"Crash" Writing with Zeynep Özakat

The first session of this course will be held in person at The Center for Fiction. The second session will be conducted online via Zoom.

Kazuo Ishiguro famously wrote his Booker Prize winning novel, The Remains of the Day, in four weeks. “During the Crash, I would do nothing but write from 9am to 10:30pm, Monday through Saturday. I’d get one hour off for lunch and two for dinner,” writes Ishiguro in an essay he penned on how he wrote his novel.

I do not think The Center for Fiction offers a program where we could quit everything else in our lives to hole-up together for four weeks from 9am to 10:30pm to write our prize-winning novels… (Not yet, at least!) But I do hope you’ll get something out of a more doable 2-day “crash.”

The first day of our “crash” writing session will be conducted in person. I will ask you to read a story beforehand so that we can dissect it and do a mini craft class before we get to writing. I will then ask you to write something specific to what we learned. The rest of our session will be spent generating work through different guided writing prompts.

The second day of our “crash” will be conducted through Zoom. This is the day we’ll get to share our writing with each other and discuss strategies on how to move forward with what we started.

This is meant to be a generative writing class with time allocated to in-class writing. My hope is for you to start something you’ll feel so excited about, you’ll want to continue and finish as soon as possible.

Course Outline

• Session I: In-person generative writing day with guided writing prompts and a mini craft lesson meant to inspire.
• Session II: Participants get to share work with each other, ask questions and discuss their work further online via Zoom.