Write Now Online: The Narrative Braid w/ videos by Lidia Yuknavitch (Ongoing)

We’re bringing one of our most popular workshops online for those of you who can’t be with us in person. We know sometimes generative workshops can leave you with an overwhelming amount of raw material. In this four-part series (guided by videos featuring our resident mermaid Lidia Yuknavitch) you’ll read, get inspired and discover the germ of an idea, write it, revise it, and finish it—and for those interested in publication, we’ll offer strategies towards that end as well!

Two versions of this course will be offered:

• Introvert’s Narrative Braid: For $99, you’ll receive access to the four “weeks” of videos that Lidia has created for this series, and you will take them each on your own time from the safety and security of your writerly hidey-hole (OH BOY DO WE GET IT) The Introvert option is live all the time. Once you purchase it, you will have access to the videos in perpetuity.

• Extrovert’s Narrative Braid: ***NEXT EXTROVERT CLASSES WILL LAUNCH MAY 1ST!***

  For $150, you’ll receive these videos in the framework of an online community space with nine (9) other writers. Think of this as a playpen, a creative incubator to support you as you generate writing. A facilitator (one of Lidia’s longtime collaborators—Domi Shoemaker, Daniel Elder, or Katie Guinn) will be in the space for logistical help and to answer clarifying questions. These facilitators won’t be offering feedback—we want you and your fellow writers to turn to each other for that. Together, you’ll have space and time each week between videos launching, to bounce ideas off each  other and form a temporary community. And who knows? We certainly hope some of these communities will last beyond the course’s end date. Haven’t you been looking for a writing group? (After the class ends, you will maintain access to the videos should you wish to revisit them.) There will also be a Zoom meeting at the beginning of the class on Monday May 3 at 5PM PST.

The Write Now collaborations are a process-based, time foreshortened, collaborative incubation space offering. They are meant to get your creative juices firing while working with a small group or alone. The weekly process-oriented creative portals and practices are meant to generate material that you can work with. This is a micro feedback oriented space, as opposed to a more heavy feedback focused space. Micro feedback is completely different in that it is generative revision and not at all corrective critique. We will get deeper in to that inside.

What is a Narrative Braid?

Lidia says: If you find yourself with more than one story strand in a piece of writing BE EXCITED—because it likely means your imagination is trying to create a narrative braid. Put simply, a narrative braid essay or story weaves more than one story thread back and forth, under and over to establish a braided form.

Narrative braids thus may have more than one storyline or piece of content or theme, and/or they may also employ more than one voice or style or discourse. Narrative braids tend to have recurring elements or images or ideas, just like braided hair—the same threads come back to create a woven story.

Over the last five years as I have been studying narrative braids, working collaboratively with other writers to create them, and writing my own—such as the essay “Woven” published in Guernica—I have noticed that some stories truly vibrate and multiply meanings within this form. Specifically, the narrative braid is a great hybrid form for:

• weaving the personal with the political

• exploring multiplicity of voice or polyphonic storytelling

• developing layered storytelling that carries more than one time and place

• multiplying meanings, opening up experiences, images, places, history to multiple meanings

• holding open questions rather than resolving them

• emphasizing the meaningfulness and power of repetition, echo, and the ways in which experience and storytelling always already have many strands

Four-Part Series—How it Works

• Week One ::  Lidia will talk through her relationship to braids and their possibilities. You’ll have links to eyeball some beautiful narrative braids for inspiration and strategy. Some of these will be pieces that were written in in-person versions of this course that ran in Portland and were later published! You’ll throw down some ideas of your own—and then commit to one of these projects to carry through to the end.

• Week Two :: You’ll begin a full draft of the braid idea to which you’ve committed. Lidia will offer guidance—both practical and abstract/artistic—on structure and process as you bring the disparate threads of your stories on to the page.

• Week Three :: Soon enough, it’s time to take what you’ve written and revise. Lidia will offer up some of her tried and true revision techniques, such as vertical reading, to help you look for missed opportunities in the text. You’ll be given tips for both opening up the work and paring it down to its essentials.

• Week Four :: You’ve got a finished draft. Now what? Our workshops are often visited by people who don’t intend to try and get their writing published, but for the most part people are longing to put their narratives out in the world. Strategies and advice as well as reminders to celebrate—you had an idea and you carried it through to completion. Fuck yes.

We do not currently have scholarships available for this online offering. We are always open to accommodating payment plans. Please contact Daniel Elder at registration@corporealwriting.com to set one up.