Deirdra McAfee

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Why is language? Language is that we may mis-unda-stand each udda.

—Krazy Kat

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Beauty has no evident usefulness, and yet without it, we could not endure our lives.

—Freud
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Activities

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Spring 2012 at The Virginia Museum Studio School


• • You started it and got stuck. You finished it, but it’s not wonderful. You revised it, but it’s not ready. It got rejected. It got accepted. You've been asked to read it. Out loud. Now what? • • You got a middle but not an end, you got a beginning but not those other two things. How do we find the form, and how do we wrestle pieces into coherence?
"Now What?" The Practical Writer: This one-day course will help you answer those perplexing questions about writing, revising, and persisting. We’ll talk about making and improving work, and about where yours goes from here. We’ll talk about reading—how to read your own work to an audience, and what you read as a writer. And we’ll talk about submitting—how-to, where-to—and about surviving and thriving on rejection. Bring paper and pencils, work, anxieties, misgivings, and questions. We will use them all.
March 10, 2012, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Beginnings & Endings: This six-week evening course will offer examples and strategies to get us into and out of stories, novels, and essays.
Fiction and nonfiction don’t arrive in order. Most writers get pieces—a middle here, a chunk of exposition or description there, openings that don’t open, and endings that don’t end. This class will help you knit together the fragments and find out how your story wants to tell itself. We will learn how to jack up stories' language and tension to make them begin irresistibly. We will discover how the first page foretells the story and suggests shapely and suitable conclusions.
February 2–March 29 (no class March 15), 7–10 p.m.

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EDITORIAL CONSULTING


You need a reader who can help you see your writing better. That reader's called an editor.

As you start . . .


Before it's a book, it's an idea, a set of notes, an outline, a bunch of pages. Developmental editing takes it from these beginnings to a completed manuscript, with special attention to the project's
-structure
-content
-plot
-beginning and ending

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After you've written . . .


Manuscript evaluation—
-Is it good?
-Is it ready?
-What now?
General Editing—
-grammar
-spelling
-syntax
-usage
Substantive Editing—
-organization
-coherence
Submission guidance—
-What to send
-Where to send
Consultation—
Proven, experienced guidance finding the right
– MFA program
– fellowship
– residency
– grant
Informed, sophisticated help—
-Crafting better applications
-Improving chances of success

To discuss or arrange evaluation, editing,
or consultation, click
e-mail.


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Private Studio Classes, by invitation


Helpful, hand-picked colleagues; knowledgeable, sophisticated instruction; congenial surroundings.

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