To all the Chicago-area writers: Three weeks from today, I begin teaching a four-week course called Editing Your Work, through the Writer’s Studio at the University of Chicago Graham School. In the class, we will examine strategies by which writers may read their own work with fresh eyes; discuss the different levels of editing; look at “before and after” examples from published writers; and practice applying various techniques of revision to our work.
And now a brief tangent from the Department of Coincidence:
I was going through my course materials from last year and made an amusing discovery. For one session, I had students read a short essay called “The Joys of Trimming” (because oh, how I love trimming!). I hadn’t remembered this, but the essay was written by the novelist Pamela Erens—whose latest book, Eleven Hours, I happened to review for the NYT Book Review earlier this month.
The Erens essay will probably be on the reading list again, so if you check it out now, you’ll be a step ahead. To register for my class, or any other Writer’s Studio courses, please visit this page and click on “search courses.”