Writing and Telling Stories:
An intensive workshop with Robert Bausch

We will concentrate on the art of story telling; we will tell stories, and read the work of each member of the workshop -- up to 3,000 words. We will discuss beginnings, building tension and conflict; characters -- how to create them, how to inhabit them; dialogue -- how to make it count in a story; novels and short stories; how to build each from the earliest conception to fruition; Writer’s block -- how to beat it EVERY time.

Revising and reworking, and polishing drafts. We will study the difference between crisis and conflict; between entertainment and literary fiction. We will tell more stories; we will spend time reading around the camp fire, telling anecdotes and stories and jokes. We will talk about publishing and the publishing game; we will tell more stories and jokes; we will laugh and cry and learn to develop and honor our craft.

Workshops will start at 9:30 a.m. (after Yoga, or morning walks, and breakfast). At 12:00 we will have lunch, and then I will have individual conferences with students in the afternoons. In the conferences we will get as deeply as possible into what each writer is trying to learn and achieve in his or her work.

Instructor Bio: Robert Bausch

Robert Bausch is the author of seven novels and one collection of short stories. He has taught at Johns Hopkins, the University of Virginia, American University, George Mason University and Northern Va. Community College. He has been teaching literature and creative writing for more than 30 years, and along with his college teaching he also conducts workshops at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Md. His stories have been published in The Atlantic, Glimmer Train, The Northern Virginia Review, and other magazines. His best selling novel A Hole in the Earth was a N.Y. Times “notable book year” and a Washington Post “Favorite Book of the Year. In 2004 he was awarded the Fellowship of Southern Writers award in fiction for the body of his work.

On the Web: Robert Bausch