WEBINAR | Self vs. Self: Writing Your Best Essays from Contradictions
January 14 @ 3:00 pm – 4:15 pm EST
The confusions and contradictions you notice in yourself and the world are your richest source of material.
For essayists and creative nonfiction writers | Included in the Season Pass
As humans, we seek certainty. As writers, diving into the messiness of our own opinions creates our most powerful work. Transcendent, complex works of nonfiction often depend on confusions and contradictions. A writer can intentionally build tension in an essay by identifying and illuminating paradox, contradiction, and incongruity in oneself, one’s subject, one’s culture, and the world. Leaning into and exploring contradiction is often the difference between a simple, underdeveloped draft and a powerful, published essay, article, or memoir.
In this webinar, we’ll examine works of nonfiction, including Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz (a memoir of grief and joy intertwined), to learn how authors establish and contend with opposite principles, conflicting perspectives, and subjects that seemingly clash. You’ll also generate your own list of contradictions you can return to time and again for inspiration.
Can’t make it live? No worries—a replay will be available to all registrants.
In this webinar, you will:
- EXPLORE the works of master nonfiction essayists and memoirists to see how to utilize contradictions thematically and stylistically
- DISCOVER why paradox and confusion make the richest material
- PRACTICE making your own lists of contradictions for future inspiration
You should take this webinar if…
- You are an intermediate or advanced writer who wants to dig beneath the obvious stories you’ve been telling
- You need help generating material
- You want to add depth, tension, and nuance to your essays and nonfiction
- You are eager to clarify (rather than avoid) the contradictions that shape your voice
- You are writing on grief, loss, or other strong subjects, and it’s difficult to find the tension or dramatic arc beyond one set of powerful feelings
Closed captioning is available. ✔
All registrants receive the recording. ✔
ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER
Lindsey DeLoach Jones is a writer living in Greenville, South Carolina. She writes about the tension between seemingly opposed forces—the spiritual and the practical, the mysterious and the mundane, the Mother and the Artist—in her Substack, Between Two Things.
Lindsey holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction and has served as the Writer-in-Residence at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts. She has taught literature and writing at Clemson University and currently teaches writing online and in person at Writeshare, the writers’ network she co-founded in Upstate SC. She previously served as Editor of Emrys Journal and Edible Upcountry. Among other places, Lindsey’s essays have appeared in HuffPost, HuffPost Parenting, Split Lip, Under the Gum Tree, and Motherwell. She is a recipient of the Vandermey Nonfiction Prize, and an essay nominated by Pigeon Pages was a finalist for Best of the Net.
Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com
FULL REFUNDS ARE AVAILABLE before the replay is sent out. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.
