CWC-Sacramento Meeting
Saturday, March 15th, from 12:00 pm to 2:30 pm at
The Spaghetti Factory, 1625 Watt Ave, Sacramento, CA 95864 Open to the Public!
Writing Coach and MFA faculty member, Sierra Nevada College
Imprudent, impulsive, poorly planned, wildly exciting—writing a short story is, as Lorrie Moore once pointed out, like having a brief intense love affair. Whereas a novel is a marriage. Marriages are fine and well, but if you’re writing and reading for fun, you might want to play the field a bit—fall in and out of love a few times, maybe get your heart broken without destroying your life. In this talk, we’ll focus on the craft (and process) considerations specific to this most exhilarating of literary forms.
A streetcar named desire?
What you will learn from Peter
- Short stories require play and improvisation. They resist planning.
- The ingredients and basic approach that ensures the play goes well.
- Short means move fast – the crucial role of information management.
- The key craft difference between shorter short stories, and longer short stories.
- How to get end a short story? The role of theme and a surprisingly early narrative climax.
Popular writing coach and instructor Peter Mountford is the author of the award-winning novels A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism, and The Dismal Science. His work has appeared in the Paris Review, Ploughshares, The Atlantic, New York Times (Modern Love), The Sun, Granta, Guernica, and elsewhere. He teaches at UNR’s low-residency MFA at Lake Tahoe. His collection of stories Detonator, will be out in fall, 2025. Learn more: mountfordwriting.com
Tickets are $30 if you buy 3 days before the event. Menu selection must be chosen at time of purchase. The buffet includes salad, bread, ice cream, and coffee. Walk-ins and late purchases will be $35.