Blog
Meet the Teaching Artist: Thinking in Book with Susan Conley
by Writing Workshops Staff
A month ago
Hi Susan, please introduce yourself to our audience.
Hello from Portland, Maine--my home state--where I have returned after many years in California and Boston and China. I teach all things story here in Portland and around the country, while I am finishing my 6th book. It's been really wonderful to see the community here at The Writing Workshops and I am excited about building more really immersive and supportive "rooms" here where we can all take risks and go deeply into our stories.
What made you want to teach this specific class? Is it something you are focusing on in your own writing practice? Have you noticed a need to focus on this element of craft?
Thinking in Book evolved after years of teaching in my MFA program (the Stonecoast MFA here in Maine) and seeing that many of my students had a book sort of burning a hole in their pocket, but they were reluctant or unable to find a way to fully name their intention and map the book and really build out the side and foundation of the book in their mind and on the page. I saw that if I was able to craft a course that really walked through the shape and pacing and expectations of each book that each student was writing, and debunked some of the fear around naming the intentions of the book, there could be these radical shifts in how my students approached the wildly exciting and also daunting experience of actually completing a book manuscript. And so Thinking in Book was born out of that very specific need, and I have seen it really transform writers' lives and catalyze them to the finish.
Give us a breakdown of how the course is going to go. What can the students expect? What is your favorite part about this class you've dreamed up?
The course will move closely through the writing of a book in the sense of how its structured, from beginning to middle to end and the reader's expectations around those pulse moments. The course will also be really intrepid in terms of how it asks you to name central questions of your book and really interrogate the thinking behind those questions and keep digging into those questions, asking more. It will also do a deep dive on pace and actionability in plot and escalation.
What was your first literary crush?
I could not believe there was such a woman as Virginia Woolf when I was in college, and this was when I fell in love with story and with her work. A woman who told us not to crush the thing we most want to in our books, by building a wobbly form around it.
What are you currently reading?
I am a polyglot of form and content. I read for voice and vibe and escalation and urgency and how the book "does language" to borrow from the great Toni Morrison. On my nightstand right now: Orbital, by Samantha Harvey. Run Towards Danger, by Sarah Polley. Two backlist novels by Maggie O'Farrell, Stay True by Hua Hsu.
How do you choose what you're working on? When do you know it is the next thing you want to write all the way to THE END?
First, being around things in the natural world that are much bigger than me: namely the ocean. Then all manner of voice-driven urgent writing on a page. So I read a whole lot when I am writing.
What is the best piece of writing wisdom you've received that you can pass along to our readers? How did it impact your work? Why has this advice stuck with you?
Backstory is expensive. So use it with great intention and sparingly. And tether it tightly to the story that you most want to tell and that is really driving the book. It's stuck because backstory never goes away, and the choices it requires and invites around structure are always there to be reckoned with!
What is your favorite book to recommend on the craft of writing? Why this book?
I love Mary Oliver's book called the Poetry Handbook. An outlier, for sure. But she is so clear and good and concise on how to think of imagery and how to consider verbs and how to basically "DO" language in a way that some prose writers I work with haven't considered yet. So borrowing from the realm of poetry really helps.
Bonus question: What’s your teaching vibe?
Warm, casual, lots of meeting you where you are at, lots of intuiting what you might want to read next and what your story is really asking. Fun. Lively. Really innovative prompts when you want 'em that may blow your socks off. I've been curating them carefully for years in terms of which ones will open the door to your story for you. I love to see you turn the corner in the work and say the things you most want to say, so I take it as my job to get you there!
Instructor Susan Conley is the award-winning author of five critically-acclaimed books, including her newest, best-selling novel Landslide which was named a New York Times “Editor’s Choice,” a TODAY Show “Best Summer Read,” and a New York Times "Paperback Row" Pick. Landslide was named “Best Book” in 2021 by Good Morning America, The New York Post, Medium, Bustle, and Biblio Lifestyle. It was a Vanity Fair, "Book We Can't Stop Thinking About" and a Maine NPR "All Books Considered" Bookclub Pick. Her writing has appeared in places like The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, Lithub, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Harvard Review, Downeast Magazine, Maine Magazine, Wildsam and others. She’s been awarded multiple fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, The Maine Arts Commission, and the Massachusetts Arts Council. She's won the Maine Book Award and the Maine Award for Publishing Excellence and has been a featured Tedx Speaker, where her talk, the "Power of Story," has been viewed widely. She’s taught at a host of colleges and art-residencies including Emerson College, Colby College, The University of Massachusetts, where she was the Jack Kerouac Visiting Fellow, The Haystack School, The Spannochia Foundation, The La Napoule Foundation, The Beijing Hutong ,and the Maine Media Workshops. She’s on the faculty of the Stonecoast MFA Program, and she is co-founder of the Telling Room, a creative writing center in Portland, Maine.
