If I teach nothing in my writing classes, I teach this: do not outline your memoir (or novel or novella or short story or essay). Do not think out the plot, the narrative arc, the protagonist’s journey, whatever you want to call it. Instead, try to find the story through an honest excavation of the characters’ total experience of the situation at hand. Do that, and I promise the story will begin to write itself, with little help from the godly, intelligent, well-read, and ambitious author. But how, precisely, does one go about this “excavation”? And how, technically speaking, can we ignite a story into “writing itself”? Come to this workshop, and I will seek to demystify those writerly tools and skills that time and time again, if they are sharp enough, and if the writer can summon enough daily faith and nerve, can penetrate the mystery of story itself.

Join 2018-2020 San Antonio Poet Laureate Octavio Quintanilla for a one-day poetry workshop designed to have you see poetry-making with a fresh set of eyes. Discover new inroads into the poetry process through three distinct approaches led by Dr. Quintanilla: lyric, visual, and form. In this workshop, there will be an emphasis on process and generating new work. Keywords: blank page // first word // first image // first line // first doodle // first draft. Take away from this class innovative ideas on how to kickstart your future poems.