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        NEED TO WRITE?
                YOU CAN!
“An Educated Writer Is An Empowered Writer.”


CONTENTS
Introduction
Upcoming Workshops:
Coaching:
About Barbara
Comments from workshop participants
Comments from clients
Words on Writing

Whether you're a student struggling to write papers, a professional wishing there were an easier way to write memos and reports, or a beginning or blocked creative writer, I can help you. For twenty years, in classes, workshops, and individual sessions, I have taught all kinds of people to write: academics, poets, managers, nurses, novelists, nonfiction writers, and others.

My approach to writing is very down-to-earth and practical; my goal in all my teaching is to empower people as writers; my emphasis is on content, communication, and craft. If you have to write (and, especially, if you hate and fear writing), I can demystify the writing process and show you how it really works. And if you want to write, I can help you overcome writing blocks and take the first steps on your writing journey.

If you live in the Boston area, and would like to take a creative writing workshop, I invite you to join one of my upcoming workshops.

For more information, read on—or email me.

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Upcoming Workshops

In Cambridge:
      How Words Work
      The Cambridge Center for Adult Education
      Nine Tuesdays, 5:45 — 7:45 pm, beginning April 4, $167
For more information: www.ccae.org

      Telling Tales: an introduction to storycraft
      The Cambridge Center for Adult Education
       Nine Wednesdays, 5:45 — 7:45 pm, beginning April 5
For more information: www.ccae.org

 

In Maine:
       The Cobscook Community Learning Center
       Trescott, Maine
        www.the cclc.org

Becoming a Practising Writer
Saturday, June, 24
      Time: TBA
      Cost: TBA
Athletes practise. Musicians practise. But writers? Rarely are we given an opportunity simply to practise writing. In this hands-on workshop, writer and experienced teacher Barbara Baig will suggest ways to set up a writing practice, and will invite you to experiment with playful and productive practices designed to help you find subjects to write about and gather material for your work. This workshop is open to writers in any genre, including beginners and those who have never before taken a writing workshop. There will be no required sharing of writing.

Telling Tales: an introduction to storycraft
July 11 to August 15
     Six Tuesdays, 5;30 — 7:30 pm
      Cost: TBA
What makes a good story? What do we have to know in order to write one? In this introductory workshop, weÕll explore these questions. Through practical in-class writing exercises weÕll investigate some basic elements of telling or inventing a story: plot, character, point of view, voice, audience, and purpose. WeÕll explore the roles of memory, observation, and imagination in creating stories. WeÕll also see what we can learn from published stories and from oral tradition. YouÕll leave with skills you can apply to your own story-making projects. Beginners are most welcome. Sharing of writing will be optional.

Writing by Ear: an introduction
Saturday, August 19
      Time: TBA
      Cost: TBA
Beginning writers often hear the advice, "Make your words sing!" But how do writers actually do that? This class is an introduction to the music of the English language: its sounds, its rhythms, its patterns. Through playful in-class writing practices weÕll each wake up our own individual ÒwriterÕs earÓ and begin to discover our own distinctive writing voices. This workshop is open to writers in any genre, including songwriters. Beginners are most welcome. Sharing of writing will not be required. Come prepared to play with words!

 

To learn more, or to register, please email Barbara


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Coaching Sessions
for Academic and Professional Writers

Barbara's writing motto #1: “Writing is work; it doesn't have to be agony.”


I have helped hundreds of people become confident and capable writers; I can help you, too. In private sessions designed to meet your specific writing needs, I can teach you how the writing process works, so that you can communicate effectively on paper and learn how to use your writing time efficiently.

I can show you how to: avoid procrastination and overcome writing blocks; use writing to generate and develop ideas; plan a writing project; consider your audience and purpose; organize your material to best effect; write clear and powerful prose; and much more.

Fee: $75/hr. (sliding scale: inquire for details)

I can hold coaching sessions with you at your workplace (within Route 128 in the Boston area; travel fees may apply).

Long-distance coaching sessions are available by special arrangement.

For more information: email Barbara.

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Coaching Sessions
for
Beginning, Blocked, and Baffled
Creative Writers

Do you wish you could write “creatively”? You can!


In private sessions designed to meet your specific needs as a writer, I can teach you how to become a practising writer, how to fall in love with words and play with them, learning their meanings and their music, and how to put them together to create the magic you want to make on the page.

We work at your pace, without hurry, as you find your own path as a writer and learn (or reacquaint yourself with) basic elements of the craft of writing.

Fee: $50/hr.

I can hold coaching sessions with you at your workplace (within Route 128 in the Boston area; travel fees may apply).

Long-distance coaching sessions are available by special arrangement.

For more information: email Barbara.

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About Barbara

Barbara Baig is a practising and published writer, and an experienced writing teacher and coach. A maker of poems and an award-winning songwriter, Barbara has also researched and written radio scripts for the Public Radio International program Sound & Spirit, and has had her own public relations business for independent musicians and artists.

Barbara has taught writing for twenty years, primarily at Harvard Divinity School, where she is the Writing Instructor. She has also taught at Lesley University's School of Management, Boston College, and privately.

Presently Barbara teaches her new workshop, Writing as Practice, Writing as Play privately in Cambridge, MA and at The Cambridge Center for Adult Education in Harvard Square.

Barbara offers private coaching sessions for academic and professional writers, and for beginning, blocked and baffled creative writers.

To learn more, consult:

Email Barbara

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Comments from participants in
Barbara's creative writing workshops:
“I LOVED this class! Barbara turned on my writer's brain. Now I see things around me like snapshots of a story waiting to be told.”
        —Bonnie, flight attendant

“Barbara's workshop, The Practice of Writing, was one of the best taught and mosthelpful courses I have ever taken anywhere, on any subject.”
        —Larry A., lawyer

“I have had MANY writing teachers. Barbara is by far the best. She allowed me to rediscover that I have both the passion and the discipline to write. I have been particularly grateful for the nonjudgmental, accepting environment in her classes. Even at its best—when writing is the most fun—it can sometimes be scary. The environment Barbara created in class banished the fear and left me free to explore more in my writing.”
        —Kathleen, social worker

“Barbara's class made my imagination come alive after years of dormancy.”
        —Carole

“What's so helpful about Barbara's classes is the inspiration they give me. I always come out of each class buzzing with ideas-for stories, for plays, for new practices to try. It's made me excited to write again and really helped me regain that sense of play and wonder I get just from telling stories. Barbara is a fabulous teacher!”
        —Karen R., freelance journalist

  “Writing has always seemed to me like such a mystical process, but this class has helped me see it in a more practical way.”
        —Joe

“Barbara 's class made writing fun!”
        —Eva, lawyer

“Barbara creates an environment in class where people feel comfortable and accepted.”
        —Megan

“Barbara's class helped me simply be more aware of my surroundings. I began to notice things in a new way. I listened as a writer, with attention, as opposed to letting things slip by.”
        —Amelia, graduate student

“The philosophy that publishing doesn't matter - that writing can be meaningful and transformative whether or not you publish - was really important and freeing to me. It fired me to write without the anxiety of whether what I was writing was any good.”
        —Leeanna, administrator

“Barbara's workshop, The Practice of Writing, was all I had hoped for from a class, and more.”
        —Gail. B., retired nurse

Comments from clients and students
who NEED to write:
“Barbara is an excellent teacher who cares deeply about writing and about helping students engage more creatively with their writing. She helps us, in stunning ways and with great skill, to learn about our ideas through writing. My learning has intensified through this experience, and I get more out of my coursework. I also feel that the sermons I am writing are clearer and more engaging.”

“As a theology student planning to get a Ph.D. and continue on to a life as an academic, I can expect to do a lot of writing in my life. This course has made such a dramatic improvement in both my writing and in the way that I approach writing. It has been, by far, one of the best things I have done for my academic career.”

“Barbara is a very gifted teacher—very clear, inspiring, and illuminating.”

“Writing and communication are integral components of our ministry and Barbara facilitates us in both! She enabled me to see writing in a new way that has shaped not only my studies but how I will write and communicate in my future ministry.”

“The Writing Workshop at HDS made me see writing differently, helped me relax and get over my procrastinating paralysis!”

 		  “I've had so much trouble with writing. I was diagnosed with ADD and put on drugs. I got special classes. And nothing has ever helped until this workshop.”

“Barbara is an amazing teacher who has made something as difficult as writing an enjoyable process.”

“This course was one of the most valuable things I did first semester. I had always feared the writing process (it felt like torture). I learned in the workshop how to organize my ideas and how to express them without draining the life from them.”

“This writing workshop is a hidden gem at HDS. Barbara's knowledge, experience and flexibility make for a class that can help not only with learning writing skills but also with creativity, planning and intellectual clarity.”

“This workshop has been of tremendous help to me in working through some ‘writer's block’ and old habits of churning out term papers. Barbara is tremendously supportive, encouraging, and relaxed in her teaching approach, which has enabled me to ease up on myself and my writing.”

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Words On Writing

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
                    —ancient Chinese proverb


Working on your craft with a good guide is a lucky move. You can save years. Many people find an interest in writing late; their talent is just waiting to be uncovered and developed. They're the ones Ben Jonson had in mind when he said, "A good poet's made as well as born."       —Frances Mayes, poet and author of Under the Tuscan Sun

A person does not "decide" to be a writer: she or he takes a single step into the terrain of putting words on a page—perhaps a tentative and halting step; then another step; and perhaps then another. And if you are that person, and if you discover that this is your path, that you love words and the craft of putting them together to make things—a sentence, a paragraph, a poem, a memoir—then you are becoming a writer. No matter how old you are when you take those first steps, you have embarked on a journey that will enrich, and possibly transform, the rest of your life.      —Barbara Baig

Talent is the assumptions we make about other people's abilities that keep us from developing our own.      —Barbara Baig

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