Gail Anderson-Dargatz is fulfilling a long-held dream and in doing so, will give others the opportunity to follow theirs.
Heading back to the Shuswap following a summer in Ontario with family and friends, Anderson-Dargatz is ready to offer a course in writing fiction.
“For years I’ve wanted to teach fiction in the region but, well, life got in the way,” she said recently. “I’ve finally set up a pilot project with Okanagan College to teach both online and blended courses (partly face-to-face, partly online) starting this coming September.”
Anderson-Dargatz and her husband tried living in Ontario full-time and love their northern Ontario summers, but the call of the West and a job for her husband, Mitch Krupp, brought the family back.
The confines of motherhood easing somewhat, Anderson-Dargatz began discussions with Okanagan College, settling on non-credit courses – a pilot project with limited registration.
The author teaches on-site at UBC in the summer but is familiar with online fiction workshops as they form the bulk of what she teaches through the university.
“Mitch, the geek, set me up with a forum,” she says laughingly of her husband’s computer prowess. “A lot of writers have never experienced forums before, so we will be working one-on-one before getting online with the group.”
Anderson-Dargatz will walk her students through the process of signing on and taking part in test forums so they can learn how to attend them comfortably.
“For most people, if it’s new, it’s scary,” she says. “But once you get going, it’s easy. If you can do email, you can do this.”
Don’t expect to write the great Canadian novel just yet, though.
Anderson-Dargatz will be handing out manuscripts about a week prior to the first workshop so students can evaluate and make some notes.
When the group gets together online, everyone will be given the opportunity to share their initial comments.
Then the group will begin brainstorming about the manuscript while the author listens and takes notes. Students will also be given the opportunity to ask the author questions.
“It’s the best way to learn to write fiction,” Anderson-Dargatz maintains, noting it’s difficult for beginners, and even seasoned writers, to see their own, usually common mistakes. The point of learning to critique others is to learn to self-edit.
People will also learn workshop protocol – kind but honest – and each manuscript will be used to talk about very specific elements of writing good fiction. That might be more engaging dialogues, building characters, finding ways to build conflict.
The accomplished author offers other services to aspiring writers as well:
• Manuscript evaluations – writers submit their manuscript by email, and Anderson-Dargatz provides a detailed set of notes on the manuscript. The writer is then invited to ask questions and brainstorm with Gail over the course of a day by email.
•Four-month mentorships – each month the writer emails a short story or portion of their novel manuscript up to 5,000 words, for a total of 20,000 words over the course of the mentorship. Anderson-Dargatz provide notes on each submission, usually within one week. At the point, the writer may discuss the submission, by email, with the author for a day.
Anderson-Dargatz has set the courses up in such a way that the online class material is available to current registered students only.
But, she has also set up areas, for example, the salon, so any one of her students can access many different discussions on craft and living the writers life or writing markets and publishing and promoting their writing, as well as reading recommendations.
“Eventually, we will be inviting well-known Canadian writers to come in and do guest events and children’s writers,” she says.
As well as fulfilling her roles as a mother, wife, teacher and mentor, Anderson-Dargatz finds time to work on her own writing.
“I’m still working on the next Great Canadian Novel (slow going between teaching and kids …),” she says. And the other good thing?
Anderson-Dargatz has been asked to present at next year’s Word on the Lake – Shuswap Readers’ and Writers’ Festival.
For more information about the author and the courses she offers, visit www.gailandersondargatz.ca.
