More for readers and writers from our friends at Five Things I've Learned! |
(Including their first-ever free class!) |
Click the image or button below to learn more and to view a personalized invitation to each upcoming live session. |
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This Sunday, June 4th: Join Random House copy chief and author of Dreyers English Benjamin Dreyer in this live two-hour class and discover the Five Things He’s Learned about the roll-up-your-sleeves-and-do-the-work work that makes writing more effective, clearer, and sharper.
Benjamin became a production editor at Random House in 1993, where he worked with a roster of writers that included Michael Chabon, Edmund Morris, Suzan-Lori Parks, Michael Pollan, Peter Straub, and Calvin Trillin. He has also copyedited books by authors including E. L. Doctorow, David Ebershoff, Frank Rich, and Elizabeth Strout. His best-selling book, Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, distills his experience in a remarkably accessible and inspiring way.
On Sunday, June 4, Benjamin will share the the Five Things He’s Learned about How to Make Writing Better. In this two-hour class, he'll build on the key lessons he’s learned as a reader, as a writer – and while becoming a now-legendary editor of others. He’ll share in the most practical nuts-and-bolts way why some great passages of writing are indeed great, and what he has learned over the years works and doesn’t work in the dance between copy editor and writer.
"What I’ve learned matters most is paying attention to what a writer is doing," Benjamin explains in explains in his personal invitation to this class, "so that your every edit demonstrates that you’re trying to support rather than distort their writing. Listen before you fix".
Find out more, and view Benjamin's personal video invitation to this upcoming class by following the button below. |
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Don't miss these great live sessions, coming soon. |
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Sunday, June 11th: Join celebrated novelist, essayist, short-story writer, and professor Peter Orner in this live, two–hour class and discover the Five Things He’s Learned about how great writers create remarkable movement and energy within a single paragraph – and how you can craft equally powerful building blocks within your own writing.
This marks Peter's return to myfivethings.com, following his inspiring earlier session, Five Things I've Learned about Writing (By Not Writing). Peter is the author of novels, story collections, and essays – every one rightly celebrated for his remarkable voice, for the masterful precision and concision of his writing, and for the compassion he summons for both his real-life and fictional characters and the worlds they inhabit. His most recent release, Still No Word from You, is a memoir of sorts – almost a sort of anti-memoir that connects experiences from his own life with those of characters who have shaped his reading.
Peter has been awarded the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a two-year Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, as well as a Fulbright to Namibia. He's currently the Director of Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. He lives with his family in Norwich, Vermont where he’s also a volunteer firefighter with the Norwich Fire Department.
On June 11th, Peter will share something he knows a great deal about: Five Things He's Learned about Momentum – In Five Great Paragraphs. He'll take time to examine great individual paragraphs from exemplary authors – including single paragraphs from Woolf, Faulkner, Joyce, Morrison, Gallant, Rulfo, and Gardner – and share insights into how these exemplary paragraphs create momentum and energy in a story. He'll also invite attendees to offer paragraphs of their own, and he'll review select contributions from class participants with the same careful attention.
"Here’s the thing," Peter writes in the introduction to his class, "I don’t think we give paragraphs enough credit. I mean what would a story be without them? They are like brief, self-contained universes. Sometimes, they are not so brief, but it’s my contention that you can look at any great paragraph, short or long, and learn a hell of a lot about how a story moves. In prose, the momentum comes from the stuff inside the paragraphs. It’s how we move things along, we carry a story from paragraph to paragraph. Please join me for a closer look at what I believe are the real building blocks of great writing".
Find out more, and view Peter's personal video invitation to this upcoming class by following the button below. |
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REGISTER NOW FOR THIS FREE, LIVE CLASS!
Thursday, June 15th: Join former Adobe Research Lab member, Matt Strain, as he shares the Five Things He’s Learned about getting started in the exciting, emerging world of artificial intelligence.
For more than 17 years at Adobe, Matt led teams across marketing, strategy, new business, and research. Most recently at the Adobe Research Lab, he explored the intersection of A.I. and creativity, collaborating with teams to bring innovative new products and services to market. He was, for example, a leader in crafting Adobe’s strategy to address fake news and disinformation – a project that grew into the widely adopted Content Authenticity Initiative.
These days, Matt helps people and businesses prepare for the unprecedented opportunities already accompanying the A.I. revolution. In fact, Matt is hands down the smartest, most thoughtful guy we know to get us started understanding what’s happening – and what’s at stake – as A.I. becomes more and more integrated in our lives.
On June 15th, Matt will share the Five Things He’s Learned about Getting Started with A.I. – for Real People. He’ll recount his recent experiences creating a one-of-a-kind cocktail book – one in which all text and imagery was generated by A.I.. The effort proved so successful that he was recently chronicled in one of the first New York Times stories about A.I.’s seemingly limitless potential.
During the session, Matt will also introduce a simple framework for understanding the components of A.I. and offer a fast look at the related tools making the biggest difference today. He’ll explain the essential importance of crafting effective prompts to help get the most out of A.I. applications; and he’ll balance artificial intelligence's potential with a discussion of the technology’s all-to-real dark side.
“We’re facing opportunities and challenges today that the experts predicted would take years to arrive,” Matt explains in explains in his personal invitation to this class. “There’s a lot to cover. But the world of artificial intelligence is already upon us, and I’m eager to make sure each of us is positioned to use this technology as a force for good.”
Something else about this class: All Matt has to share feels so urgent and essential that we think it best to make this class as broadly accessible as possible. As a result, we’re providing unlimited complimentary access. The live class and its archive are both available for free. You need only register to receive confirmation that your space has been reserved for this 90-minute session. Find out more, and view Matt’s personal video invitation by following the button below. (It's the last class we'll offer before our own summer break. If you like what you see, please spread the word about this first-ever Come-One-Come-All live session.) |
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Explore every Five Things I've Learned on-demand class any time – and save on more than 70 classes from our first two seasons with our three- or six-class Multi Pass. |
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