Build Your Collection: Fiction, Memoir & More

Build Your Collection is a choose-your-own-path writing course. Over 12 weeks, students write four polished pieces selecting from short stories, memoir, personal essay, flash fiction, or brevity memoir for each one. Every student’s collection is different because every student’s creative vision is different.

Each piece follows a complete writing cycle: plan with a coach, draft, receive feedback, and revise. Students don’t just write and move on. They work on new pieces while simultaneously revising earlier ones, the same way professional writers manage a body of work. This overlapping cycle builds discipline, revision skills, and the ability to hold multiple projects in mind at once.

The course includes genre-specific lessons for each writing path: narrative craft for short stories, voice and reflection for memoir, compression and imagery for flash fiction, humor writing, and speculative fiction (science fiction and fantasy). Students read the lessons relevant to their chosen pieces and skip the rest: no busywork, no one-size-fits-all assignments.

Your coach is your biggest asset throughout this class. They review every planning sheet, read every draft, and provide detailed feedback at every stage. This class focuses on individualized, one-on-one work with your coach; others may be in the class, but peer collaboration is not required. Students learn how to conference effectively with their editor including how to evaluate their own writing, identify weak spots, and ask the kind of specific questions that lead to real improvement. This is a professional skill that serves writers for life.

This class can be taken more than once. Each time, students choose different genres and prompts for a completely different collection. Your story. Your voice. No creative limits.

Note: This course runs as a continuous 12-week semester. The writing and revision cycles build on each other sequentially and are designed to be completed together. Ready to publish your collection? Pair this class with Meet with an Editor and Publish.