Gotham Writers Workshop

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing, Level 1, on-​site NYC, with Paul Witcover:
You’ll get back from the class whatever you put in, squared. So if you put in alot you’ll receive something spectacular in return. Your writing may undergo a sudden upheaval; you may have a mystical experience that transforms you. I thought it would take me a year to recover, but it only took a month. I’m just getting back on my feet now, which is why I can write this review!
Paul gives detailed, thoughtful, in-​depth consideration to every student’s writing. He spends alot of his personal time writing up extremely useful pages of feedback for each piece, as well as going into remarkable depth with each submission during the workshop part of the class. If you need help with your story, there is genuine aid here. He has a firm apprehension of speculative fiction scenarios and dilemmas, and a strong editorial eye. He’s gentle and respectful of creativity, and takes care to support you as you go careening off in your own direction — provides deep and detailed feedback, but doesn’t interfere or squash your vision. He strikes a wonderful intuitive balance when helping students — tells us what we need to know to make our writing better, but gives us plenty of room to be ourselves.
This class went off like a blaze of illumination in my mind and heart. Keep yourself together, fellow writer, as you jump into the beautiful creative storm that is a Gotham speculative fiction class!

This review is for the online courses. There are about 9 assignments for which feedback is provided. The word limit is between 250 – 500 words per assignment. As a result, the rate is about $ 4/​word submitted for feedback. It is pretty expensive.

I would like to establish some caveats right at the start: 1) I probably should have written this review a long time ago, and 2) this review isn’t so much a review of GWW per se, as it is of one particular GWW instructor — although it could be argued that in an educational scenario, one’s experience with an instructor represents the overwhelming essence of one’s experience of the institution itself, so any review of an instructor is always at least a partial and/​or indirect review of the institution which she/​he implicitly represents. Feel free to evaluate accordingly.
In the fall of 2011, I enrolled in a 10-​week, online, Level I course in poetry. The instructor was Michael Montlack. For the past few years, I’d already been writing poetry on my own, sparingly but successfully. I was looking for some expert feedback… and some constructive criticism… to help me to further develop my talent and refine my style: the key word here being «constructive».
A brief personal note, if I may: I’m a writer who is brutally honest with himself. I know what I do well — and what I don’t do well. And I would never share a work that wasn’t yet complete, or was otherwise not up to standard. I’m not the kind of poet who is still trying to find his poetic voice. I know who I am, and I already know my own poetic voice. I’m interested in evolving as a writer/​poet, because it’s something that I already do well, and I want to see how much more skilled and accomplished I can become.
During this course, I had an experience that was quite unlike any other in my 13 years of K-​12 school, four years of college, and two years of graduate school, as virtually from the very start of the class, Mr. Montlack took a visceral, almost peevish dislike to my material. During the 2+ months of my participation in weekly class sessions and regular poetry submissions, I cannot recall a single instance in which he offered any actual encouragement to me, much less positive support. What I do recall are several instances in which Mr. Montlack seemed to have gone out of his way to disparage my work, for what seemed like very gratuitous reasons, if for any actual reasons at all.
Things finally came to a head at about the midway point of the course — just after Mr. Montlack had dumped all over my midterm poetry submission, without explanation. I immediately responded with an extensive email message, in which I reviewed his behavior toward me from the very first class session, and demanded that he explain to me — precisely — just what it was that he found so objectionable in my work. I reminded him that I had just spent $ 400 in order to learn from him — not to be insulted or demeaned — and insisted that if he found my poetry to in any way be lacking, it was his responsibility to actually instruct me, by being explicit about a) his frame of reference, b) his particular poetic standards and principles, and c) his reasons for why I should accept those same standards and principles as my own.
For whatever reason, I thought he might reply to me in kind, i.e. by actually getting into the nitty-​gritty of what it was that he had to teach me, and that this unfortunate confrontation might yet have a positive, productive outcome — IF he would then seize the opportunity to clear the air with me, and begin to provide me with the constructive instruction that I had paid for. Instead, he failed to acknowledge the validity of ANY of my complaints, refused to engage with me concerning ANY of the particular issues involved, and replied only with a terse two-​sentence statement, informing me that he was dropping me from the course, effectively immediately, and that I could take up the matter with the dean. No explanation. Not even an attempt.
The dean responded to me the next morning with an apology, and an offer to take the course again at no charge — with a different instructor. As one might imagine, however, by that point I had no appetite for a potential repeat of what I’d just endured — and therefore have focused upon writing independently, without an instructor, ever since then. As any creative writer knows, success in the craft depends upon the willingness to accept a good deal of vulnerability. And I would argue that this is in no case more true that it is with that most sensitive, most intimate literary genre of all: poetry.
From what I’ve been told, Mr. Montlack gets very positive feedback from most other GWW students who have studied with him. Based upon my personal experience with him, however, I can state only that any potential poetry student at GWW should probably think twice before committing to a course of study with such a narcissistic prima donna as Michael Montlack.

I took the Creative Writing 101 class this past fall, and LOVED it. I was an English major in college and have taken a lot of writing classes, but stopped writing about 10 years ago and wanted a gentle re-​entry that would work my atrophied writing muscles without being too taxing. This class was exactly that. Short exercises during the class, prompted by reading excerpts from different authors and genres, voluntary reading (unless it’s always the same people and then you rotate), and 500-​word assignments that you submit early and the instructor comments on. There are orchids and onions (positive comments and suggestions) that preserve one’s delicate ego as you venture into the forest. Am already signed up for another course.

I may be addicted to Gotham classes. I’ve taken several one-​day intensives and 10-​week courses, including Songwriting, Memoir, Screenplay Writing, Children’s Book Writing, and a few others. Every teacher I’ve had has been fantastic, and I’ve made some great friends in classes. The write-​ins on Friday nights are a lot of fun, too.

I just finished creative non-​fiction 101. This is the only writing class I’ve ever taken so I can’t compare it to anything but I say Yes! This was the real deal. I thought the class was very well organized with each week introducing a different type of non-​fiction writing. We were given time in class to write and then the lesson began. We talked about the elements of each type of writing and then we discussed examples of when its done well. If you want to just start writing, do this course.

I just finished level one of the memoir writing class. I loved this class. It really taught me how to write. The class showed me what was needed to make my writing well rounded, clear and enjoyable. The teacher understood how to write and how to teach writing. I will be taking level two in September, hopefully with the same teacher. I have wanted to write for a long time and taking these classes has helped me. I like the deadline of having to write every week. This week without the class I haven’t written a word. The class keeps me going.

My favorite part of this class — it was fun! This is perfect for someone who has a busy life schedule. Work, family, etc. Believe me, I am one of those people. Yet I managed to find time to read one assignment per week, and submit my homework early. Because let’s face it, if you love something, you will make time.
The teacher was knowledgeable and provide me with valuable feedback. There is no doubt about one thing; I am a better writer because of this course. My writing is much more entertaining, coming from comments of the few readers who read my stuff.
Here is the best endorsement I can give; I am signing up for the next class. This one was Creative Writing 101. Next I am taking Fiction 1, then I will probably take Novel Writing. If you like to write, and want to get better, then I recommend this school.

This as one of the most exceptional things I have done for myself in years. The syllabus, exercises, critiques and especially the teacher, Domenica Ruta, were amazing. After 10 weeks I have truly rediscovered my creative voice in my writing, something I was not able to do on my own. Thank you, Gotham!

I had been looking at taking the Creative Non Fiction intro course for a few months — I finally went for it, and I was really pleased with it. Aside from the fact that I had to miss some of the classes due to my own schedule, I felt it gave me a comprehensive enough overview to get a sense of which genres I had an interest in, where I felt i could expand my talent, and that I might want to explore in more depth through one of the longer format courses.
Our instructor, Kelly, was excellent. I was impressed by the quality of instructors — experts in their fields and instructors at the college level. It really made a difference in my opinion. I’ve taken a number of writing workshops, since that’s my occupation, and I felt this one was really well constructed and thought out in terms of the structure and the syllabus, and what they were trying to achieve. It gives you just enough of a taste of the course to decide if the topic is something you want to explore further. Highly recommend. Also — they have a really interesting and diverse course selection for different areas of writing, which I liked.

Great travel writing class. Instructor was well prepared, enthusiastic and geared the content to the interest of the students. I would definitely take more classes with this instructor and at Gotham. One of he best classes I’ve ever taken.

I took the «Write it Right» one day class. It was just what I needed to learn the basics of English. Stuff I didn’t learn in my crappy grammer school. But that aside, this class was just what I needed, it covered everything about grammer and the use of it. I loved it! The teacher, Stephanie Paterik was great, her joy of grammer showed through in her teaching, making the class really enjoyable. I sure hope I used all my comma’s in the right places.

This is a review of the Friday «Write-​In» two-​hour class. For $ 20 (you can get a discount if you buy three class passes, I think), you get to free write based off of two prompts. There’s time after each to share work and comments. It felt casual yet structured – a credit to our instructor, who guided the discussions and encouraged everyone to participate.
Just the kind of thing to kickstart the creative juices. Plus, there was wine and a great snack spread.
I can’t comment on the other course offerings.

Taking a creative writing class at Gotham is one of those things I always planned to get around to since moving to NYC seventeen years ago and seeing those ubiquitous yellow boxes all over town, but each class costs roughly $ 450, and since I didn’t know anyone personally who had ever taken a Gotham class, I hesitated. Then, last year, I got an offer to take their 6-​week On-​line Creative Writing 101 class for $ 100 through Groupon, and I figured it was worth a try. Worst case scenario, I would be held accountable for producing work every week, and I would be pushed to share my work with other people instead of forever hiding it in the dark recesses of my computer’s hard drive.
I had a wonderful experience in the 101 class and ended up taking Fiction I and both sections of Fiction II (part I and part II). I had three different instructors. Overall, I have only good things to say about Gotham. The management is responsive to questions and concerns. The instructors are highly knowledgeable about the art of fiction, encouraging of student efforts but also constructively critical of student work, and enthusiastic about books, words, and the craft. The instructor feedback in my experience was comprehensive with both in-​text comments on form and end comments on content and structure. Overall, the instructors at Gotham are experienced, intelligent writers and readers.
The classes are demanding considering they are optional, continuing education courses, and if you are disciplined and self-​motivated, you will learn a lot about yourself and about writing. You will also produce a significant amount of work that you can independently develop into short stories or novels. In the Fiction classes, each week, you are expected to read a 3 – 4 page lecture; read a well-​known or critically acclaimed short story; respond to a Discussion Board prompt regarding the lecture and story, and write 1 – 2 pages of fiction related to a topic of the week such as plot, character development, setting, or tone which is read and critiqued by the instructor. Twice during the 10-​week term, you have the opportunity to submit 10 – 15 pages of writing to «The Booth» for review by the teacher and the other students in the class.
My only negative comment about Gotham’s online classes is the quality of your experience is highly dependent on the participation of other students. I was in one class which had a high level of participation both on the Discussion Board and in The Booth. I was also in one class where only two to four students actively participated throughout the term. While Gotham has no control over the quantity or quality of student participation in online courses, I do think the instructors could be more pro-​active and encouraging of participation by the entire class throughout the term. In the classes with high levels of participation (at least 10 people actively participating throughout the term), I received numerous recommendations about writers and books to which I might not otherwise have been exposed, read a number of interesting short stories and novel excerpts written by fellow students, and received valuable feedback on my own stories from a community of fellow writers.
I have to add that one perk of the online classes is that you have a diverse group of people who enroll. I have been in classes with students who are in their twenties and students who are in their eighties. I have been in classes with people from NYC, Korea, Germany, Bolivia, South Africa, Dubai, Australia, California, Wyoming, Oregon, and Vermont. I have been in classes with educators, retirees, stay-​at-​home mothers, journalists, engineers, librarians, actresses, and physicians. This diversity is invaluable in terms of getting to read stories across the spectrum of human experience and in terms of getting feedback from readers across all walks of life.
If you have been thinking about trying out a Gotham class – don’t hesitate. Sign up. You will not regret it.

I was fortunate enough to take the screenwriting class and finished a full-​length movie script! We were provided a lot of concrete examples. The instructor was very knowledgeable and thorough and broke the process down in understandable terms. I’m definitely going to take another Gotham Writer’s class. Thanks for helping me with the writing process.

I took Creative Writing 101 with Jennifer Armstrong. Great experience!
Don’t be intimidated. Even if the last «real» writing you’ve done was years ago in college, or you’re afraid you’re not talented enough to hang with whatever budding literary geniuses have signed up for the same class, it really is a welcoming and non-​judgmental environment suitable for anyone who wants to be there. Seriously :)
And if you’re considering an Article Writing course, take it from Jennifer! She’s remarkably talented, funny, full of insight on a plethora of writing and pop-​culture topics, and adept at providing useful feedback to improve your work.

I would definitely not recommend this class if you’re a quick learner or have decent grammar skills. The class is extremely slow paced.
My biggest critique is that the instructor did not come prepared. He got exercise answers incorrect and sometimes gave incorrect explanations that would contradict the logic of a prior explanation. Lecturing mistakes are forgivable on the professor’s part; however, these should have been prevented with an instruction manual. I found these errors very inappropriate in a basic grammar workshop setting, as they result in a foundation built on shaky or incorrect principles.
Finally, the instruction should have differentiated between what grammar rules were to be used in a ‘creative writing’ setting vs a formal writing setting. Most of the students were attending to improve their grammar on the job but it was clear the professor was teaching a creative grammar style not appropriate for work. Having to consistently ask for the formal rule was a pain.
In sum: the class was slow paced, the instructor was confused, and I would not recommend the course to others. Overall, simply paying to force yourself to sit for seven hours and review a general outline of grammar rules.

It’s been about a year since I posted my first review on Gotham and I am still going to workshops and classes there. I really enjoy it. Here’s a list of classes I’ve been to since last year:
Memoir Writing with Melissa Petro — great class, she gave a lot of insight/​clarity into what exactly memoir writing is. I enjoyed the writing exercises — she’s very funny and the time went by pretty fast.
Creative Writing 101 with Shelly Oria — Shelly was fantastic and gave so many tips and suggestions on how to be inspired and creative — some of it was inspired by things like the Artist’s Way. But she’s also a writing & life coach so she just gave so much practical information and suggestions for how to keep inspired and keep writing — that’s my biggest problem — carving out time to write and being disciplined about it.
Fiction Writing with Polly Bresnick — Polly gave us great writing exercises and went over a lot of the concepts that good storytelling has — writing vs showing, how to come up with non cliched phrases, conflict, etc. And we read some great examples in class to illustrate the concepts we learned in the workshop. Polly was very supportive and encouraging.
Documentary Films with Dave Seigerman — I really really enjoyed this class, there wasn’t really much ‘writing’ involved but the focus of the class was the storytelling aspect of Documentary Films and the process you go through when you are making one. Dave was incredible, he’s done a lot of documentaries and has a ton of experience so it was such a valuable experience hearing from him and having him share with the students in the class.
How to Blog with Alison Stein — I just took this class last Saturday and it was great (the only drawback was that we all brought laptops in and then the venue we had the class at didn’t have wi-​fi so those of us who didn’t have hotspots or any connections weren’t able to get onto the internet. But still the class was so informative and inspiring and at the last section we actually went through how to set up a blog online — much easier than coming up with the content for sure!
If you are an active/​seasoned/​professional writer and you just need some inspiration or you’re stuck on something — I would still suggest attending a workshop just to get inspired or to get some help from either the instructor or other students. But mostly if you are a novice or you just want to get into writing, going to these one-​day intensives is great. A lot of people don’t attend thinking that they’re not good writers or they don’t know if they can call themselves ‘writers’ or they are too intimidated but that’s all non-​sense. Everybody thinks the same thing and honestly, you just have to start writing and get inspired and these workshops are a great way to do that.

After getting a recommendation from a member of my writing group I decided to take the 10 week online course of Science Fiction and Fantasy 1 with Paul Witcover. I afraid to say we ended with less participants than we started with. Not because Paul or the class was horrible in fact the feedback received from the class and Paul helped fix the first chapter of my work in progress. Either the feedback was not people’s liking or real life got in the way.
The structure of the course is fairly straight forward: Lecture once a week with homework and two booth submissions. The lectures cover a great variety of things like POV, dialogue, world building and figuring out the business. The booth submission process may seem painful at first but if you been in a writing group you know how hard/​painful it can seem when the feedback from complete strangers rolls in.
The library links to authors, magazines and such are worth saving.
The only downsides I found was the lectures, homework and booth reviews aren’t in a portable format that’s easily savable. The current way of saving the work as giant file doesn’t really do it for me. An annotated PDF file of booth work is really needed and this goes for the lectures/​homework, too.
I think if Gotham came out with an mobile/​ipad app that encompasses this it’d make the experience even more enjoyable.
The other downside was the chat lounge is a great idea but don’t be surprised if the optional 1hr chat with fellow students drops down to a core group at the end of the 10 weeks.
In the end, the writing class was money well spent and I signed up for SFF II with Michaela Roessner.

Took two classes here, one fiction and one non. I’m an editor and a published writer, so in some ways I was ahead of the game. I really wanted to jump-​start my writing and had been unable to do so on my own.
The students are a mixed bag. Some advanced classes enroll serious writers, while the entry-​level groups host the full spectrum of writing ability. If you think this will bother you, it probably will.
Having said that, the students are spending a fair amount of money and have a vested interest in improving their writing. Slackers generally quit after the first meeting or so. What’s left are fun, smart people who are really trying. Not everyone is talented, but everyone gets better as time goes on.
The teachers make or break the classes. Mine were winners, albeit imperfect. Both were professional writers and understood how to teach adults. They were relentlessly upbeat and encouraging, but neither shied away from real criticism, especially of the best writers. Both had a tendency to be unfocused, but most students were able to look beyond that. I admit it could sometimes be annoying.
Understanding the workshopping process is crucial to your success here. Everyone critiques everyone else’s work, at a rate of 2 student works per week, on average. A critique means mentioning something you liked about the work, as well as the euphemistic «something I wondered about.» When the system works, it’s great: You get honest feedback, but none of it makes you want to kill yourself. However, if the teacher doesn’t moderate the criticism – making sure none of it is too long or too repetitive – then your class is going to suck.
You will be given homework, which will be a pain. Do the homework anyway. Every time I got an assignment, I thought I was too good to do it. Every time, I was wrong. Each homework assignment taught me something valuable, and one sparked an idea for a novel.
The school itself is well-​run, and dealing with the administration is straightforward. Be aware that classes are held in various locations around the city. There are also on-​line classes, and I’ve heard good things about them, but I would favor the on-​site classes unless you’re physically unable to attend.