Sex Scene Writing On-Line Class

**Permission to forward granted and encouraged**

Yosemite Romance Writers is proud to present their online workshop for April.

Date: 4/6 - 5/1/09

Workshop title: Creating Effective Sex Scenes

Writing about sex in our stories is often a literary mine field. You can easily find yourself caught up in clichés, aphorisms, and euphemisms. You might end up romanticizing or depersonalizing sex, or find the genuine emotion connected with it so difficult to capture that you exaggerate or pull away. This four-week course gives you a lot of strategies and tips that make it unnecessary to fade to black. You learn the key elements of a well-crafted sex scene and how sex in your stories can enhance and promote character, plot, and theme. You also learn how to use language that is sensory, specific, and thoughtful to create scenes you love (and others will too). By the end of the course, you have in hand one-to-two new scenes.

About the instructor: Jessica Barksdale Inclán

Jessica Barksdale Inclán's debut novel Her Daughter's Eyes, published in 2001, was the premier novel published under New American Library's new imprint Accent. Her Daughter's Eyes was a final nominee for the YALSA Award for the best books of 2001 and best paperbacks for 2001 and has been published in Dutch and Spanish. Her next novel The Matter of Grace was published in May 2002 and was re-released in a mass market version in May 2004. Her third, When You Go Away, came out April 1, 2003. Her fourth, One Small Thing, was published April 2004, and has been published in Dutch and Spanish. Her fifth, Walking With Her Daughter, was published in April 2005. The Instant When Everything is Perfect was published in February 2006. In June 2006, she published the first in a trilogy from Kensington Books. When You Believe was followed by Reason to Believe and Believe in Me. Being with Him--the first in a second trilogy, was published February 2008 and the second, Intimate Beings, is due out October 2008.. She is a 2002 recipient of the CAC Artist's Fellowship in Literature. Inclán teaches composition, creative writing, mythology, and women's literature at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California, and on-line creative writing courses for UCLA extension. She has studied with Sharon Olds, Anne Lamott, Kate Braverman, Grace Paley, Marjorie Sandor, and Cristina Garcia. Her short stories and poems have appeared in Rockhurst Review, Hotwired, The Salt Hill Journal, Free Lunch, The West Wind Review, The Prairie Star, Gargoyle and many other journals and newspapers. Her short story Open Eyes was given first prize by Sandra Cisneros for El Andar magazine's 2000 writing contest. She co-edited a women's literature/studies textbook Diverse Voices of Women (Mayfield Publishing, 1995). Ms. Inclán has degrees in sociology and English literature from CSU Stanislaus and a Master's degree in English literature from SFSU. Ms. Inclán lives in Oakland, California and is currently at work on her next novel.

Deadline to register: 4/5/09

Fee: $20 YWR members; $25 non-members. RWA Membership isn't required; Anyone can take our courses.

Where to sign up: You may register online at our website. Please click the Pay Now button and follow the instructions for Paypal, then EMAIL us at Workshops@YosemiteRomanceWrtiers.com to Confirm. You may also YRW at YosemiteRomanceWriters@YosemiteRomanceWriters.com. For any other Questions.

Thank you for considering our workshops!!

Sandra Marlow Vice President, YRW Yosemite Romance Writers http://WWW.yosemiteromancewriters.com