Writing Literary Fiction w. O.G. Rose
What we wish we had known sooner
Begins Saturday, January 17, 2026
Introduction
For years, we asked ourselves the same quiet, exhausting question many writers face:
“Why isn’t this working?”
The plots were solid. The characters were alive. Editors offered praise. And yet—something wasn’t landing. Readers weren’t fully inside the work. The stories were understood, but they were not experienced.
That gap cost us years.
This class exists so it doesn’t cost you the same.
Michelle and I formed O.G. Rose in 2011 after several years working together on creative writing and fiction, often at the community center we helped run called Eunoia. I personally had worked from 5th grade to college on a science fiction series titled The Sword of Tribulation before focusing on literary fiction starting in 2008. We sent numerous poetry and fiction submissions to literary magazines over a decade, and though we were published, we knew something was off. We kept writing, editing, rewriting, editing—our story Heroes, first written in 2014, went through over fifty rewrites—but we kept hitting a wall. It was at this point that our friend Sarah Wade made an off-handed comment that would start a transformation.
What we didn’t fully grasp, and what we want you to learn sooner, is that fiction sentences have a job, stories have an inner logic, and writers need a vision strong enough to organize a life, not just a project. Once we learned this, everything changed: how we drafted, how we revised, and how our work was received. This course distills that re-education.
Who This Course Is For:
This class is ideal for writers who:
Have been writing seriously for years
Know the basics but feel stuck or frustrated
Receive positive feedback, but sense something essential is missing
Want writing to come alive
If you’re just starting out, this course may feel demanding. If you’ve been at it a long time, it may feel like relief.
Our Schedule
3 Live Zoom Classes (2 hours each)
3 1.5-hour Writing practice sessions
Start date: Thursday, January 17, 2026
Time: 8:00pm CET (Paris)
2:00pm EST · 11:00am PST
Schedule
• Jan 17 — Module 1 (2h)
Practice: Mon Jan 19 (1.5h, 8:00pm CET)
• Jan 24 — Module 2 (2h)
Practice: Mon Jan 26 (1.5h, 8:00pm CET)
• Jan 31 — Module 3 (2h)
Practice: Mon Feb 2 (1.5h, 8:00pm CET)
Price: €260/200€/100€ Tiers
COURSE CONTENT
Session 1
🗡️Writing
We knew how to write correct sentences, but fiction doesn’t live or die by correctness. No matter what we did, we couldn’t figure it out. Then, years later, we discovered Robert Butler, who taught us how to write a story. It turned out that we didn’t know what sentences in fiction were for. Most writers never learn this explicitly, but once we saw it, we couldn’t unsee it.
Session 2
🌿 Story
Stories must “blossom,” not merely proceed. We had a strong sense of story, guided well by William Wilson, notably through the work of Flannery O’Connor. However, though we understood that what happened in a story also needed to “point beyond itself,” and furthermore that great work didn’t “pour in from the top,” as Wilson would say, our intuitions were not easily articulated. A story wasn’t just a sequence along a line but more like an unfolding, but why exactly was hard to say. The first glimmer of a greater understanding came from Robert McKee, but then we were blessed to meet Alex Shandelman and Andrew Luber, whose work on Theme is a revelation.
Session 3
🪙 Vison
Vision entails inspiration, but inspiration doesn’t necessarily entail vision. Inspiration alone is unreliable, while vision is not. Inspiration can leave us waiting around, while vision, far from abstract or vague, is concrete, lived, and actionable. Vision is something you can feel into and create. We want to share how living in vision shapes our actions and practices, as well as perpetuates our writing. Knowing earlier in our writing journey the practical link between vision and action would have been invaluable, and that’s the insight we hope to share with you.
About your instructors
O.G. Rose is the pen name of Michelle and Daniel. The name’s origins come from the maiden and middle names of Michelle, along with the couple’s shared last name. While at the University of Virginia, O.G. Rose spent several years working collaboratively with other artists at Eunoia, a creative community O.G. Rose helped develop in Charlottesville, Virginia. O.G. Rose now lives on a farm with their children, manages a wedding venue named Mead Lake Lodge, teaches piano using a visual pattern method called the DLGPM, and writes nonfiction and fiction.
A finalist for the 2020 UNO Press Lab Prize and 46th Pushcart Nominee, O.G. Rose’s creative works appear at The Write Launch, Allegory Ridge, Streetlight Magazine, Ponder Review, Iowa Review online, The William and Mary Review, Assure Press, Toho Journal online, West Trade Review, ellipsis, Poydras Review, O:JA&L, Burningword, and Broken Pencil. Their published books include The Conflict of Mind (2021), A Philosophy of Glimpses (2022), Thoughts (2022), Belonging Again: Part I (2023), Second Thoughts (2023), Belonging Again: Part II.1 (2024), Under the Wing (2024), and The Map Is Indestructible (2025).
Other Parallax Courses by O.G. Rose:
Belonging Again
Look at the Birds of the Air - How We Must Unplan Our Lives