April Writing Retreat, Learning How to Adapt Your Work for TV and Free Workshops
Write or Die Weekly #20
Free Workshop!
On May 11th, join Alex Baia, humor writer and editor of Slackjaw, for a free workshop, You Can Be Funny Now: How To Start Writing Humor! Whether you're new to writing humor or you have been dabbling at it for a while, this workshop is for you. Details here
Our Write or Die 101 April workshop with Andrea A Firth is now live! Join her for Finding Your Essay’s Heartbeat, a workshop on writing personal essays and how to get them published. Here is what you will learn:
Upcoming free lessons
Lesson 1 | Generating Ideas and Tapping into Memory
Lesson 2 | Building Scenes and Creating Structure
Lesson 3 | Who's Talking? Dialogue and Point of View
Lesson 4 | Beginnings, Endings and What to Call It
Upcoming paid lessons ($9/mo)
Lesson 5 | Finding Your Essay's Heartbeat
Lesson 6 | Observing the Craft at Work
Lesson 7 | The Craft of Writing an Essay at Work
Lesson 8 | Risk, Revision and Personal Essay Writing Resources
Check out the course introduction and Lesson 1 here!
Workshops Recently Added
Write Messy: Bucking Perfectionism with Haley Jakobson
Date: May 25 from 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM (EST)
Calling all teacher’s pets!!! If you’re a creative that edits while you write, find it hard to know when a piece is “finished,” or dread working on the sloppy first draft — this workshop is for you! So many creatives are desperate to write freely but feel shackled by their own perfectionism.
In this 2 hour workshop, we’ll work on quieting the perfectionistic voice, use prompts to help us crack open our writing to its messiest potential, and commiserate with a community of former Good Students ready to become rebels.
*This workshop will be recorded if you can’t attend live!
Adapt Your Book, Short Story, or Personal Essay Into A TV Show with
Date: May 11 from 2:00 PM - 4:30 PM EST
Dreaming of turning your novel, memoir, or short story into a TV show? Want a TV writing sample that shows a mastery of character, structure, story engines, and more?
This workshop, taught by a WGA Award-nominated writer from "The Morning Show" introduces you to all the tools you need for a strong adaptation.
*This workshop will be recorded if you can’t attend live!
April Writing Retreat
The Write Together Retreat featuring Elle Nash and Sophia Hembeck
Date: April 20th
Time: 11:00 AM - 3:30 PM EST
Spend a day writing with us and learn how to balance the business and creative sides of writing!
Join us for a day of writing during our monthly virtual retreat! You will have the opportunity to write alongside other writers in real time and learn from authors in the industry. This will be a time of encouragement and a chance to make real progress!
The retreat also includes an hour long craft chat and Q&A session with Elle Nash and Sophia Hembeck who will discuss how they balance both the business and creative sides of their writing life.
They will talk about how they support themselves through multiple income streams and how, using Substack, social media, Patreon, and other ways, writers can develop ways to support their art.
*Retreat Scholarships are available! Apply here
Upcoming Workshops
*Scholarships are available for Write or Die workshops. Click here for more details.
Saturday, April 13 from 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM (EST)
Small Press Publishing with a Debut Seminar with Emily Jon Tobias
Looking for a publisher to call home for your manuscript? Emily Jon Tobias will share her successes and failures along the journey to find a home for her debut story collection, MONARCH. You will learn about writing query letters (agents vs. presses), tracking submissions, the research process, fees, red flags, green flags, how to best navigate technology with productive, simple tools, and, perhaps most importantly, how to handle the emotional pressure of rejection after rejection.
*This workshop will be recorded if you can’t attend live!
Sunday, April 14 from 2:00 PM- 4:00 PM (EST)
Land Big Bylines by Writing for Columns with
In this workshop, Courtney will explain the crux of popular columns for top publications. You'll do a brainstorming exercise for each, and there will be an opportunity to workshop your ideas and ask questions. You'll receive a list of potential columns and editor contact information for each. By the end, you'll have a game plan for landing your best bylines yet!
*This workshop will be recorded if you can’t attend live!
April 20th & April 27th from 12:00 PM - 3:00 PM EST
Chasing the Chantable: A Two Week Intensive on Sonic Impact in Syntax with Ben Jahn
In this half-class/half-workshop, we'll study the sentence as a site of sound aesthetics and practice techniques to increase our syntax's sonic impact.
This class is for folks who hear “kill your darlings,” and think: but they’re all darlings! For people who see the sentence as its own aesthetic terrain, with tension and energy and momentum within and between each syllabic synapse. We’ll read and discuss the work of writers who do this—who write with and make us read with a tuned ear. Then we’ll practice the techniques in a workshop format.
April 27th from 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM EST
Come Celebrate With Me: A Poetry Intensive with Arriel Vinson
Using Lucille Clifton’s “won’t you celebrate with me ” as a guide, this workshop will examine writing joy and celebration.
You’ll first look deeply at and discuss this poem, then read and discuss other celebratory poems/songs by BIPOC writers. Students will dig into how each celebratory work was created despite the dangers or harm each speaker faced, and how many factors of the world determine how we approach joy.
*This workshop will be recorded if you can’t attend live!
April 28 from 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM (EST)
Exploring Sexuality & Motherhood in Writing with
In this 3 hour workshop, you will experiment with new techniques to explore sex and motherhood in your own writing. Writers will generate new questions about the intersections between motherhood/parenthood and sexuality, develop new terrain for exploration in their work, and gain new craft techniques for embodied, sensory writing.