Write or Die Weekly #1
Our next writing retreat, workshops under $70 and contributing to our small press gift guide
Welcome to our new format! Same newsletter. Just all the good stuff moved here to Substack.
We have a few announcements!
Our December Write Together Retreat will be held on Saturday, December 9th. Our featured author is the bestselling author of A Woman is No Man and Evil Eye, Etaf Rum! 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 Etaf during her craft chat and Q&A. This will be a time of encouragement and a chance to make real progress!
Each month, we will award two writers a scholarship to attend our Write Together Retreat free of charge! We don't want money to get in the way of your writing goals and this fun and exciting community opportunity. If you are interested in applying, click here.
With the holiday season approaching, we at Write or Die have a fun tradition. Each year, we release our Small Press Literary Gift Guide! This annual article is intended to highlight small presses and magazines as places to shop and support during the holiday season. We use it to feature book bundles, merch, holiday specials, and more from small presses and publishers. This is a labor of love, and it brings me a lot of joy to highlight indie presses during the capitalism chaos that is the holidays. If you would like to be featured in this year's gift guide, please fill out this form to help us get all the information needed to showcase the work you'd like shared accurately! Pass this along to anyone you know who works in indie spaces! The deadline to participate is 11/17.
Fiction submissions are still open for Write or Die Magazine! Our submission period is open until Dec.1 so send us your good stuff! Read our submission guidelines here.
Workshops Starting Next Week
Tuesday, November 14 • 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM (EST)
Crafting Conversations: Elevating Your Fiction Through Dialogue with Joanna Cantor
Do you feel lost when it comes to writing incisive, memorable dialogue that elevates your fiction rather than dragging it down?
Join this 3 hour workshop, and learn how to craft dialogue that builds tension, reveals character, advances plot, and takes your work to the next level.
Wednesday, November 15 • 8:30 PM- 10:30 PM (EST)
Character Crafting: Navigating Your NaNoWriMo Journey with Paula Macena
In this 2 hour workshop, attendees will go through a variety of writing exercises, questions, and free writing time to deep dive into who their characters are at their core. Characters can often take a life of their own, and this course encourages that!
Saturday, November 18 • 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM (EST)
Let's Make a Zine (again): A Collaborative Poetry Workshop with Lilith Noah
Lilith Noah's Poetry Workshop goes into the second round! This time, the workshop participants will use creative exercises to delve deeper into a specific emotion that had not been assigned in the first installment of the workshop, which they can explore in their poetry. The poems written in class will again appear in an exclusive workshop zine that you will build together with Lilith Noah, like the one you can see here.
Sunday, November 19 • 3:00 PM- 6:00 PM (EST)
Mastering Sensory Detail and Description in Fiction: A Craft Seminar with Aatif Rashid
In this 3 hor workshop, explore the basics of “show, don’t tell,” the relationship between character emotion and description, the way description helps create vivid and atmospheric settings, and the nature of sentence rhythm in crafting lyrical and effective prose. Students will also practice their own writing through an in-class craft exercise.
Workshops just added (all under $70)
Sunday, December 3 • 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM (EST)
Write (Fiction) Like Taylor Swift: The Method to Her Madness & Magic (& Heaven & Sin) with Erin Karbuczky
Let’s explore creativity and the writing process through Taylor Swift! We will learn to apply her methods to our own writing as well as draw inspiration from her work.
Price: $50
Wednesday, December 6 • 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM (EST)
Give Your Protagonist Main-Character Syndrome with Jenny Kleiman
With a healthy balance of lecture and workshopping, this class will hone your protagonist's wounds, misbehaviors, and fatal flaws.
Using your protagonist’s external goal as a guide, we’ll reverse-engineer their wound, fatal flaw and misbehavior to drive your story.
Volunteers are welcome to pitch their protagonist’s external motivation and receive blind pitches on matching internal goals.
Gain new insights on protagonists’ wants and needs, and how they can be used as the driving force for your scene work and overall story arc.
Price: $65
Saturday, December 9 • 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM (EST)
2 Essays in 2 Hours! with Hannah Grieco
Two essay drafts on the page in two hours? Is that even possible? YES!
In this class, we’ll read and write, using prompts to help you generate two new nonfiction pieces: one flash work of memoir and one personal essay! You’ll leave with two new drafts and a guided plan for revisions!
*This class offers two full scholarships for BIPOC writers. Please email kailey@chillsubs.com with your request, plus a 2-3 sentence statement of need. If more than two writers apply, the scholarship recipients will be chosen from among them via lottery.
Price: $50
Did you know our editors offer editorial feedback?
We currently offer three options tailored to your needs:
Fiction Margin Notes
Fiction Margin Notes + Editorial Letter
Creative Nonfiction Margin Notes + Editorial Letter + Zoom call
Our Editorial Philosophy
We strongly believe an editor’s central job is to support a writer’s unique vision, style, and voice via actionable feedback. We never want to change a story to reflect our own aesthetic and artistic beliefs; rather, our goal is to offer kind and constructive insights with a focus on asking questions that will allow you to transform your work and create the best possible version of your story.
We accept fiction or nonfiction up to 5000 words.
oh, okay, thanks.
I keep trying to pay the monthly fee for the Horror class and it keeps declining even tough I have money in my account.