A Year of Writing Dangerously: Workshop Preview!

A chance to see the orientation video and workbook sample!

Dear friends,

I wanted to check in with you about what I have in the works right now. I’ve restarted the Essay Series after my holiday hiatus, and I’m hoping to share the next post on “the braided essay” with you next week. This is an extremely popular essay form, and I’ve wanted to do it justice, so getting this one together has taken a little longer than the others. I’m working hard on my book The Parisian Sphinx and hope to send off a final draft very soon.

I also wanted to share a preview of the writing workshop I just launched. As you may have seen in previous posts, I’m teaching a year-long workshop intended to transform your writing practice. It’s called A Year of Writing Dangerously. Think Essay Camp meets a secular The Artist’s Way meets a low-residency MFA (with optional workload) meets the best virtual writer’s group you could ever want. It’s based on my own experiment of writing in a certain way last year, which resulted in me accidentally writing a memoir I intend to publish—more news on that in the coming months I hope!

The workshop will be 32 weeks, or 224 days, and will happen during five six-week sessions. There are weekly videos, live Zoom write-alongs about every two weeks, and one talk with Q&A per session. Today is officially Day 9 of the first session, but people are still signing up and getting started! If you’re curious, I want to encourage you to do the same. Several people have called it a “game-changer” and I couldn’t be more pleased. Joining now, within these first few weeks of the course, it will be especially easy to integrate.

So far we’ve had three instructional videos, a well-attended live write-along via Zoom, and many great discussions in the chat—but it’s easy to catch up! You can simply start where you are. I have a dedicated email for the course that participants are using to ask questions or send out an SOS during a writing crisis, and so far that’s working out great as well. I love answering your questions and supporting your writing in whatever way I can.

I’ve always been a little video shy, but this workshop is forcing me to get over that pretty fast. In fact, I wanted to share the informal orientation video I recorded for the first day. Even if you have no intention of taking this or any other writing workshop, I thought you might enjoy getting to know me a little bit anyway.

If you’ve been on the fence about joining the workshop, I want to encourage you to take the leap. As I said in today’s workshop video, so far this workshop has already surpassed my wildest dreams in terms of how dedicated, interesting, motivated, and supportive this incredible group of writers is. Even I am finding the experience to be life-changing!

Once you sign up, you’ll receive an email with a link to download the Session One workbook. I must admit, I’m may be having a bit too much fun making these. Each workbook has its own creative design, and comes with 45 unique writing prompts, for those who choose to use them—one for each day of the session. Here’s a sample from the first one:

The decision to dedicate ourselves to our writing and transform our practice over the course of a year is not an easy one, but it can be even harder to go it alone. I’m thrilled to be able to facilitate this incredible space, where writers can be supported, encouraged, and given guidance, creating an environment for themselves within their own lives where good, consistent work becomes possible.

I hope to see you in the workshop chat xo

Summer

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