WRITER UNLEASHED

 

Liberate your voice, get out of your own way, and write. 

You know your story could be masterful. Even publishable. If only you could go the distance.

Problem is, you’re feeling stuck. You’re hitting snags along the way. You can’t stay focused. Or motivated. Time is in ever-shorter supply. And all you want to do is write.

If this sounds like you, then I’d love to introduce to you a new class called Writer Unleashed.

With Writer Unleashed, you get:

• 4 Audio Classes
• Class transcripts in downloadable PDF.
• Writing Exercises to get you thinking and writing like a real and serious writer.
• A private Writer Unleashed Wiki space to share and get feedback on your writing.

During the Writer Unleashed sessions, you will break through creative roadblocks, harness your time and energy, and write with more joy, freedom, and mastery.

This course is for you and your writing if one or more of these apply to you:           

• You’ve reached an impasse in your work and don’t know what’s holding you back, let alone how to break through it.
• You just can’t seem to keep a consistent, productive writing practice going. The kind of practice that’s worthy of the story you’re bringing into the world, a practice that propels a rough idea all the way to finished manuscript.
• You experience frequent bouts of despair, confusion, lack of motivation, and frustration.
• You don’t feel like a real writer because you haven’t published. Let’s dispel that notion, once and for all, shall we?
• The standard writing advice such as “Write what you know,” or “Show, Don’t Tell”  aren’t helping you much. In fact, they’re just cluttering your head space, making your work feel contrived, rather than inspired.
• You’re having trouble keeping creative juice flowing long enough to realize your work’s highest potential.

 What’s in the class?

The Writer Unleashed Class has 4 audio modules created to dissolve the barriers that are coming between you and your best work. Each of the modules is split into 4 sections so you can start revving up your writing practice without overwhelm. You’ll also get the transcripts of each class in PDF format, along with writing exercises designed to help you free your voice and write with more fluency and power.

Who this class is for:

Aspiring writers of short stories, personal essays, novels, and memoir. You might have a story that’s still in the early stages of development. Or a fully formed novel that feels unwieldy to revise. You just need a loving push in the right direction, and the confidence to know you can do it. And you want to bring more of you into your work. Your voice, your vision, your own take on the world.

If that’s you, then here’s what I’ve got:           

MODULE ONE: GETTING INTO THE WRITER ZONE

For many writers, staying in a state of productive engagement with our work is just about the hardest thing to do. Everything else is more powerful. Our jobs. Our kids. Our spouse. Lovers. Email, Facebook. The dishes. Laundry.

But the only way to gain mastery in our work is to reach and stay in a state of flow.

You know what flow feels like because as a child, you were in flow mostly all of the time.  That is your natural state, even if you find it harder now to get there.

The good news is that flow can be re-learned. We just need to remind ourselves how to get there. And then create rituals that support our deepest engagement with our writing. So that we can approach our work with a sense of serious play. So that it feels natural again.

In this class, we’re going to talk about getting a lot more flow, as quickly and effectively as possible.

A synopsis of what we’ll cover:

• The dynamics of flow and why it’s essential, not only to your writing, but to your survival.
• What to do when time is not on your side.
• The nature of mastery and how to apply that directly to your writing, starting now.
• Faulty mindsets that keep you from fully engaging with your work.
• How to collaborate with fear and uncertainty.
• How to stay motivated, even when your story is not going as well as you had hoped.
• Setting up and supporting your ideal conditions to write.

MODULE TWO: LIBERATING YOUR VOICE

We’re often instructed to “find our own voice.” But I think there’s a mistaken premise here, that it’s out there somewhere. Voice isn’t something outside of us in need of finding. Your voice is not lost. It’s inside you. You just need to give it the time and space to emerge.

This module is about thoughts and misconceptions that block your voice. It’s about how to tap into that deep reservoir of experiences, memories and events that have profound meaning for you, so that you can give your readers an experience. It’s about eliminating self censorship. About getting out of your own way, so you can let go, and write fearlessly. To tell your story through your vision, your spin on the world, and all that you are. That’s what it’s all about. Otherwise we’d all be writing the same books.

A synopsis of what we’ll cover:

• What voice is and why yours matters.
• How to stop censoring yourself, once and for all.
• Why talent alone is not enough.
• Why being eager to reach the holy grail of publishing is standing in the way of your best work.
• How to create the conditions that allow your voice to flourish.
• How to tap into the ideas that will create new work and help you re-envision current work.

MODULE THREE: BREAKING THE RULES

In this class, we’re going to unwrap some of the most common writing mantras, such as “Write what you know,” and “Show, don’t tell.” We’ll turn these and other “rules” on their head so that you can expand your approach to writing and stop trying to squeeze your story into preconceived templates. It’s not that any of the standard advice is wrong. Or bad. For my money, it just doesn’t go deep enough. And when these rules are not explored, they can restrict your writing. I want your writing to breathe.

A synopsis of what we’ll cover:

• Why writing what you know can limit your work, and why writing towards what you don’t know is far more liberating and powerful.
• Why our fictional characters, just like real people, often don’t, can’t, or won’t change, and what to do instead.
• Why epiphanies, revelations, and bursts of insight can leave your reader numb.
• Why too much focus on plot can result in a story that’s dead on arrival.
• When it’s better to tell and not show, and vice versa.  And why you can’t do one or the other arbitrarily.

MODULE FOUR: YOU ALREADY KNOW HOW TO WRITE

That’s right. You know more about writing than you probably realize.

In this class, we’ll talk about how to simulate what you do naturally, every day, and transfer it onto the page.

We’ll demystify some of the most complicated craft issues including point of view, selection of details, creating characters, creating atmosphere, writing dialogue, and revising. We’ll explore what our  human impulses can teach us about the craft of writing, impulses you engage in every day, whether you’re conscious of it or not.

A synopsis of what we’ll cover:

• How the filtering process we do moment by moment can help you select relevant details in your story.
• Why we create characters out of the people we know out of necessity, and how to parlay that invention into your prose.
• How subtext and the code we speak in every day can add texture to our written dialogue.
• The difference between our public life and our secret life, and what that has to do with creating characters.
• How we constantly edit and revise stories in our own heads, and how that relates to revising  fiction and non-fiction.

In You Already Know How to Write, we’re going to focus on becoming sharper observers of our own mind, and of the world around us. We’ll become more aware of how we interact with the people in our lives, and how we continually search for and derive meaning from our real life experiences.

When you finish Writer Unleashed,  you will learn to trust your ability to write great stories. You will gain momentum. And you will have the confidence to keep going.

I’ve designed Writer Unleashed from the ground up to teach you ways of thinking, understanding, and acting that will get creative juice flowing back into your writing as fast as possible. We’ll discuss habits and mindsets that all productive writers practice.

This isn’t a quick fix course that tells you how to write your novel in 30 days. I’m not giving you a set of rules, but principles and subtle shifts in consciousness that will serve you over the life of your writing career. And I’ll help you rely on your own instincts so that you can access craft from that deep reservoir of knowing within you, not just writing books and blogs.

Why Me?

I’m a published writer, creative writing coach, and mother to a 5-year-old wild child.

As a writer who for years struggled with story after story, and battled limiting beliefs about my abilities, I deeply understand the questions, challenges and concerns you’re facing now.

My coaching practice has developed through many years as a writing student, a workshop leader, and through working one-on-one with writers from all over the world. As I help writers grapple with pragmatic aspects of craft, I also help them move beyond limiting beliefs about themselves, misconceptions about writing and the writing process –all those mental maps that get in the way of creating our best work.

It took me years to get a solid practice down, to make the writing process more fun, to lean into all the uncertainty and doubt with a sense of curiosity and awe, and to finally write with a mix of unstoppable momentum and control. I’ve acquired a lot of strategies and mindset shifts along the way, which I’m now passing onto you with Writer Unleashed.

Some of what I’ve learned:

1. You’re trying to make sense of something that’s beyond capture, beyond understanding, even. The beauty is in the question, not the answer.
2. Your task is not to judge your work, but to get out of your head and into your dream space. That’s where your power resides.
3. There’s tremendous freedom with form. Learn technique and practice it as rigorously and seriously as any dancer, musician, or athlete.
4. A big part of voice is uncovering why you’re writing your story in the first place. What are you trying to understand about the experience? Once you have that, you’re half way there. Promise.
5. There’s something uniquely brilliant about your writing. Even if you’re just beginning. Even if it isn’t obvious on the page yet.
6. Write from what you know towards what you don’t know. Not knowing creates space in your work. This is as true in memoir as it is in fiction.
7. You know more about the craft of writing than you realize, simply by being alive. Trust your instincts.

Writer Unleashed is coming again in Summer 2012!

Enter your name and email and you’ll get priority notice the moment the doors open again.