Writers Workshop Series: Writing for Yourself

This is the first of a three-part SERIES DESIGNED TO ALLOW EMERGING WRITERS (high school WRITERS AND ABOVE) to learn more about the process of WRITING, essential craft elements, how to build WRITING COMMUNITY, and what it means to be a published author. This WORKSHOP FORMAT WILL BE INTERACTIVE, with conversation, WRITING PROMPTS, as well as exercises to develop your personality as a writer. WRITERS/creators can take the WORKSHOP AS A STAND-alone or attend the full SERIES. Each session is $20. WRITING FOR YOURSELF - August 18 - This WORKSHOP FOCUSES ON HOW TO BEGIN A WRITING PRACTICE AND HOW TO KEEP IT GOING. Building a practice, whether it's everyday or twice a week, for hours or simply minutes at a time, is essential to strengthen your creative muscles and begin to get something on paper. We will provide prompts, exercises, and simple WRITING TECHNIQUES WHICH YOU CAN USE TO CONFRONT INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL OBSTACLES AND BUILD A WRITING PRACTICE THAT WORKS FOR YOU, no matter what you want to write. WRITING FOR OTHERS - September 29 - In this WORKSHOP, we explore the craft elements of fiction and non-fiction, with emphasis on the process of WRITING AND DEVELOPING A 'WRITER'S EYE' THROUGH NOTICING, observation, and relishing the odd detail. We'll discuss point of view, voice, and the rules of narrative structure and how to break them. We'll rifle through "the writer's toolbox" to discover what you need to make your WRITING CLEAR AND DYNAMIC, so it can find a receptive audience. Tickets go on sale August 28th. WRITING FOR PUBLICATION - October 27 - What does it mean to be published? How does a writer go about creating an online footprint, build an author's platform, determine how to tell their story as a writer to the world? This session will explore traditional and self-publishing models (the pros, the cons), literary citizenship, deveping content for online journals, magazines, and blogs and the very basics of creating an online presence, WRITING AN AUTHOR BIO, and becoming who you want to be as a writer and a creator. Tickets go on sale September 30th. (Registrants who attend the previous two sessions will have priority registration for this session.) Steve Mitchell is an award-winning writer and journalist, published in december magazine, Southeast Review, storySouth, Red Fez,The Tishman Review, and Contrary, among others. His novel, Cloud Diary, is published by C&R Press and was shortlisted for the Sir Walter Raleigh Award. His book of short stories is The Naming of Ghosts from Press 53. He is a winner of the Curt Johnson Prose Prize and the Lorian Hemingway International Short Story Prize and has been nominated a number of times for the Pushcart Prize. Deonna Kelli Sayed is the author of Paranormal Obsession: America's Fascination with Ghost & Hauntings, Spook & Spirits. Her essays have appeared in Love, Inshallah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women and Faithfully Feminist: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Feminists on Why We Stay, as well as online. Her fiction is featured the anthology, Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction From a Small Planet, Volume III. Deonna is a TEDx speaker, a storyteller, and an award-winning podcast producer.