Build Momentum for Creative Energy with the New Monday Night Series 5/17-6/21

 

Happy Spring! As we are setting our writing goals for this summer, here are the new dates for the Monday night 6 wk creative writing workshop series. This is a great time for building momentum with creative energy as we move into long summer days. We will begin again with this adventurous workshop series May 17th. Feel free to forward this email to anyone you think would benefit from this workshop.

This creative series is the most popular and longest-running workshop I offer. A fun and generative workshop for artists, writers, journalers, journalists, bloggers, beginners and experienced writers alike. Do you wish you wrote more? Want to feel a sense of community when you write? Want to start a book or finish a book? This series also supports Nanowrimo participants! Craft, technique, and prompts for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. A kick in the butt for your writing life! Waiting for inspiration is also called procrastination.  So don't wait - connect with a community and improve your writing practice.

I invite you to sign up now to save a spot. We meet on Zoom 5/17 through 6/21 from 6:30 pm - 8 pm on Monday nights.To sign up for the Monday night workshop, you can pay via Zelle or Venmo or a check made out to Karen Terrey. The cost is a sliding scale from $120-$160.

I'll send out an email with our Zoom link a few days before the workshop. All you need for the workshop is a notebook and pen and your computer with internet and Zoom.

Happy Writing!

Openings now available for this winter's Advanced Revision & Craft sessions: 2/7, 3/7, 4/11, and 5/9!

In this intimate workshop, the goal is to revise your first draft by pushing further to the next level, strengthening your writing skills, and simultaneously exploring meaning in your writing. Attention Nanowrimo-ers! This workshop is deadline- and goal-oriented to complete the next draft of a project for publication.  You will get professional feedback for developing the heart of the subject as well as the structure and organization of your project. 

Learn techniques to creatively unearth what really matters so that your writing stands out as surprising and original to an editor. We will meet from 5-8 pm on the first or second Thursday of each month. Expect readings and deadlines to keep you accountable and move your writing forward. $220 for four months. 5-8 pm. Tea and snacks.

Starting 10/11 Openings available for this advanced workshop in fiction and non-fiction

10/11, 11/8, 12/6, 1/10:  REVISION/DEVELOPMENT WRITING WORKSHOP FOR FICTION AND MEMOIR. 

Go deeper into what you really want to say.

 In this intimate workshop, the goal is to revise your first draft by pushing further to the next level, strengthening your writing skills, and simultaneously exploring meaning in your writing. Attention Nanowrimo-ers! This workshop is deadline- and goal-oriented to complete the next draft of a project for publication.  You will get professional feedback for developing the heart of the subject as well as the structure and organization of your project. Learn techniques to creatively unearth what really matters so that your writing stands out as surprising and original to an editor. We will meet from 5-8 pm on the first or second Thursday of each month. Expect readings and deadlines to keep you accountable and move your writing forward. $220 for four months. 5-8 pm. Tea and snacks.

New workshop series starts 9/10! Monday Night Creative Writing Workshop

9/10 - 10/15:  Monday Night Creative Writing Workshop 

Starting up again this fall! A fun and generative workshop for artists, beginners, and experienced writers. Do you wish you wrote more? Want to feel a sense of community when you write? Want to start a book or finish a book! This series specifically supports Nanowrimo participants! Craft, technique, and prompts for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. A kick in the butt for your writing life! Connect with a community and improve your writing practice. Tea and chocolate provided. 6 week series Mondays from 6:00 to 8 pm. $150. Downtown Truckee. 

I decided to take a writing class by Karen Terrey through Tangled Roots Writing as a last attempt to gain the upper hand over Writer's Block. And to my surprise, she gave me more gun powder than I could have ever expected. Through her class, I was able to write some of my favorite scenes for a trilogy I'm writing and since taking her class, I'm back on a normal writing schedule. I'm very thankful for Kat and her dedication to writing. - Courtney

Thank you so much for the wonderful writing experiences.  I came home Monday night and told my husband how much I absolutely love and value your classes, your prompts, your insight and how taking your classes has really helped me in trying to move my writing beyond the hobby level. - Liz

The Monday Night Writing classes are fabulous. - Clare

New Monday Night Creative Writing Workshop series and Revision and Development Workshop series start this month!

It's never too late to start what you didn't start yesterday. 

The newest Monday Night Creative Writing Workshop series and Revision and Development Workshop series start this month.  Let's take advantage of the introspective darkness of winter to stoke creative fires within:

1/12, 2/15, 3/15, 4/19, 5/17 Revision and Development Writing Workshop for Fiction and Memoir:

Attention Nanowrimo-ers! This workshop is deadline- and goal-oriented to help you complete the next draft of a project for publication. In this small workshop, the goal is to revise your first draft by pushing further to the next level, strengthening your writing skills, and simultaneously exploring meaning in your writing. You will get professional feedback for developing the heart of the subject as well as the structure and organization of your project. Learn techniques to creatively unearth what really matters so that your writing stands out as surprising and original to an editor. We will meet to workshop from 5-8 pm on the third Thursdays of each month. Expect readings and deadlines to keep you accountable and move your writing forward. $220 for four months. 5-8 pm.

I decided to take a writing class by Karen Terrey through Tangled Roots Writing as a last attempt to gain the upper hand over Writer's Block. And to my surprise, she gave me more gun powder than I could have ever expected. Through her class, I was able to write some of my favorite scenes for a trilogy I'm writing and since taking her class, I'm back on a normal writing schedule. I'm very thankful for Kat and her dedication to writing. - Courtney

1/22 - 3/5  Monday Night Creative Writing Workshop:  

A fun and generative workshop. Do you wish you wrote more? Want to feel a sense of community when you write? Do you have a neglected blog crying out for fresh ideas? Want to explore ideas for beginning or finishing a book? This series specifically supports Nanowrimo participants! Craft, technique, and prompts for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. A kick in the butt for your writing life! Connect with a community and improve your writing practice. Tea and chocolate provided. 6 week series Mondays from 6:30 to 8 pm. $150. Downtown Truckee.

Thank you so much for the wonderful writing experiences.  I came home Monday night and told my husband how much I absolutely love and value your classes, your prompts, your insight and how taking your classes has really helped me in trying to move my writing beyond the hobby level. - Liz

Call me anytime to talk about your writing and to discover ways to find and connect with writing communities. 

Happy New Year!

Karen

And if I successfully write a shitty first draft in November, then what?

It's always more fun with a friend.

You can re-enter your work, re-vision the draft, on your own.  Go for it. 

Or.

Continue to set up accountability, what worked for you in November and supported you to produce this fantastic, exciting, ambiguous first draft:

Starting January 2017! Revision and Development Writing Workshop for Fiction, Essay, and Memoir.

Attention Nanowrimo-ers!

This workshop is deadline- and goal-oriented to complete the next draft of a project for publication. In this small workshop, the goal is to revise your first draft by pushing further to the next level, strengthening your writing skills, and simultaneously exploring meaning in your writing. Plot, structure, character development, voice, setting, time, subtext, dialogue. You will get professional feedback for developing the heart of your subject to unearth what really matters. Learn techniques to creatively so that your writing stands out as surprising and original to an editor. Call for details.

Ask not what you can do for Nanowrimo, but what Nanowrimo can do for you (and still make a donation)

I've been saying for a long time now that before I can experiment with writing prose (essay and short story) that I need to complete my poetry manuscript. A few weeks ago I woke up with the knowledge that it was time to commit to writing the prose, to moving on to a new project, that "shiny new thing" as Neil Gaiman called it in this talk at Google Authors.  Taking on this new project in no way means I'm leaving the manuscript in the dust.  In fact, I have a new fire under my butt to get it ready for submission.

Some of you have committed to Nanowrimo and some are still on the fence.  Nanowrimo.org inspires and supports nearly 300,000 writers each November to write the first draft or 50,000 words of a novel (or other prose/hybrid creation) by November 30th.

Here's an excerpt I'm reading by Elisa Albert from her essay titled The Snarling Girl that might speak towards making this commitment:

"I write to make sense of things, to make order from chaos, to make something from nothing, to examine my own thinking. Because what I have found in the writing of others sustains me. Because while I am struggling to live, the writing—a kind of parallel life—helps me along. Because language is my jam. Because I never learned to play the guitar and no one ever asked me to sing in a band.
I mean, writing is liberation! Or so I tell my students, over and over and over again. Flex your muscles, I tell them. Feel the sun on your face, the wind in your hair! Struggle with your shortcomings. Leave everything out on the field! Do it again tomorrow! What rigor. What joy. What privilege. Say whatever the hell you want to say, however you most accurately can! Complete and utter freedom. Work.

And this:

"'The notes for the poem are the only poem,' wrote Adrienne Rich. There it is. There’s my ambition: Notes.

And then this too:

"Keep your head down. Do your work. Focus on the work at hand, not the work that’s done. Do the work you’re called upon to do. Engage with what moves you. Eventually you’ll get recognition. And if you don’t get recognition? Well then, all the more badass to continue working your butt off. Recognition has nothing to do with the work, get it? The work is the endeavor. The work is the process. Recognition comes, if/when it does, for work that is already done, work that is over. Recognition can really fuck you up. Remember the famous koan? The day before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water; the day after enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. Substitute recognition for enlightenment, putting aside how ironic that is, and there you have it."

So - personally, I'm looking forward to having a fire under my ass to do the work I've been talking about for a while.  That's what we'll offer each other, myself and my writing buddies.  And some good opportunities to write and drink wine together!

If you are working on a novel, memoir, or book-length writing project, get in touch with me - maybe you'll want to join our writing tribe this November or the revision workshop I'll offer in January to follow up on our 50,000 word drafts!  More on that workshop later -