JUMP START YOUR WRITING COURSE FOCUS
This class has an inspirational focus on creating realistic waypoints for our writing, tackling a variety of drafting and revision strategies as well as looking at the ways both fiction and non-fiction authors tackle their writing throughout the year! This class is limited to 25 participants and during our two hours together there will be time for informal feedback, break-out rooms and Q&A. All participants have access to the recording and digital hand-outs for a month after the class concludes.
This course will cover the following topics:
- Looking at how life affects our writing and yearly output
- Reflect and analyze your writing in 2020
- Create objectives and waypoints for 2021
- Exploring your developing writing voice through a variety of exercises
- Analyzing the writing of established authors
- Draft up to 500 new words of your work in progress or a new work
- Use both metacognitive and “flow writing” techniques for exploring your developing process as a writer as well as how you approach the text you’re working on
- Identifying the three main stages of revision (idea, solidifying, granular)
- Giving and receiving feedback
- Prioritizing your writing in a hectic world
Who should take this course?
- Novelists in any genre looking to jump right back into writing in the new year in a supportive and energizing online environment with the opportunity for informal feedback.
- Memoirists wanting to further refine and hone their voice, as well as examine their past and present world.
- Non-fiction writers looking for new ways to look at their voice and writing process.
- Writers interested in taking a live, online course with a focused group of peers.
- Writers who want to both explore their methods of writing, but also the ways in which they accomplish their best work.
- Previous experience is not required. You can be at the beginning stage of your writing process or very experienced. This workshop is designed for all levels.
What does the course include?
- All digital handouts (usually sent 24 hours before the workshop starts)
- All course readings
- All questions answered from the Q&A (even if we run out of time during the live class, all questions will be answered in the follow-up e-mail with the class recording, handouts, etc..)
- Opportunity for informal feedback in break-out rooms.
- Exercises that could spur up to 500 words or more of new material.
- Explorations you can use in your writing again.
- Access to all the slides (in pdf) after the course concludes.
Deliverables for Students
- Digital handouts
- Course recording
- Class slides
- Q&A answers
PRICE $25 (Register by January 8 at 4pm CST)
How do I know if the course is worth the cost?
This is a difficult question to answer, as live, online classes (with access to all of the above after the course concludes) can range anywhere from $25-175+. A few important gauges in comparing costs are the two important features of this course: you meet live, online in real-time with the instructor and fellow students for two hours (and if something comes up and you cannot attend the live class, you have access to the recording later). When you factor in the opportunity to meet and talk with other writers, share your work in progress (if desired) and receive both instruction and informal feedback, this course is priced for a variety of budgets so that individuals from around the world can participate.
However, ultimately you decide if this form of investment in your writing is best for your budget, writing goals, and work. We hope you’ll join us in working on your writing in the new year!
About the instructor:
Britta Jensen has spent seventeen years in the literacy education and publishing world. She is the award-winning novelist of the Eloia Born series. She has also received numerous awards, including the General Sharp Award, for her teaching of creative writing and literature. Many of her stories explore themes of persevering through disability, parental separation and the intersection of various cultures in new worlds. She holds a BA in Acting Performance from Fordham University and an MA in Teaching of English Literature from Columbia University. Friends often refer to her as a polyglot—which is a product of living twenty-two years overseas in Japan, South Korea, and Germany before settling in Austin, Texas. She enjoys mentoring writers and editing books with The Writing Consultancy and Yellowbird Editors and teaches first-year writing at St. Edward’s University.
Testimonials from Previous Students
“The class was so rich with ideas and wonderful exercises…I also loved the advice to not focus so much on rewriting the beginning (which is something so many of us do!) but instead to try to finish a draft and then go back to rework the beginning.”–Maureen Turner Carey, author & librarian
“I like the way you provide a mechanism to explore what a character might do, not necessarily in the context of the story, but just behave if I extracted them from the story and watched them go.”–Sam Ritter, author
“So much revealed in so little time!”–Roanna Flowers, author of Dramedy Au Contraire
