Reel in New Writing Depths! Deeply Question to Transform Your Work
A preview to get you started and a link to the full workshop
Enter the joyful, freeing practice of guiding your writing from draft to polished vision.
Who is this for?
Wanna
Create work that succeeds on its own terms
Turn anecdote into art
Write pieces that change you and your readere?
This workshop’s for you!
To watch the workshop and use the worksheets and resource links, plus access all these workshops.
Prefer to purchase a single workshop? Click here, select the $15 option, and email me for a link to the workshop and its resources.
Based on 20 years editing, patterns holding works back and prompts to usher them forward.
A preview. Deeply questioning in three
1. Good art lets readers see us change on the page
In the opening essay of Body Work,
talks about “the extravagantly hard work of making good art, which is to say art that succeeds by its own terms.” Developing our work—incorporating a robust revision process—is how we make good art. I believe it’s also a key way of defining and redefining for ourselves as we go, what our own terms of success are.1Febos points to transformation, to seeing the writer change on the page, as a marker of good art for her. This essay, “In Praise of the Art of Navel Gazing,” is about personal writing; in it, Febos reveals her unlearning of the idea of memoir as a lesser genre.
Yes, personal writing needs change. And I believe, change on the page is key to all types of writing. Think of what you write. Is it sci-fi, YA fiction? Is it humor, persuasion, self-help, poetry, essays exploring topics that intrigue or mean something to you? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to know what we wrote left our readers changed, even if just a little, even if fleetingly? A little more joyful, curious, open, interested in a topic? And what better way than by revealing how the developing of a piece changed us?
2. A systemized process of developmental editing is distillation, enrichment, and play
One of my favorite quotes on writing comes from Lorrie Moore (by way of Mary Karr for me): “Life is a field of corn. Literature is the shot glass it distills down into.”
Revision is distillation. As our own editors, we’re first witnesses to what we’ve harvested. In an essay called “Caught in Time’s Current” (Burning Questions),
knows her poem “Dearly” was written in the third week of August 2017 on a backstreet of Ontario, Canada, with either a pencil or a rollerball on an envelope or a shopping list or in a notebook. She knows it was transcribed in December 2017. She writes of all that was occurring in her life when she drafted this poem—she was at a festival watching two plays a day, she was already grieving her partner who had been diagnosed with dementia, she was working on what would become a hit TV series.2Our lives are full. Whatever we’re writing is informed by what’s happening to and around us. Developing our works enables us to allow life to seep in and enrich our writing. It helps us to be more ourselves on the page.
And our lives our full. We don’t have time to reinvent with each new piece. A systemized process of editing allows us to explore in ways we didn’t think we could fit in. We have a draft. Now we have practiced ways of asking ourselves, What else? What if? We can play with technique, style, genre, and more. We can turn to writers whose work we aspire to and ask, How did they do that?
3. Deep questioning helps us get there
Mary Karr wrote on a common quality among life-story writers. “Truth is not their enemy. It’s the bannister they grab for when feeling around on the dark cellar stairs” (The Art of Memoir).
This grappling for truth, like change, can be extrapolated to writing broadly. Deep questioning is a way to feel our way into emotional honesty. It helps us discover what we want to bring to light and create art that succeeds on terms we define.
What people are saying about the workshops
♥️🔥 If you’re on Notes and wanna restack this post, I would be ever so grateful. Thank you!
What qualifies me to offer these workshops? Over two decades, I’ve edited more than a thousand manuscripts, from memoir to fiction to self-help and lots in between. Whether as a developmental, content, or line editor or a co/ghost writer, I’ve seen my job as helping authors transform works they’ve knitted from the fibers of their beings into the best versions possible. Before that, I was briefly an award-winning journalist. I’ve written for clients ranging from question-answering systems to influencers to nonprofits. And I’ve overseen mini zines and small publications as managing/assigning editor.
What’s next?
Live Zoom! March 30, 2024, 9am PST. Wow with Your Choices
What else?
Replay! Reach New Writing Heights: Developing early drafts to firm up the scaffolding with strategic outlining
Replay! Be Stunningly Concise: The gifts we give readers and ourselves by cutting what’s not needed and loving it
Live Zoom! April 13, 2024, 9am PST. Polish & Publish
More coming in the fall. An annual subscription locks you in for all of that. Each workshop stands on its own. Come to or watch whichever calls to you.
All artwork for the Rolling Desk is by the crazy talented Alexandra Rickards. Check out her art and think of her for your project needs!
In “Ten subtle habits of the top 1% online writers,”
offers some solid writing advice, including a section called “You must redirect your concept of success.” I adore this redirection of the concept: “I had an idea. I started a written piece. I finished the piece. I shared it publicly.” The more we learn to develop and edit our work, the more we can widen our targets for success. And the key here is we get to define those terms.
Looking forward to viewing the replay, Holly :)