ONLINE CLASS: Writing-Craft Skills and Techniques for all genres

Honing craft skills is essential in every form of writing from fiction to memoir to poetry.

This will be a continuation of Sheila’s ongoing writing program, but it is not necessary to have participated previously to get the full benefits of this new series.

Whether you are new to creative writing or an experienced writer, the lessons and practice of using craft skills help enormously. In our hurry to finish writing something, we can forget to employ the craft skills available to us as writers. And if we are new writers or writers beginning new work, we may feel at a loss about how to start and shape our writing, how to use specifics and not bore the reader, how to use reflection in good balance with the offering of experience.

Leaning on craft skills like building scenes, making smooth transitions in time and space, and using images to evoke experience rather than telling about it seem always to need sharpening. We will practice those skills as well as self-editing for compression in prose and poetry, and learn about a variety of structures to adopt or adapt, as we workshop participant drafts from lessons (that include models from published writing) provided each week.

Sheila’s writing class in Italy

In our four weeks (every other Monday) Zooming together, we will:

• Study models from short published work by contemporary poets and writers
• Then we’ll practice using the skills we’ve seen demonstrated in their writing
• And we will “workshop” the writing you do in class and between sessions using a gentle, empowering three-step response method that leaves the writer eager to carry on with revision.
• For those interested in publishing, there will be time and information on this aspect of the writing life, too.

Port Townend, Washington based poet, memoirist, instructional book writer and writing teacher, Sheila Bender, will offer exercises, close listening, and developmental editing based on where your writing is taking you.  She has guided 100s of new and experienced writers in manifesting the work they have dreamed of being able to share and publish.

Click here to see Sheila’s Youtube video introducing this workshop…

The class includes a half-hour private consult about your work by Zoom as well as a library of articles and videos Sheila has made about the writing craft. Learn more about her and what her students say about her teaching at WritingItReal.com.

I simply want to thank you so much! This workshop was so worth the time!! You are amazing and brilliant and encouraging! – Susan P., participant from November session