I’m thrilled to be teaching again at the Writer’s Digest Conference! I’ll be teaching a 1-hour workshop called: Dropping the Mic: How to End a Short Story with both Style and Heart on Saturday, May 18, at 5 pm MST. The entire weekend will be a blast.
SESSION 4: Drop the Mic: How to Write Effective Endings for Short Fiction
INSTRUCTOR: Nancy Stohlman
Time: 5:00 p.m. ET
Many writers, even those who begin beautifully, struggle with endings. Yet, we all know a brilliant ending when we read one. A brilliant ending compels you to say whoa. Then reread. And say whoa again. It can be poignant, messed up, surprising, gorgeous, tragic. But it should punch you in the gut or the heart–and it should leave a mark. It should echo off the page and haunt you all day long. In this class we’ll play with several strategies to rethink and uplevel your endings. You’ve already come this far–you’ve written the breathtaking opening, the humming middle… now it’s time to land the ending. And drop the mic.
My dear writing friends and family–it’s spring! We made it! I hope your spring creativity is emerging from the cold, cold ground (ahem, at least here in the northern hemisphere!), and you are feeling excited about the blossoming all around.
You may have seen that I recently took myself on a three-day writing and spring visioncasting retreat to: Carhenge! (Oh yes, it’s as weird and wonderful as it looks!)
It was a much-needed time for me as a writer–as you know, I’ve been having so many life transitions that my writing and I had become estranged. It happens. Thankfully I know from lived experience how creativity ebbs and flows, so I wasn’t panicking…too much.
BUT it was time to reunite and reconcile with my work. If our work is a kind of relationship (and I believe it is), then I needed a Manuscript Encounter Weekend.
So…off to Alliance, Nebraska for three days. Which doesn’t mean I wrote for 8 hours a day–that’s not always what’s needed when you go on a writing retreat. Sometimes what’s needed is time to think. Then write a little bit. Then go for a weird Carhenge walk. More thinking. An insight or even a breakthrough while wandering Main Street. Or staring at the hotel wall. And then write a little more. Plus the multi-hour drive through the Midwest, empty highways under the drama of a spring sky and remembering why you cared about this story to begin with.
Does this resonate for you? Maybe you’ve become distant from your work. Or maybe you’ve recently ended a big project or had a life change and you’re now filling up your well again, looking for new inspiration. Spring has a way of doing that; clearing out the cobwebs is always an invitation to take creative stock, too.
I’m happy to say that my manuscript and I fell back in love and we are going to stay together! Whew.
But it was a good reminder that the creative relationship and the creative life takes constant care and loving diligence. It’s easy to become estranged from your work when life gets demanding (and she does, doesn’t she??)…but it’s also easier than you think to get back on track. Sometimes you just need a little nudge. Sometimes you need a big adventure. Sometimes you need both.
So to that end, let me plant some spring seeds (pun intended!) that may be just the thing you and your work need to freshen up your relationship:
First: If you need an adventure with lots of inspiration and camaderie with me, Kathy Fish, and an inspiring cohort of your creative colleagues–I’ve got 4 spots left in our upcoming Grand Lake Colorado Writing Retreat this July 23-28. Maybe this is finally the year you join us?
Maybe you can’t wait until July? (I can’t xo) So, in the spirit of Carhenge, I’m also offering a 90-minute live Spring Visioncasting Check-in Workshop next Friday, April 19.
Details for both of these below.
Check these out and see if they might be a perfect fit. But either way, consider this a personal invitation to prioritize your best creative life this year. Listen to your heart, talk to your creative work, and see if you can give yourself and your sweet writing relationship something to look forward to this spring.
Whether that’s an in-person retreat, a crazy Carhenge adventure (wink!), or a spring visioncasting workshop to get you back on track: It’s always better together!
I look forward to working with you soon! xoxo
WHERE DO YOU WANT TO WRITE THIS SUMMER?
How about Grand Lake with me and Kathy Fish? FOUR SPOTS LEFT
High Altitude Inspiration in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains July 23-28, 2024
Imagine yourself high in the Rocky Mountains: wildflowers, blowing aspens, dramatic clouds, hummingbird visits, a stunning mountain view overlooking a deep, natural lake, and you…. finally focused on your writing!
Imagine how it would feel to sink deeply into your creative work with like-minded others, in a beautiful location that will inspire fresh perspectives and the opportunity to take new creative paths.
AND….how are your creative goals coming? Could you use a spring check-in?
SPRING CREATIVE VISIONCASTING 2024
a special 90-minute workshop and strategy session to envision and implement a year of creative clarity, confidence, and courage
PART TWO: Taking Stock, Working Well, and Navigating the Unexpected
LIVE: Friday, April 19 at 11 am MST
I’ve heard from so many of you since our January session! You’ve shared many insights, shifts, and creative a-has! And, of course, life is an unending series of shifts and adjustments--no matter how beautiful our original vision, or how well we laid out that map in January…it’s time for a check-in. A time to assess where we are, where we want to be, and how to get ourselves there with curiosity, clarity, courage and compassion. No judgement!
As I shared before, I regularly take myself through this process of revisiting and re-orienting–not towards blatant productivity, but towards my deepest creative visions so I don’t spend my life just staying busy but not moving the needle on what really matters. And it’s time to check-in.
In this 90-minute session we will take stock of your 2024 goals, discover insights, make adjustments, and keep you reaching towards the life you want. I’ll share my own process these first three months, including some radical reshifting and some gentle reorganization when life gets unexpected.
We will also continue to brainstorm and identify our creative priorities, decide how and why to choose, and revision a realistic and empowering plan to move forward.
Remember: this is NOT a one-size-fits-all-strategy but a living conversation and method of interrogating and knowing ourselves in order to reorient toward what we value most.
And if this is your first time–welcome! We will work, yes, but the work will be fun–creativity is our job after all! So let’s re-convene for 90 minutes this April and continue 2024 with more creative confidence, clarity, courage, and camaraderie.See you April 19!(registration comes with access to our January video recording)
P.S.S. Interested in a Private Coaching Session to get you ready? I’m opening my books next week for a limited amount of 30-minute private sessions for just $99 before we gather together. Email me to grab a spot!
Other questions? Email me or respond to this email.
Which is why I’m offering two opportunities to get my help and make real progress on your work this spring:
FIRST: You are not too lateto join the 12-week Flash Mastermind, a thriving workshop space of motivation, accountability, group coaching, and community. Whether your book is fiction or creative non-fiction, if you are a dedicated writer, drawing on the skills of flash fiction, this is the long-term container of inspiration and support you’ve been wanting.
The Mastermind includes weekly content, Zoom community calls and special events, as well as M-F access to me for all your questions and coaching. Together we are growing, drafting, completing, and submitting projects, finding sustainable rhythms, developing our creative confidence, and building some amazing, supportive friendships. You’ll probably see some familiar faces!
AND SECOND: I’ve just opened additional spaces for Private Creative Coaching sessions via Zoom. There are individual sessions available as well as a 6-session coaching package, which includes feedback on up to 18,000 words over the next 12 weeks–perfect for a flash-length book.
Or maybe you just need a refresher or inspiration boost? Feel free tobook a single coaching session,(which includes up to 3,000 words for feedback), and let’s get you back on track.
Whether you join us in the Mastermind or prefer private coaching, I’d love to help you make real progress on your project this spring.
xoxoxo Nancy
P.S. And yes, these two offers can be combined–-shoot me an email and let’s chat!
Other questions?
Email me at nancystohlman@gmail.com or respond to this email.
Since we’re at the start of a new year, and I promised you an update, I’ve decided to share my biggest personal lesson of 2023…which doesn’t really have anything to do with writing.
Or maybe it does…
Some of you might remember last January when I was in Puerto Rico, scouting retreat venues, and my phone was swallowed by the ocean.…which turned into a huge but necessary metaphor for my life. Now, one year later, I’m in Costa Rica, halfway through an amazing retreat week of creative work and play with some of my favorite writer people…and feeling all the morphic resonances of one year ago.
Maybe that’s why we love anchor dates like New Year’s Eve or birthdays–they’re familiar catch points along the wheel of the year that help us rememberwho we were from the vantage point of who we are.
For me, 2023 was an extremely full year, rich and dense and flavorful and unexpected and marked with nearly every life milestone or transition: I lost two of my most important people. I moved houses and cities. My youngest child graduated from high school. I fell in love, got married, and gained a stepchild. And I finally published After the Rapture, a book I’d been writing since shortly after my accident in 2016.
Wait–hold up. You got married?
xoxoxoxo (!!!)
During a year of such intense change, I had two guiding principles: radical honesty and claiming desire.
Radical honesty as in the hard but necessary truths with myself and others. Whew. Big sigh. And claiming desire, which turned out to be the same thing as following the breadcrumbs of joy.
These may sound like common platitudes, I know, But in 2023, I learned the difference between idealism and execution. I learned how to save myself, find one more reserve of courage and swim instead of drown…even when there was no island in sight.
I’m not the first to do this. But I have to tell you this in order to tell you what I really want to tell you:
Happiness is possible.
Not happiness as in the absence of pain, or happiness like a new truck, or happiness as in pretty good, but radical, ridiculous happiness. The kind of happiness we might have once believed possible as children, a limitless joy and wonder and delight that we may decide is too immature to bring into adulthood. Too silly, those fantasies. Not practical. Not realistic. After all, nobody is deliriously happy, right?
But…what if real happiness is actually closer to our true nature than any modified adult compromise we may have been living with?
I want to tell you: Real happiness is possible.
It doesn’t happen on accident. If you aren’t radically happy right now, there’s a reason, and untangling that reason or reasons may require some radically honest inventory-taking, maybe even some painful letting go.
Last year I joked that I had to sacrifice my phone to the ocean in order to open some sort of portal…and in a way that was true.The sort of happiness I’m speaking of couldn’t have happened without a sacrifice of the old life, including all the many ways we don’t listen to our own truths or the radical desires of our hearts.
I’ve learned much from grief, shock, despair, illness, loss, and maybe even more from a nagging mediocrity. I had to ask myself: what would it be like to believe in happiness again?
I don’t know how to get you there; I don’t have specific steps or a signature method--all I can offer you is this message if you need to hear it: Happiness is possible.
By the way, my new words for 2024 are dwelling and devotion. I take this to mean: I swam all the way to an island of joy, and I will remain here and become a student of happiness. I will apprentice in this place, introduce myself to the trees and learn the landscape of joy. I will build a house of devotion on this island, and I will lower the white flag (and the red one) and I will discover what it is to dwell here.
And I will also build a lighthouse, in case you need a signal. And the signal will say:
Happiness is possible, my friends.
And as I sit here, still uncomfortable at times in the gentleness of ease but learning, learning, I half expect that one day my old phone will wash up on this beach, strangely uncracked, and the locked screen message will say:
ah…I thought I might find you here.
To your radical, ridiculous happiness, xoxoxoxoxo
P.S. Write with me! spots still available
February 12-23:Launch Your Flash Novel 10-Day Intensive *Online and asynchronous but I am “live” and active during the workshop
March 4-May 24: The 12-Week Flash Novel Mastermind *Online with both live (zoom) and asychronous components
Nancy Stohlman 