LAST CHANCE for Spring Workshops!

On By nancystohlmanIn The Writer's Life, Uncategorized, workshops, writing

Need inspiration? Revision? Both??

COURTING THE MUSE  (SOLD OUT)

FIVE DAYS OF CREATIVE AUDACITY AND RADICAL INSPIRATION TO REFRESH AND RE-INSPIRE YOUR WRITING (NEW!)

May 8-12
$199
REGISTER NOW

PHOTOGRAPHER: jazztrio2014

Spring is springing and everything is blooming…except your writing! Maybe you’re in a rut, writing the same things over and over. Maybe you’re walking around with a shovel but you don’t know where to dig. Where do our best ideas come from? Where is our most fertile soil?  How do we cultivate and plant the right seeds? In this workshop we will begin in truth, allowing our unique, sometimes challenging, but always necessary stories to burst and bloom as they travel from the heart to the page. We’ll use familiar and even radical methods of releasing narrative seeds, digging beyond first, second, and even third impulses until we find ourselves deep inside our own abundant source of inspiration and face to face with our muse(s). Finally!

This will be a 5-day online workshop format class with limited availability. Leave with up to 5 new drafts and plenty of renewed vigor to take you into your summer of writing. Come with an open mind and be prepared to play!

REGISTER NOW

GET PUBLICATION READY

SPRING CLEAN YOUR WRITING 3-DAY REVISION WEEKEND  (NEW!)

May 12-14  (SOLD OUT)

Do you have a story or stories that keep getting rejected? Have you been told you are CLOSE…but not quite? Have you looked at it so long you aren’t sure how to make it better? Do you have a pile of first drafts but you aren’t sure how to take them to the next level?

As serious writers, you know it’s through the re-visioning and editing process that we begin to refine and sculpt our messages. But sometimes you need another pair of eyes and a fresh perspective to see what you haven’t been able to see. In this workshop we will use the tools of ambiguity and implication; we will play with chipping and chopping; we will learn how to sculpt your text and we will figure out what’s missing? as I guide you and other participants to revise your real works in progress.

This will be a 3-day online workshop format class with limited availability. Each participant will have the opportunity to submit up to 2500 words in a positive, encouraging space.

REGISTER NOW

P.S. TWO SPOTS LEFT!

High Altitude Inspiration in the Colorado Rockies
August 15-20, 2023

How are you going to celebrate your writing this summer? Join Nancy Stohlman and Kathy Fish for a breakthrough gathering of inspiration, creation, and transformation in beautiful Colorado and experience High Altitude Inspiration for yourself. 

FIND OUT MORE

 Happy writing! xo

Writing a Book Is a Lot Like Falling in Love xoxo

On By nick busheffIn Uncategorized

For me, there’s nothing comparable to writing a book.

The journey across pages is a holy collaboration with the muse, an extended meditation inside the Great Creative Mystery.

If you’ve ever fallen in love—and I mean the kind where lightning strikes jagged across the sky, obliterating (in the best way) everything you thought you knew!—then you are familiar with that feeling of glorious surrender.

Writing a book is exactly the same. 

To fall in love with your book is to fall in love with the Muse, to embark on a dazzling albeit maddening journey filled with many unknowns, possibility, risk, and many, many junctures where you just have to close your eyes and go for it.

But that’s not always easy! 

When we’re swimming in so much possibility, especially at the beginning of a big creative project, it can be intimidating.

We put pen to paper without knowing exactly what will emerge.

  • Can we pull this off?
  • Do we even have a full story?
  • Is this going to be a waste of time?

But, ironically, it’s in this murky creative clearing that your best ideas will arise.

There’s nothing pragmatic about inspiration.

In my workshops and retreats, I like to remind writers that true inspiration, like true love, is messy and unexpected. It takes over.

And the further you get into your own creative goo, the further away from the shoreline of the known…the more it happens.

That’s when you know you are on to something. 

Continue reading at Writer’s Fun Zone

When the world starts to sparkle, when the edges of reality get fuzzy in that way that lets you know true inspiration is coming… you just have to let go and fall back into the open arms of art.

Staying alert in that vast, open space of mystery is a skill.

And like any relationship, your creative lover will keep you wonderfully off balance.

Lean into this eerie clearing in the woods, this space of ambiguity and potential.

Not-knowing is exactly where you should be right now.

In fact, don’t just embrace it but celebrate it.

To make real art, inspired art, is to take a seat inside the mystery. 

We show up to our work each day because we honestly have no idea how it ends or what it will demand of us.

But we know it’s beautiful and rare, and speaking just to us.

What about you?

When the Muse (or Love!) descends, do you release control, or do you insist on having it your way?

My three best tips for navigating your creative relationship:

  1. Always remember your true position.
    Not as inventor or genius or even “the writer” in control…but as a humble servant of the story, the midwife catching the creative baby and landing it safely to the page.Sometimes we have to get out of our own way and just let what wants to be written…arrive.
  2. Fifteen minutes a day can save your relationship.We don’t always have an hour, an afternoon, an open, glorious weekend. But fifteen minutes a day can keep the creative fires going.Plus, when your creative brain knows you’ll never be away for more than 23 hours, it starts helping. You’ll begin to “see” your story everywhere.
  3. And most of all: Allow yourself to be surprised.
    Breathe into the boundless potential of the creative project in front of you and be okay with the mystery.Remember: a visit from love or the muse is a gift.Every day we get to make art is a gift.The story is not a wild horse to be broken. The story is two lovers riding bareback with a notebook and a pen in each hand.

To your greatest creative love manifesting on the page.

I can’t wait to read your book
xoxoxo Nancy

TWO NEW WORKSHOPS OPENING APRIL 11!

COURTING THE MUSE 

FIVE DAYS OF CREATIVE AUDACITY AND RADICAL INSPIRATION TO REFRESH AND RE-INSPIRE YOUR WRITING (NEW!)

May 8-12

FIND OUT MORE

PHOTOGRAPHER: jazztrio2014

GET PUBLICATION READY:
SPRING CLEAN YOUR WRITING 3-DAY REVISION WEEKEND (NEW!)


May 5-7 and May 12-14 


FIND OUT MORE