Tag: writing workshops

Happiness is Possible

On By nancystohlmanIn Craft Essays, the writer's life, The Writer's Life, workshops, writingLeave a comment

Friends!

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 remember who 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

LEARN MORE AND REGISTER HERE

Winter Workshops now open (plus special offer)!

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

February 12-23: Launch Your Flash Novel 10-Day Intensive *Online and asynchronous but I am “live” during the workshop

March 4-May 24: The 12-Week Flash Novel Mastermind *Online with both live and asychronous components

SPECIAL OFFER UNTIL JANUARY 31:

Get BOTH Workshops for $999 (save $98 on both)

payments available

REGISTER HERE

Launch Your Flash Novel 10-Day Intensive

February 12-23, 2024

$299 

REGISTER FOR LAUNCH YOUR FLASH NOVEL HERE

Is 2024 the year you finally write your book? Do you have an idea brewing, but you don’t know where to begin? Is it a flash novel? Novella? Collection? A regular novel or memoir or a million other things? Sometimes not knowing can stop us from getting started. Sometimes the scope of it feels overwhelming.

The Launch Your Flash Novel Intensive is my signature course designed to help you launch your Big Idea. For 10 days we will envision, draft, collage and create momentum; we’ll begin breaking it apart and making friends with the scope of it, and in that process of discovery you will find momentum, insight, excitement, and sometimes a total pivot–that’s okay! For 10 days we’ll get out of our own way–10 days and a flurry of words and ideas and encouragement and camaraderie–and when it’s over you will have the bones (at least) of a longer project and a much better idea of where to go next.

The Flash Novel Mastermind:

a 12-week masterclass and creative community

March 4-May 24, 2024

$799 

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, motivation, community and support you have been wanting,

LEARN ABOUT THE FLASH MASTERMIND HERE:

SPECIAL OFFER UNTIL JANUARY 31:

Get BOTH Workshops for $999 (save $98)

payment plans available

REGISTER HERE

Email me with questions at nancystohlman@gmail.com

I can’t wait to work with you!

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

March 25: Presenting at Arapahoe Community College Annual Spring Lit Fest: Back in Person!

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

Back In Person! ACC’s Annual Spring Literary Festival.

The Writers Studio at ACC provides a full-day writing conference for students and community members that is the most affordable, quality-laden literary festival you’ll find, for writers of all levels and ages.

Included with the registration fee:

  • One complimentary copy of the “Progenitor Art and Literary Journal”, v. 57, 2022
  • Continental Breakfast, including coffee and tea
  • Lunch
  • Author reading and book signing during lunch
  • Open Mic opportunity for registrants at the end of the day (approximately 5 minutes per person)

Registration fees:
$25 student rate*
$30 CCCS employee rate
$40 Senior rate
$55 community member rate 
*Students of any college or high school. Please show Student ID at check-in.

MORE INFO AND REGISTER HERE

SCHEDULE
8:30-9:15 Sign-in and continental breakfast
9:30-10:45 Session 1 (registrants choose from 2)  
11:00-12:15 Session 2 (registrants choose from 2) 
12:30-1:30 Lunch and author reading (I WILL READ FROM AFTER THE RAPTURE)
2:00-3:15 Session 3 (registrants choose from 2** I WILL BE PRESENTING IN SESSION 3
3:30-4:15 Festival concludes with an Open Mic reading for registrants—time limit of five minutes per reader 
4:30 campus closes

SESSION 3: 2:00-3:15 pm

Write a Flash Novel: All Meat and No Fat
Workshop Description:  Do you have a Big Story Idea brewing but you don’t know where to begin? Have you been working on a traditional novel/creative nonfiction book, but you find yourself hitting a wall? Maybe you need a total perspective shift, a radical re-visioning of how to write a book?
Meet the “Flash Novel”, a breakout genre that draws on the skills of flash fiction to tell a large-scale story in a compact space. Existing at the intersection of the novel and flash fiction, the flash novel has both the scope and complexity of a novel and the ingenuity of flash fiction, delivering a sophisticated reading experience to a contemporary audience. 
In this workshop, we will envision, draft, collage, and create momentum on your Big Idea. We’ll begin breaking it apart and making friends with the scope of it. For 90 minutes, we’ll get out of our own way, and you will discover the bones of your project as well as the enthusiasm and insight to know where to go next. Open to all writers, whether you have already started writing or the idea still lives in your head and heart. Come ready to play and rethink what you know about writing a book.

Register here!