News and a New Writing Workshop

Busy, Busy, Busy!

In my previous blog post, I wrote about celebrating successes, little and otherwise. In that vein, I want to share briefly what I’ve been up to over the past few busy months.

July

In July, I took a five-week flash-fiction workshop through Cleaver. It was a fabulous class and aided me in putting together my first chapbook collection of flash/microfiction. (The collection is not done yet, but it’s getting there; I plan to start submitting it to contests and publishers next month.)

August

In August, I attended EFACon 2023, a conference for freelance editors like myself. It was a great event—I networked with other editors (some whose names I knew from the professional editing groups I’m in but had never met in person) and learned a lot! To be in a business like editing, one needs to constantly be learning, adapting, and pivoting. Language is fluid, always changing, and editorial professionals need to keep up with the trends and adapt accordingly. This conference was the perfect opportunity to do all of those things. It also gave me the opportunity to visit with relatives and friends in Northern Virginia, including the furry kind.

Also in August, one of my writing tips was published in Cleaver. And keep an eye out—my interview with Kathryn Kulpa about her latest book, Cooking Tips for the Demon-Haunted, will be published soon as well, also at Cleaver.

September

I’ve had several recent publications, too; most notably was my story “You’re Just Growing Up,” which won 3^rd Prize in the 2023 South Shore Review Flash Fiction Contest and was published earlier this month.

So, What’s Next?

One of my latest endeavors is something I’ve been researching and working on for almost a year; as an extension of my editing business, I’m planning to start offering a writing workshop for short prose (both fiction and nonfiction) and poetry. But this won’t be your typical writing workshop!

A New Kind of Writing Workshop

Instead of the traditional writing workshop model, I will be using a structured method of giving and receiving feedback based on Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process (CRP). There are distinct–and important–differences between the traditional workshop model and a CRP-based workshop model.

The goal of a CRP-based workshop is to provide a writer with useful feedback, directed at their immediate needs and concerns, without offering them “fixits” (directives of how to fix what the responder might perceive as a “problem”).

In a CRP-based workshop, the writer submits a piece for workshop that they’re heavily invested in–it can be at any stage of the writing process. Because the feedback is author-centric (rather than responder-centric, as is often the case in traditional workshops), the author will come away with specific next steps for the piece at hand based on their own vision for the piece and not anyone else’s. (In this recent Substack post, I discuss, in passing, how frustrating it can be to have someone try to “fix” an aspect of your work that you don’t perceive as “broken.”) The nature of CRP also makes it easy to provide feedback across genres (i.e., fiction, nonfiction, poetry).

You Can Be Part of this New Endeavor!

Want to learn more about Critical Response Process (CRP)? I will be holding an informational/practice CRP session on Sunday, Dec. 3, 2023 at 6 p.m. (EST) on Zoom. The goal of the informational/practice session is to provide you with more information about CRP and its four steps. This will also be a “hands-on” practice session so that you can get a glimpse of how CRP will be applied to a writing workshop. (I am also looking for participants for a beta CRP-based workshop; more on that later, but if it sounds like something you might be interested in, please attend the informational session!)

To attend this informational/practice CRP session, please fill out the contact form with this message (or something similar): “I’m interested in the CRP informational session.” I will then be contacting interested parties via email. The fee for this informational/practice session is $5. When I email interested parties, I will provide a link for payment as well.