InkBlossom Special Topic Workshop Offerings
Workshop Leader: Connie May Fowler
All Workshops are Virtual Via Zoom
Connie’s workshops are rigorous, nurturing, and exploratory. Designed to help each writer discover their own answers, the workshop group explores narrative possibilities, prompting inspired realizations that lead to deep understandings of craft and art. Our goal is for writers to leave each workshop with renewed creativity, insights, and commitment to the process. Connie’s own writing journey has taught her that happy writers are productive writers.
The Landscape and Setting Workshop
October 28 and 29, 2023
10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern, Saturday and Sunday
A story’s setting should inform and support plot, theme, character, and mood. Scenes must be populated with “props” your characters interact with. These “props” can help turn a static scene and a static character into dynamic, active elements that support all aspects of the story, including character development, tension, movement, and metaphor. This six-hour workshop includes generative exercises crafted exclusively for each participant that will help you build complex and engaging worlds and scenes.
Fee: $125
Non-refundable deposit due upon acceptance into the workshop: $25
Registration and Balance Payment Deadline: October 14
Manuscript-based and Generative: Submit two pages maximum, generate landscape and setting explorations
Participants: Eight persons maximum
The Everything Workshop
November 18 and 19, 2023
10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern, Saturday and Sunday
Building on last year’s successful Specificity Workshop, this six-hour class explores all aspects of your narrative, including voice, detail specificity, setting, internal logic, sentence level and story-wide tension, pacing, characterization, and whatever else arises from your pages.
Fee: $125
Non-refundable deposit due upon acceptance into the workshop: $25
Registration and Balance Payment Deadline: November 4
Manuscript-based: Three pages maximum
Participants: Eight persons maximum
The Everything Workshop
December 9 and 10, 2023
10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern, Saturday and Sunday
Building on last year’s successful Specificity Workshop, this six-hour class explores all aspects of your narrative, including voice, detail specificity, setting, internal logic, sentence level and story-wide tension, pacing, characterization, and whatever else arises from your pages.
Fee: $125
Non-refundable deposit due upon acceptance into the workshop: $25
Registration and Balance Payment Deadline: November 18
Manuscript-based: Three pages maximum
Participants: Eight persons maximum
Voice Workshop
February 17-18, 2024
10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern, Saturday and Sunday
A story can have a page-turning plot, but if the voice is not authentic and engaging, everything falls apart. This six-hour workshop will explore all aspects of voice on sentence and holistic levels, including possibilities, word choice, cadence, uniqueness, authenticity, freshness, and cliché avoidance. Generative exercises will help you discover the perfect voice for your project.
Fee: $125
Non-refundable deposit due upon acceptance into the workshop: $25
Registration and Balance Payment Deadline: January 17
Manuscript-based and Generative: Submit two pages maximum, generate voice explorations
Participants: Eight persons maximum
Point of View and Narrative Perch Workshop
March 16 and 17
10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern, Saturday and Sunday
Margaret Atwood said, “Reality simply consists of different points of view.” In your stories, what reality and whose reality are you attempting to convey? Is this a single character’s narrative or do multiple characters need to tell the tale? Is your narrative lens perched inside the consciousness of your character or is it in the treetops gazing downward? This workshop will explore POV and perch in all of its iterations, helping you make informed and deliberate decisions . You will learn how to control POV and perch, rather than having a narrative lens that is out of control.
Fee: $125
Non-refundable deposit due upon acceptance into the workshop: $25
Registration and Balance Payment Deadline: March 9
Manuscript-based and Generative: Submit two pages maximum, generate POV and perch explorations
Participants: Eight persons maximum
The Essential Revision and Editing Workshop
June 22 and 23
10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern, Saturday and Sunday
Inexperienced writers often shudder at the prospect of revision and editing, as if the first things tumbling from their minds are pristine and untouchable. But if you don’t touch it, hone it, carve it, polish it, the first impulse—that narrative lump of coal—will never shine diamond bright. Toni Morrison said of revision, “I love that part; that’s the best part, revision. I do it even after the books are bound! Thinking about it before you write it is delicious. Writing it all out for the first time is painful because so much of the writing isn’t very good. I didn’t know in the beginning that I could go back and make it better; so I minded very much writing badly. But now I don’t mind at all because there’s that wonderful time in the future when I will make it better, when I can see better what I should have said and how to change it. I love that part!” In this workshop we will explore the wonders of revision and editing, using your work as our compass.
Fee: $125
Non-refundable deposit due upon acceptance into the workshop: $25
Registration and Balance Payment Deadline: June 17
Manuscript-based and Generative: Submit two pages maximum, generate revisions and edits, acquire and improve revision and editing tools
Participants: Eight persons maximum
Building Better Sentences Workshop
July 27 and 28
10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern, Saturday and Sunday
James Baldwin gave us our marching orders: “You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.” But meeting that goal can be challenging. It requires courage, focus, intention, and clarity. This workshop will examine sentences that fail and those that soar. We will look at your sentences, discover their heartbeats, and reveal their gleaming centers.
Fee: $125
Non-refundable deposit due upon acceptance into the workshop: $25
Registration and Balance Payment Deadline: July 20
Manuscript-based and Generative: Submit two pages maximum, sentence level explorations
Participants: Eight persons maximum
Creating Conflict and Tension Word by Word
August 17-18
10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern, Saturday and Sunday
We often overlook the tension that can be created simply through the juxtaposition of two words, through what is not said, through the give and take of language and gesture. Conflict and tension are not the exclusive domain of overt drama. Sometimes, they manifest as steam pulsing its way through every word, sentence, and paragraph. We will look at texts that deal with tension and conflict in various ways and will explore your own writing to discover possibilities for manifesting narrative steam.
Fee: $125
Non-refundable deposit due upon acceptance into the workshop: $25
Registration and Balance Payment Deadline: August 10
Manuscript-based and Generative: Submit two pages maximum, sentence level explorations
Participants: Eight persons maximum
Novel Incubator: Plan Your Book Workshop
November 16-17
10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern, Saturday and Sunday
Agatha Christie famously said, “The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.” There is a great deal of truth to that. But it is also true that it’s difficult to jot down your musings with wet, sudsy hands. We will explore exercises that will help you expand your creativity and fuel ideas that will form the core foundation of your novel in progress. We will keep in mind that writing is alchemy, requiring a nimble and flexible approach. But we will also explore novel creation as a practical art that requires self-knowledge each time we face the blank page. Come with ideas or come with none. The workshop is designed to help you launch your novel going into the new year.
Fee: $125
Non-refundable deposit due upon acceptance into the workshop: $25
Registration and Balance Payment Deadline: November 10
Generative though feel free to come to workshop with some ideas in place
Participants: Eight persons maximum
THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW:
Classes fill on a first-come basis. Send Connie an email to make sure there is a slot available. If there is, she will email you payment instructions.
If yours is a manuscript-based workshop, your submission must be emailed no later than the Monday prior to your workshop date.
Manuscripts must be rendered in 12 point Times New Roman font. They must be double-spaced and page-numbered with one-inch margins. They must be sent via email as a Word attachment. Include in the document title your last name, workshop title, and workshop month. EXAMPLE: Smith.Everything.Nov or Smith.Landscape.Oct
We cannot offer refunds unless we are able to give your seat to another participant. If you pay your tuition and have to miss or cancel your participation, if we cannot fill your slot, your fee can be credited to a future InkBlossom literary event as space allows.
CONTACT:
“I am a significantly better writer thanks to my work with Connie May Fowler. Be it grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, tense, or larger issues like voice, point of view or pacing, Connie's editing is invaluable.” ~ Sheila Reed, Novelist
“I wish every writer had Connie. She has cheered me when something worked, kindly confronted me when something didn't (and I remained in stubborn denial), and insisted I keep the project's overall trajectory as a guiding light to move things forward. She makes me dig deep and reminds me why I love writing. She's a warm, wise soul who loves helping writers birth books.” ~ Carla Damron, author of the novels Keeping Silent and The Stone Necklace