Writing workshops
(Yes, I'm starting one)
I feel like most of my online chatter last year was about being the instructor for Clarion West’s inaugural Novel Writing Workshop (the 2026 round is about to start soon, led by the inimitable Dr. Karen Lord). We wrapped up the 2025 workshop in November, and after nine months of trying to keep 12 wonderful books in progress in my head through 2025, I’m now wandering the house zombie-like wondering what I’m supposed to do next (write more books, yes, but still). The image here is one of a lovely weekly gathering I miss with an intensity that really surprises me - an actual writing community is a rare treasure in any world, and absolutely invaluable in this one. The photo is also the last page of a calendar the writers sent me - I feel like sharing every page, each one is dedicated to one of the books we worked on, but the messages are so lovely and so kind that I’m going to keep them to myself.
I’d made it clear when we’d started that there was absolutely no requirement to actually finish a novel draft during the course of the workshop. Novels take their own time, and productivity/wordcount - always admirable, of course - are only really important in the context of each individual writer’s life/time/deadline management matrices. But to everyone’s surprise and delight, nine of the twelve writers have finished their books! And all three remaining are well past their halfway marks and months away from submittable manuscripts. And I’m just delighted to not need to pretend I know anything Mentorily and just have a bunch of lovely and talented new writer friends.
So despite my lifelong commitment to grumpiness, after almost a quarter-century wandering around across media, territories and genres, there’s a couple of things I’ve come to realise - one, I actually really like this teaching thing.
And two, I want to do it again.
I’ve taught before many times over the decades, but always much shorter engagements, workshops at universities, schools, culture centres or festivals, the CW six-week short story workshop, Bound. But 2025 really made me want to make this a regular part of my life, because the joy of watching these books grow and their writers help one another and outgrow their individual hurdles was really addictive. I was worried about the design and execution (and utility, even) of a multi-month novel writing workshop before we started, and at least some of this is because I’m not from a writing-workshop/MFA background myself. But I was surprised and delighted to learn - it actually seems to work? And I definitely want to use everything I learned last year, building on that process and designing more workshops, and build a teaching side to my work around the year, starting small so I can find a way to balance it with my own writing in a way that’s sustainable, and run it independently either solo or with author friends every year, or at least every year I’m not anchoring a long-form workshop for someone else.
I’m planning to start the first two groups, for international-publishing focussed and Indian-publishing-focussed writers, in September this year. The details and processes are here. Do have a read and follow up, share with writer friends who might be interested (my bio is here), or start up a conversation if you have questions.
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