December 2013 — I will lead a weekly series of eight two-hour Blue Deer Writers Workshops in my home beginning in January 2014. Later, I will begin leading online workshops.
The Blue Deer Writers Workshops are designed to free you from your inner critic so you can commence writing. These workshops are created especially for you who want to write but never seem able to get the words out onto the page. Of course, even if you’re a working writer, the Blue Deer Workshop exercises enable you to limber and stretch your writing muscles and discover gems hidden within the thickets of that thing you wrote and are about to fling into a flaming hearth. The only workshop tools you need to spark your fancy are a couple of good pens and a spiral bound notebook.
Emphasizing journaling, memoir writing, and as the Blue Deer name implies, storytelling and the imaginative, the workshops will focus on observation, narrative, description, and just plain wild writing. These sessions are flexibly structured, designed to inspire and are drawn for mutual support and fun.
We will tells stories, write, read our work aloud if we desire, sit around a burning candle and conjure up phrases, listen to music, maybe take short walks and simply awaken our senses,
Journaling, especially, is cathartic. A journal is an accessible, private place to work through a range of emotions and keeps you moving forward; it helps you to reflect and laugh. A journal is a treasure trove to mine for formal writing. Research shows that journaling heals wounds and keeps you sane. Journaling allows you to vent – and possibly keep your mouth shut at crucial moments. Journaling, as with writing in general, is empowering. The bonus – you discover yourself.
The workshop fee is $300 payable in advance through PayPal, the “Donate” button on my website. What a great idea for a gift certificate for a loved one.
The workshops will be held on Tuesday or Wednesday evenings and/or Saturday afternoons, whichever works best for participants.
As my friend Rocco wrote: “Just make it fun for yourself and invite inner wisdom to the table. Then watch wonderment dance across the surface. Others will hear their own, unique voice. Pages will fly, compile, bind and virtually appear, be read and disappear. And still, you will be, amused!”
I invite published authors to attend these workshops as guests to give brief presentations of their work and working process.
I regard my Blue Deer Writers Workshops as the beginning of an exciting ongoing writing and storytelling project.
To learn more and make reservations for the Blue Deer Workshops, or to give an author presentation, please email me.
—Samantha Mozart