Welcome to Sense Writing’s live, in-person workshops, usually given in New York City. To study Sense Writing from anywhere in the world, please check out the 12-week online program.
SENSE WRITING I: MEMORY, LIFE STORIES, AND FICTION
For everyone. The first step into an approach designed to spark your curiosity about your own creative process, Sense Writing I is a prerequisite for all other workshops.
Re-imagine writing as a sensual and intellectual process and unlock your voice. Discover your love of writing, whether you’re a beginner or a long-time writer struggling with a creative block.
In a supportive environment that integrates accessible physical and writing exercises, you will learn to calm your nervous system, find lightness in your body, and mine your imagination, all while connecting to the core of your craft. Sense Writing frees you from the thoughts you think you “should” be thinking so you learn to create without anxiety.
Work with the nervous system to interrupt body and language patterns that inhibit writing
Find pleasure in all the stages of writing
Refine your craft
Complete two pieces of memoir and/or fiction.
Includes written feedback of your work by Madelyn.
SENSE WRITING II: MAKING CONNECTIONS
Open to those who have taken Sense Writing I
In this workshop, you will learn how to sustain larger pieces-- without struggle. By working deeply with the first three principles of Sense Writing:
Learn to listen to your own writing by uncovering connections within your work.
Identify the inherent structures that are forming within your writing.
Clarify your creative goals and work towards them effectively and with ease in and out of the classroom.
By the end of the workshop, writers will have several completed stories of non-fiction, fiction, or both. This class prepares students for Sense Writing III: The Workshop, where writers will be working toward a larger piece (a novel, collection of stories, play, or screenplay) in their chosen genre.
SENSE WRITING III: THE WORKSHOP
A repeating workshop, open to those who have already participated in Sense Writing III or have completed Sense Writing II.
Now that you have the practice in your bones, this workshop allows you to spiral through all five principles of Sense Writing while working towards larger pieces without feeling over-whelmed.
The series is designed so that by the end of your first iteration of Sense Writing III, you will be working towards a collection of shorter works or a longer piece (a book, screenplay, or play) in your chosen genre-- with a sense of ease and trust. Know where you are going while still remaining open to the process.
Repeat the workshop as often as it fits your creative goals.
Why no genre classes?
Sense Writing is an approach to creative writing but it is also a structural approach to the process of creativity. Though the work of the classes results in written pieces, a lot of the work that we do takes place in a pre-language terrain, where we can settle into ourselves, discover, and reconfigure new patterns.
Although the series starts with Sense Writing I “Life Stories and Fiction,” you will soon learn to work with its tools in ways which intimately suit you. Rather than defining yourself as a novelist or memoirist or playwright, the containment and structure that sustains your work will emerge from the process itself, and not just the form or genre.
The process, in its layers of pleasure, effort, curiosity, will be yours to integrate, clarify, re-integrate, and play with, and the work that comes out of that process, in whatever genre, will be a happy bi-product-- and indelibly yours.
