Breaking writing into units that survive interruption. For writers whose work must exist in fragments.

Cognitive limitations, variable energy, and the techniques that work when your mind is not cooperating.

Your Best Nonfiction Topic 

Twelve conversations with writers who navigate limitation, publication, and creative life with real constraints.

This class will give you a solid system for sorting through your ideas and evaluating them, so you can be certain which one you’re ready to write. 

One-Day Writing Kickstart

This class will help you understand your writer’s block so you can move past it, set goals and create a writing routine to help you do just that.

Is This Okay to Write About?: Ethics & Personal Nonfiction

We'll look at the ethical questions to consider and ask yourself before and during personal nonfiction and memoir-writiing. Rather than making recommendations, we provide exercises designed to help you figure out your own answers, including 10 questions to ask yourself before writing personal nonfiction and/or memoir. 

Journal-Keeping for Memoirists

We walk through the process of journal-keeping for both your current book idea and the ideas to come. You'll excavate memories in your journal, using concrete exercises and prompts. To get to the details you need for the project you have in mind—no more wandering in the foggy lands of I don't remember how exactly that went—as well as recording the events of your life for future personal nonfiction and memoir projects. You'll inspire topics for writing that you didn't know your life contained. 

Indexing as Creative Discovery

We’ll dig into organizing our nonfiction writing using index cards, and look at why this system works particularly well for creative nonfiction. With practical exercises for generating and structuring your cards, we’ll utilize index cards to visualize writing project structure, identify gaps in research, revise previous work, and keep our facts straight.

Structure & Perspective: How Do We Tell the Story?

We explore five structural approaches to personal nonfiction writing: the braided essay weaves multiple narrative threads into a cohesive whole; the fragmented essay is composed of smaller pieces that create a compelling mosaic; the graphic essay incorporates visual elements alongside text; the mimicry or "hermit crab" essay adopts existing forms like instruction manuals or social media feeds; and the lyric essay employs poetic devices within nonfiction.

Writing Personal Nonfiction About What Hurts

We examine writing about difficult subjects, including identifying and approaching painful topics, preparing emotionally for writing about trauma, techniques for writing sensitively and effectively, navigating ethical concerns when writing about personal experiences, and protecting yourself during and after the writing process. Boundary setting and self-care are essential aspects of writing about trauma and pain—take care of yourself first so that your writing might help others.

Accessing & Writing Emotions

We’ll explore accessing emotions before writing, employing self-care during the writing process, and translating emotions onto the page through style, language, and content. We’ll be using practical techniques for accessing lighter and darker emotions, using sensory triggers like music, scents, and objects.

The Shape of Your Memoir

We explore the concept of narrative shape in memoir writing, and how structure organizes personal events into a meaningful narrative arc that engages readers. Concepts like Freytag's triangle help us visualize narrative shape, and of course there are as many alternatives as will work for individual authors: your narrative might resemble a trapezoid, a funnel, a wave, or a spiral. What’s critical is finding the natural shape of your memoir and using it with a complete understanding of what it is doing for your memoir – even unconventional shapes require intentionality to guide readers effectively.

We look at how to get personal essays published, covering both submitting completed manuscripts and pitching essay ideas to publications. We’ll walk through the decision-making process of when to write first versus when to pitch first, before looking at the anatomy of an effective pitch. Check the Additional Resources section below for real-world examples of successful pitches!

We’ll break down a successful nonfiction book proposal, covering each component from the overview and chapter outline to marketing, platform development, and sample chapters. The book proposal is meant to convince agents and publishers of your book's commercial viability, give them practical guidance for identifying your audience, positioning your work in the marketplace – with the aid of your comp titles – and showing why you are uniquely qualified to write this book.

Building Your Author Platform (When You’d Rather Be Writing) is a practical, compassionate class for writers who want to share their work more widely without feeling like they’re selling out. Designed for those who’d much rather be immersed in the craft than crafting Instagram posts, this class offers sustainable, values-driven strategies for building visibility, connecting with readers, and establishing an authentic presence—all while protecting your creative time and energy.

Building a Writing Practice While Living with Limitations

How do you make writing a regular part of your life (and who does "regular" mean, anyway) when you're living with limitations? After taking part in this workshop, you'll know how to take a page from working artists like Laura Hillenbrand, bestselling author of Seabiscuit, who lives with ME/CFS, to figure out what a writing habit will look like for you.

Dream Hunting with Limitations

Dream Hunting with Limitations is a self-paced, five module course, where you'll be studying how to bring your dreams to life, implementing the techniques and skills in each lesson while creating a plan to move forward and toward your goals. You'll learn more about rethinking ambition, the emotions that come with living with limitations, imposter syndrome, and self-sabotage.