The AWA Workshop Leadership Training is a five-day intensive course in the AWA method. This training will prepare you to lead writing workshops for the general population and for traditionally silenced people in places such as public housing, shelters, hospitals or prisons.

The AWA Workshop Leadership Training is a five-day intensive course in the AWA method. The guidelines and practices that shape AWA writing workshops are quite specific, and the leader’s in-depth understanding of them is vitally important to the effectiveness of the group. This training will prepare you to lead workshops for the general population and for traditionally silenced people in places such as public housing, shelters, hospitals or prisons. In addition to the specific AWA practices, skills that will be taught include:

• Creating and maintaining a safe and hospitable writing environment.
• Choosing effective writing exercises and prompts.
• Being a clear, supportive leader.
• Running workshops as a business.
• Understanding the transformative power of the method.
• Structuring the writing workshop to accommodate the needs of diverse people.
• Understanding essential differences between writing for healing and therapy.
• Inviting experimentation and growth in participants’ writing.

AWA Workshop Leadership is taught through writing sessions, talks by experienced leaders, group discussion, role playing, film, and guest speakers, giving participants a full experience of the AWA method in action. Upon completion of the training, participants will have a thorough understanding of the AWA method, our practices and guidelines, and will be able to convey them effectively to their workshop members.

For further information about the trainings and an application, please go to the AWA site or leave a comment in the box below.

When:
September 15th, 2011 9:00 AM through September 19th, 2011 2:00 PM
Location: Roches Point, ON, Canada

View Larger Map

Poetry Manuscript Review

The poet emails or hand delivers a digital copy of the manuscript.

Within 30 days:

• James reviews and makes comments/suggestions on a duplicate of your manuscript, including line edits and recommended changes (if needed) for each poem.

The focus of his review concentrates on answering these questions:

1. How effective are the poems as individual works of art?

2. Do the line breaks, imagery and other poetic elements combine to create delight and surprise?

3. Are the poems in the order that best expresses the themes and objectives of the book?

4. How close to publication is the manuscript?

James conducts a follow-up 60 minute discussion (either by telephone or in person) to celebrate the strengths with the poet, answer any questions and discuss his review in detail.

The Cost is $375.00 (+ HST) for the first 36 pages.

A fee of $12.00/page is applied starting at page 37 to a maximum of 64 pages.

The industry definition of a POETRY MANUSCRIPT PAGE: 12 point type, 1 inch margins all around, one side of the page, single spaced.

If you have any questions please contact us.

ASK US ABOUT CUSTOMIZING TO FIT YOUR NEEDS:

If you would like support for the completion of your manuscript and you need an alternative approach, please contact us with the details. We would be happy to work with you to customize the best solution.

November 24, 2012 – Full Day Workshop

Registration at bottom of this page. Please scroll down.

CLICK HERE for location of the workshop.

Time: 10:00a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Date: Saturday, November 24, 2011
Place: Trent University,
……….Oshawa Campus
Cost: $110.00
……….(95.00 for WCDR members
……….and associated
……….organizations) plus HST

_______________________

If you have a WordPress-based Website (or you’re planning on having one built for you) and you’d like to manage it yourself, this is the workshop that will embed the skills you need to take this important and money-saving step.

Perhaps you currently have a free WordPress blog and you need to upgrade to a site that does not limit your capacity to sell your products or promote yourself as a commercial entity.

Maybe you just want to save the maintenance costs.

Maybe it’s as simple as wanting to be able to update your website whenever you want, or the excitement of developing your skills to the point of true web independence.

This workshop will give you WordPress autonomy and teach you a number of basic as well as more advanced skills on a WordPress-based website.

In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn how to:

• create and update pages and posts 24/7
• add pictures, video and audio files
• reposition text and pictures into different arrangements
• generate interactive discussions on site
• create “ads” (from simple text to embedded videos) that stay visible on every page
• install a subscription service to notify clients/friends every time an update is made
• learn how to optimize your site for search engines by yourself
• monitor which pages are being viewed the most, how people are finding the site, and more

 

 
Please note these prerequisites:

Participants must bring a laptop with wireless capability. We have arranged for Trent University to supply participants with guest wireless access during the workshop, but computers will not be provided.

(Note: If you do not have an existing WordPress website, or websites are completely foreign to you, we offer a workshop just for you. Our last workshop was on March 19th in the same location:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Instructors:

James Dewar and Sue Reynolds have been building WordPress websites since 2006 – everything from small sites with only a few pages to massive sites that manage client databases, multiple ongoing discussion forums and other sophisticated applications.

They believe in the “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” philosophy when it comes to managing client websites – empower clients to manage their own content.

Of course James and Sue will stay in the background like pleased parents ready to provide support if there are questions.
 
 

Manuscript Review for Prose Writers

This one-on-one consultation is available for Fiction, Memoir and Non-Fiction.

The author provides a printed copy of the manuscript.
(If a manuscript is sent in a digital format, an extra fee of $30.00 will be charged for Inkslingers to print it.)

Within 30 days:

– The facilitator reviews and makes comments/suggestions on the printed manuscript.

– A minimum two page written review of strengths and areas for improvement is prepared. The focus of this review concentrates on the substantive elements of good story such as plot structure, pacing, characterization and scene development.

– The facilitator conducts a follow-up 60 minute discussion (either by telephone or in person) to celebrate the strengths with the author, answer any questions and discuss the review.

If Fiction, Memoir or Non-Fiction:
The Cost is $300.00 (+ HST) for the first 150 pages (a maximum of 40,000 words).
A fee of $1.50/page is charged starting on page 151.

The industry definition of a MANUSCRIPT PAGE: 12 point type, 1 inch margins all around, one side of the page, double spaced.

If you have any questions please contact us.

ASK US ABOUT CUSTOMIZING TO FIT YOUR NEEDS:

If you would like support for the completion of your manuscript and you need an alternative approach, please contact us with the details. We would be happy to work with you to customize the best solution.

Please note that this is not a copy editing review. Although the facilitator may identify any recurring grammar, spelling and sentence structure issues found, these copy editing recommendations are not meant to be exhaustive. If you would like a copy edit performed on your manuscript, please contact us for a recommendation.

This one-on-one consultation is available for Fiction, Memoir and Poetry.

It is designed to provide accountability and ongoing feedback to an author who is writing a new manuscript over a long period of time.

Support is available for writers in four month segments and is designed to provide the structure and support that will keep a writer focused on completing a novel, memoir or book of poetry.

A Novel Approach OnLine Mentorship provides a personalized alternative for writers who wish to keep their work confidential or who prefer not to work in a writing group environment.

Please visit our sister website for more information about A NOVEL APPROACH ONLINE MENTORSHIP.

If you have any questions please contact us.

ASK US ABOUT CUSTOMIZING TO FIT YOUR NEEDS:

If you would like support for the completion of your manuscript and you need an alternative approach, please contact us with the details. We would be happy to work with you to customize the best solution.

Saturday September 18th
Time: 10:00 to 4:00
Place: The Dubliner Restaurant,
1121 Dundas Street East
Whitby, Ontario
L1N 2K4
CLICK HERE FOR MAP

Cost: $95 + HST
($85 + HST for WCDR, WEN, WHEN, PWAC members)
____________________________________________________________

Whether you’re writing fiction, creative non-fiction, or poetry, you hear the maxim “show don’t tell” over and over again. But what exactly does that mean? And are you doing it?

James Dewar and Sue Reynolds began incorporating feedback into their A Novel Approach workshops on showing rather than telling, giving participants direct response to their writing with regards to this skill. When they began getting emails from students afterwards saying, “I thought I understood Show don’t Tell, but NOW I get it!” they knew they were onto something with this teaching method.

Join James and Sue for a full day workshop into this most essential skill.

The day will cover “showing” rather than “telling” in several different forms:

• dialogue
• description
• plotting
• subtext

as well as identifying those opportunities in your writing when telling is actually more appropriate than showing.

Workshop participants will be working with samples from their own work to see where they are already using this skill and to find out where they employ it more powerfully. This hands on, interactive workshop will make sure each participant fully integrates this essential element of the craft of writing.

Scroll down to register.

About the Instructors

Click on the photos to learn more about us:

________________________________________________________________

[quickshop: Show Dont Tell workshop price for WCDR members:price:85:end] $85.00 Member Price for Show Don’t Tell workshop

[quickshop: Show Dont Tell workshop price for non-members:price:95:end] $95.00 Member Price for Show Don’t Tell workshop

A Year-long Workshop

to help You Get Your Novel Written

This popular workshop begins it’s THIRD YEAR starting the second week of January!

WE ARE RESERVING SPOTS NOW for 2011.

Please visit www.anovelapproach.ca for details.

____________________________________________

Saturday November 20th
Time: 10:00 to 4:00
Place: Central Durham
Cost: $95 + HST
($85 + HST for WCDR, WEN, WHEN, PWAC members)

____________________________________________________________

Erotic Writing – Part One ”Go where the energy is – go fearward.”

There are few places in our writing more fearful to us than writing about sex. What will our mothers think? What will our partners think? Omigod, what will our children think?
Also, there’s the question of… what if our characters are the kinds of people who do things that we would never! Not in our wildest! How do we write about that and make it believable? And if we do write about it (once again) what will our mothers think? Or (worse) our spouses?

Yet castrating the electricity of our romantic scenes (and many of our other scenes as well – because, as we know, sex isn’t always about romance) by being afraid of the erotic, robs our work of so much of the power available to us in writing. If literature is all about casting pure light on every aspect of human experience, then to ignore the sexual also robs our work of veracity and courage.

To step away from the higher intellectual and philosophical truths for a moment, sex also sells! Romance and erotica are two burgeoning categories in fiction, and publishers are always looking for new voices in this field.

In this one day workshop James and Sue will be leading the group through exercises designed to get you through the fear of putting those words out there for all to see.

In a series of on the spot exercises, participants will discover:

– the difference between romance, erotica and pornography
– how to fine tune their writing to fill the particular niche they’re aiming for
– how to introduce sex into their regular fiction
– about sex in genre
– about the markets and resources available to them

________________________________________________________________

What to Bring:

A notebook, a fast writing pen or your laptop, your memories and imagination.

________________________________________________________________

[quickshop: Caressing the Page workshop price for WCDR members:price:85:end] $85.00 Caressing the Page workshop

[quickshop: Caressing the Page workshop price for non-members:price:95:end] $95.00 Non-Member price for Caressing the Page workshop