Care for Writers:
Birth Your Book
A structured revision workshop to support writers as they move their embryonic draft closer to its due date.
This class is for writers who are ready to whip their first, second, or even third manuscript draft into its intended shape.
This workshop uses guided outlining, re-visioning exercises, and revision "passes" or rounds to help you pinpoint, assess and improve elements in your draft such as character, plot (or argument), structure, theme, language, and more.
Over 16 weeks, the group will meet weekly for 2-hour Zoom sessions. Meetings will include discussion and intensive revision exercises for the first 8 weeks. The second half of the class will be workshop review of up to 100 pages per writer, in which every writer will receive comments from their peers and Amanda. Our focus will be on high-level, developmental feedback, and on analyzing sentence-level patterns for style and voice, not on copyediting.
Admission to the class also includes a 20-minute next-steps conference in November.
Zoom sessions for this class will be held weekly on Mondays 3-5pm PT/6pm-8pm ET starting August 3, continuing until November 16. Let’s get that book in shape before the end of the year.
*Interested in a daytime option? Let me know at amandaemontei@gmail.com. If there is enough interest, I may open an another section.
Writers enrolled in the workshop will also have a chance to share their full draft with Amanda, in either December or January, for a full editorial consult, at an additional discounted cost (see below).
Who is this class for?
This workshop is best suited for prose writers working in memoir, narrative nonfiction, literary fiction, autofiction, historical fiction, or hybrid genres that blend these with elements of horror, speculative fiction, dystopian fiction, and satire. Poets are welcome, though you may find yourself a (highly valued!) minority!
If you are working on a book proposal rather than a full draft, you are welcome to take this class, and submit whatever pages you wish from the project for your workshop spot.
Most writers in Amanda’s classes are writing about themes such as feminism/gender politics, queerness, motherhood, single womanhood, sexuality, trauma, race, immigration, marriage/divorce, non traditional relationships, sex, work/labor, mental health, and pop culture. If any of those topics make you uncomfortable, this is probably not the right group for you.
Please note that a key component of this course is community feedback and support. If you are seeking only instructor feedback on your work, please check out my 1-1 editorial offerings.
Just starting out with a draft or trying to find your writing practice? Stay tuned for more offerings.
How to join us
Choose from the menu to enroll in the course. That’s it! You will be prompted to tell Amanda a little bit about your book via a simple form when you enroll, so I can most effectively structure the course for our unique cohort.
Paid subscribers of Mad Woman and returning students should use their discount code when signing up for the class.
The cost of this workshop $1350 for 4 months.
Once you are enrolled,you will be contacted with Zoom information and to see if you are interested in setting up a partial or full manuscript consultation, outside the 5k words covered in class workshops. These manuscript consultations are $100 off my regular rate, and are only available for writers enrolled in this course.
*To protect the privacy of all writers, weekly classes and workshops will NOT be recorded. Any class materials and prompts, however, can be emailed over to writers if they have to miss a class session for any reason. Thanks for understanding.