Hiya, welcome to The Forever Workshop.

First time? Read this first »

Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

A workshop for:

Any writer who wants to bring a little ritual to their creative process and manifest the heck out of their writing goals.

Your instructor:

Erin Karbuczky — writer and educator who teaches craft and the creative process with a touch of the mystical. She also writes about pop culture and tech through a queer/feminist lens.

Takeaways:

• Build a practical toolkit of spiritual, ritualistic, and meditative practices for your writing routine

• Draw inspiration from ancient, everyday cycles (ever wonder why poets have a thing about the moon...?)

• Manifest your writing goals with affirmations, scripting, and inspired action, just like Octavia Butler.

• Play with prompts, exercises, and magical practices designed to stretch your creativity

By the end of this workshop you’ll have seven new ways to add a little witchery into your writing process — because, as we all know deep down, words are full of magic…

How to Use Manifestation, Ritual & Spirituality to Enhance Your Creative Process

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Hiya, welcome to The Forever Workshop.

First time? Read this first »

Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

A workshop for:

Writers who want to learn how sentences work (and why sometimes they don’t) so they can self-edit with confidence.

Your instructor:

Helene Kiser — editor, writing teacher and book coach, specializing in personal essays, narrative non-fiction and memoir.

Takeaways:

• Identify the eight common weaknesses that drain your sentences of power

• A 6 step self-editing framework you can use on any piece of writing

• Recognize when breaking the rules might strengthen your work

• Edit your sentences without losing what makes your writing sound like you

• Diagnose whether a sentence problem is about clarity, rhythm, or voice — and fix it accordingly

By the end of this workshop you’ll have learned how to transform barely functional sentences into lines that sparkle with hands-on exercises to sharpen your editorial eye across poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.

Self-editing — Sentence by Sentence

Why self-editing is the most important skill to learn as a writer

The cold truth is that readers don’t owe us their time. We have to earn it, sentence by sentence.

But here’s the thing about sentences: they’re sneaky little devils. When we’re drafting, we’re focused on getting the story down, the argument made, the image captured. But sometimes when we go back and read, something feels... off. Sentences that felt perfectly fine while we were writing them now sound flat. Or muddy. Or like they’re trying to run a marathon while wearing concrete shoes.

But that moment when you reread your work and think “why isn’t this working?” isn’t failure. It’s the beginning of real craft. And improving our editorial eye really is the key to producing good (or great!) writing.

The problem is, well, self-editing can be hard.

As writers, our noggins autocorrect mistakes and fill in gaps before we even notice they’re there.

Or maybe we’re too close to our work to be truly objective. What structural problems? Plot hole where? No logical flaw in that! Whaddya mean I haven’t clarified Aunt Suzie’s obsession with button collecting?

Or we’re just too attached, Gollum-style: My precious, precious, precious words!

The good news? Self-editing at the sentence level stands as one of the soft AND hard skills you can continually improve with practice. And today we’re going to learn some quick, easy strategies to get you started…

The 8 Enemies of Strong Sentences

Before we talk about what makes sentences work, let’s identify what makes them stumble. This is of course not an exhaustive list but a round-up of the usual suspects — the patterns that sneak into our drafts and sap our prose of energy.

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Hey writer-friend. New to The Forever Workshop? Read this. Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today…

A workshop for:

Writers who want to condense their craft into tiny, powerful pieces of writing.

Key takeaways:

• Learn what micro prose is and draft your first piece

• Big mistakes to avoid in micro works

• How to create impact and meaning in a short piece of writing

• Titling technique (seriously who better to learn from)

Your instructor:

Darien Gee — award-winning micro memoirist, author of five novels, teacher of creative non-fiction at UCLA and founder of , helping writers master the art of micro prose

Micro Prose 101

Welcome, writers!

I’m Darien Gee, and today we’re diving into one of my favorite short forms: the micro.

In this lesson, you’ll learn how to craft tiny stories that pack enormous emotional punch. We’ll explore what makes micro prose different from other short forms, discover why constraints can be your creative superpower, and practice techniques that transform fleeting moments into unforgettable prose.

The most powerful stories often emerge from small moments and careful attention. Let’s find out how...

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Hey, welcome to The Forever Workshop! First time? Read this. Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today…

A workshop for:

Writers who want the full picture of today’s publishing world (TikTok, Substack, Zines) and how to navigate it on their own terms.

Key takeaways:

• What multimedia is and how writers are using it

• Choosing images, audio, and video to compliment your work

• How to find collaborators i.e. photographers, illustrators, designers

• Where to publish your writing so it actually gets read

Your instructor:

Daphne Bryant — Gen-Z writer, creative director and editor-in-chief of Dreamworldgirl Zine

Multimedia for Writers

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Learn to write flawlessly fucked-up, halting, gorgeously messy and staggeringly good REAL dialogue! This is a fun, exploratory, and interactive workshop (think public eavesdropping as homework!) where we learn to identify and adore the perfect imperfection of how “real humans really talk.”

Mushy, sentimental, robot-stiff, ridiculously poetic, or full of cloying exposition? Dialogue that hasn’t been trained on real human conversation is a liability. But when we nail authentic “voice,” we deepen investment in our fictional worlds and celebrate the gnarly mess that is humanity. Boost your fiction, screenplay writing, or playwriting with a top-to-bottom dialogue glow-up.

Join screenwriter, educator and coach Lauren Veloski and discover why the screenwriting lens is a the perfect “in” point for radical dialogue work.

Lessons

About The Instructor

Lauren Veloski is a screenwriter, comedy writer, creative coach, and founder of THAT’S BANANAS—a groundbreaking community for women and nonbinary writers. Her first feature, the indie comedy “SORRY, THANKS,” was praised by Lena Dunham for writing “as seamless as any studio rom-com—if studio rom-coms had astute, nuanced dialogue.” An “unromantic comedy” about casual douchebaggery, “SORRY, THANKS” world-premiered at SXSW, played 15 fests internationally, and sold to IFC/Sundance. After 15 years as the “story brain” in the room on countless television and film projects, Lauren launched THAT’S BANANAS in 2022 to no less than spark a revolution. Though THAT’S BANANAS, Lauren teaches kooky-fresh courses year-round and coaches women/nonbinary writers of all levels, helping them come fully into their badassery and power on the page. Learn more about Lauren at thats-bananas.com, and join the THAT’S BANANAS community on Instagram at @writingisbananas

All writers, whether in the fictive or non-fictive world, rely on the same building blocks—words. But what a writer does with these words distinguishes a bland, ordinary sentence from one that memorably and musically shines.

This workshop will focus on the sentence and all that it can do, not at the content level, but by its construction. You’ll learn to write sentences that create a feeling of anxiety, euphoria, calm, and abundance, and much more. You’ll learn that there is an entirely different way to write, and it’s by writing with the ear. 

Lessons

About The Instructor

Nina Schuyler’s short story collection, In This Ravishing World, won the W.S. Porter Prize and the Prism Prize for Climate Literature and was published in July 2024. Her novel, Afterword, won the 2024 PenCraft Book of the Year in Fiction, the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Science Fiction and Literary, and the PenCraft Spring Seasonal Book Award for Literary and Science Fiction. Her novel, The Translator, was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and won the Next Generation Indie Book Award for General Fiction. Her novel, The Painting, was shortlisted for the Northern California Book Award. Her books, How to Write Stunning Sentences and Stunning Sentences: A Creative Writing Journal are bestsellers. Her short stories have been published by Zyzzyva, Chicago Quarterly Review, Fugue, Nashville Review, and elsewhere, and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She teaches creative writing for Stanford Continuing Studies and The Writing Salon. 

Great copywriting isn’t only about selling. It’s about knowing your audience so well that you can craft stories that deeply resonate with them. Stories that guide them on a journey from where they are now to where they want to be.

Copywriting and creative writing might seem worlds apart. But they are rooted in the same principles: empathy, connection, trust, and transformation. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to use industry-insider copywriting techniques to create rich, memorable, and gripping prose.

Lessons

About The Instructor

Sophie Campbell is a Freelance Creative Content Writer based in Scotland. She writes for literary and cozy lifestyle brands providing writers and readers with the tools or vibes they need to live their dream literary life. She is also a lifelong fiction writer and prize-winning poet, published in The Woolf, Surely Mag, Bright Flash Literary Review, WhyNot and Razur Cuts (including their Finest Cuts edition), and others. In 2023, she won the poetry prize in Bold Types, Glasgow Women’s Library’s Annual Scottish Women's Creative Writing Competition. Learn more on her website.

If you do a lot of “I’ll get to that later”ing with Forever Workshop lessons — this one is for you.

We’ve put together a very best digest for each genre, and one for literary careers on the whole.

In this round-up series, you’ll find all the bits you can’t miss from our huuuge archive of lessons, organized into handy skimmable megasheets, so you can grab exactly what you need.

Whether you’re just getting started with The Forever Workshop, looking for some signposting to develop your skills in a particular area, or just fancy a lil’ pick ‘n’ mix of writing exercises, this masterclass-of-masterclasses has everything you could possibly wish for…

What You’ll Learn:

The Everything Workshop contains highlights from our 2023-2025 archive of writing workshops, written by an array of experienced, award-winning, and super-knowledgable authors, teachers, editors and publishing professionals.

Each round-up focuses on a different genre/subject, with something for every writer, at every stage.

Including:

• Everything you need to know about submitting your work

• Everything you need to know about writing prize-winning poetry

• Everything you need to know about writing the best fiction of your life

• Everything you need to know about writing authentic non-fiction

• Everything you need to know about building your writing career

By the end of the series you’ll have a master list of prompts, exercises, ideas and inspiration — resources to come back to again and again (and again).

Start here >>

Right. It’s time. You’re finally gonna write that thing you really want to write. That thing you’ve been thinking about writing forever, but somehow never get to the starting part.

In this workshop, we’re focusing on all those brilliant, full-of-potential, hypothetical ideas we’ve spent so much time speculating about and actually make them real.

Every lesson, we’ll be targeting a different Horseman of the Procrastination…ocalypse (catchy!) so you can get out of your own way, tell writer’s block to go screw itself, and start writing something.

Go To Lessons

Workshop Overview

Join , award-winning writer and creative development mentor, for a four-part masterclass in procrastination.

In this workshop, we’ll be exploring four of the most common reasons for writer’s block, feeling stuck, imposter syndrome, and generally finding yourself ‘procrastinating’ instead of writing. (Hint: it’s not that you’re lazy, there’s usually something else going on.)

Get a dose of tough/gentle/honest love about why your executive dysfunction is being such a pain in the ass, do a little self-reflection, and then actually do some writing with some practical exercises. And, by the end of the workshop, you’ll have defeated all four Horsemen of the Procrastinocalypse…

Takeaways

• How to get started on a project (or how to beat the blank page / decision paralysis)

• Why perfectionism is bullshit and half-assing it is the way forward

• Learn to use ‘fear of the unknown’ to your creative advantage

• Break through writer’s block, find your motivation, and actually get the f*ck on with it…

About Your Instructor

is an award-winning author, editor and writing mentor (and your friendly neighbourhood curriculum manager at The Forever Workshop!). She has been teaching creative writing and narrative theory for over a decade and writes about chasing creativity at . She’s a massive Shakespeare nerd, loves a good pun, and wants to live on your bookshelf. Find out more about her writing and creative services at www.jogatford.com

“Comedy for All'“ is an introductory humor writing workshop for all writers — whether you write fiction, personal essays, scripts, ad copy, or are a budding stand-up, this course will help you to develop your comic skills in a variety of ways.

Join humor writer and improv comedian Alex Baia for a four-part exploration of all things humorous. Each lesson will focus on a different principle of humor writing, with theory, examples, and a writing exercises designed to work a specific comic muscle (or… funny bone?).

Lessons

About The Instructor

Alex Baia has written humor for The New Yorker, Austin Monthly, McSweeney’s, Eater, Points In Case, and others. He’s an editor of Slackjaw, a daily comedy publication on Medium. Alex also runs Comedy Bizarre on Substack, a weekly newsletter for anyone who wants to write funny stuff. Find out more about Alex's writing and projects at alexbaia.com

What can we borrow from Shakespeare when it comes to our writing? 

A love of linguistics and a bold disregard for the literary ‘rules’!

In this generative workshop, we’ll use Shakespearean techniques to experiment with rhythm, rhetoric and repetition. We’ll explore methods of manipulating and subverting language to create layers of meaning. We’ll push boundaries, play with form, mix up syntax, and have a whole load of fun mucking about with our writing.

Whether you write prose, poetry, long or short, borrowing methods from Shakespeare can help to elevate each sentence, bring a unique voice to your work, and make every line sing. No previous Shakespeare knowledge or literary snobbery required — just a passion for words, words, words.

Lessons

About The Instructor

Jo Gatford is the author of The Woman’s Part, a hybrid collection inspired by Shakespeare’s women, and holds an MA in Shakespeare & Theatre from the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. She is also an award-winning novelist, poet, flash fiction writer and scriptwriter, with over 50 publications, including the Bath Flash Award, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Forge, trampset and Stylist. She has been an editor and mentor for 15 years, and has been teaching creative writing and narrative theory for over a decade. Find out more at www.jogatford.com and

Other Workshops by Jo:

This workshop delves into the art of collecting and organizing your ideas, creating and/or revitalizing your process and creative practice, and discusses using elements of writing and storytelling to build a body of work no matter your genre. 

We will review the way Swift has used elements such as theme, intertextuality, and repetition to build a body of work, and how you can apply those and other elements to your own work effectively.

Whether you’re a diehard fan, a skeptic, or even a hater, you will come away with a new perspective on writing and process. 

Lessons

Meet Your Instructor

Erin Karbuczky is a writer, workshop facilitator, public speaker, and artist. She is a regular contributor to Write or Die, and her fiction and poetry can be found in various journals across the web. Erin has a Master’s Degree in English Literature, and writes about writing, queerness, technology, and the American Dream (among other things). Her biggest dream in life is to support other writers and artists on their journey. When she's not writing or listening to music, you can find her at the Oregon coast, a coffee shop, or at home, dissecting novels in order to make her, and your, writing stronger. You can find her on Instagram and Tiktok @thegratefulpoet. She is also on Substack.