Online Workshop Schedule

Mid-Willamette Valley RWA Online Workshops are held via a Yahoo Group.

To register for a workshop, send an email to mwvrwa@gmail.com with your name (specify if your PayPal name is different from your writing name), the workshop(s) you are registering for, and the e-mail address you would like to use for the Yahoo Group.

Then pay with the Paypal button provided by the course description.

Late enrollments may sometimes be possible. Email if you have questions.

Just before the workshop starts, you'll receive an invitation to join the Yahoo Group.

Four-week workshops are $25 (or $20 for MWV RWA chapter members).
Two-week workshops are $15 (or $10 for MWV RWA chapter members).

Are you an instructor with a workshop you'd like us to consider? Please send your proposal to our workshop coordinator, Barbara Cool Lee.

Upcoming Workshops:

Personal Brand Express: An Action Plan for Authors
January 4-31, 2010 (4 weeks - $20/$25)
Instructor: Jenn Stark

In today's competitive market, your Author Brand can help you stand out from the crowd and achieve lasting success. How can a knockout Writing Brand and powerful Industry Brand take your career to the next level?

A strong Writing Brand and slogan will enable you to make a memorable and positive impact on your readers, and will help drive your marketing efforts. A dynamic Industry Brand will help you present yourself successfully to the media, industry professionals and your writing peers.

In this four-week class, you'll get the tools you need to create and refine an ideal Writing and Industry Brand for you and your work, and learn tips and techniques to effectively showcase these Brands in your marketing, publicity and promotional efforts.

Lessons will include:

  • Overview of Branding and Introductions
  • Branding Research Worksheet (homework)
  • Multi-Genre Branding
  • Industry Brand Worksheet (homework)
  • Utilizing Your Industry Brand
  • Writing Brand Development (homework)
  • Utilizing your Brand in your Packaging
  • Utilizing Your Brand in Promotions
  • Utilizing Your Brand with the Media
  • Black Belt Branding: Branding in a Crisis
  • Your Six-Month Brand Strategy/Q&A
  • Wrap Up

    • Regular Enrollment ($25):

    MWV Member Enrollment ($20):

    Writing Evocative Fiction
    February 1-28, 2010 (4 weeks - $20/$25)
    Instructor: Ann Schroeder

    Our stories suffer from emotional flatness when we merely describe what our character is "feeling." We will study how basic emotions are expressed (and hidden) as we move our story forward. We will learn to probe our character's motivation in ways that reveal her deepest emotional yearnings. A fun, interactive way to deepen emotional writing which is the hallmark of women's writing.

    Regular Enrollment ($25):

    MWV Member Enrollment ($20):

    No Matter How Busy You Are, You Can Find TIME TO WRITE!
    March 1-31, 2010 (4 weeks - $20/$25)
    Instructor: Kelly L. Stone

    Each week will include 2-3 "lectures" by instructor that stimulates a discussion among participants. Each lesson ends with one formal exercise that participants will be asked to do and report out on the following week. Each exercise builds on the last in terms of helping participants incorporate writing time into their lives. It is suggested but not required that participants have a copy of TIME TO WRITE available when taking the course.

    Week I: Finding Time to Write
    Discusses a writer's innate "Burning Desire to Write" and various ways to generate motivation to make a change in one's life to accomodate writing. Participants will volunteer the obstacles that currently keep them from writing. Students will do an exercise called the 24 Hour Time Budget that allows them to pinpoint small pockets of time that they can fit writing in, which also helps them see where they may be sabatoging their writing efforts by putting writing last on their priority list.
    Week 2: Seven Professional Writing Schedules
    Students will report out on their time budgets and any insights they gained from the exercise. Next they learn about seven writing schedules used by professional writers, including national bestsellers like Sabrina Jeffries, Steve Berry, Pamela Morsi, Beverly Barton, Eloisa James, CJ Lyons, and others. Students will learn how the schedules work and by using their time budget from the previous week, choose one of the schedules and commit to using it for a week.
    Week 3: Your Writing Action Plan
    Students will report out on how their writing schedule went for that week. Next they learn how to further capitalize on the writing schedule by making a writing action plan. Students learn about the importance of pre-planning as a way to efficiently use the writing schedule. Based on the chosen schedule, participants will set at least one writing goal, ojective, and mini action step. Students learn about quotas and how to incorporate quotas into their writing to meet their goals. Students will use their schedules and work toward their chosen goal for the week.
    Week 4: Dealing with Distractions and Resistance to Writing
    Students will report out on the exercise from the previous week. Next we cover ways to deal with various intrusions to the writing schedule, including working around children and other family members, dealing with e-mail, internet, nosy neighbors, etc. Students learn ways to exercise self-discipline to overcome their own resistance to writing, and ways that the professionals write even when they don't feel like it.

    Kelly L. Stone holds a master's degree in counseling and is a licensed therapist. She always wanted to be a writer, though, and when she got tired of putting her dream on the back burner she buckled down and started a successful writing career while holding down a full time job. She then wrote Time To Write (Adams Media, January, 2008) to show other aspiring writers how to do it, too. Her novel, Grave Secret (Mundania Press, September, 2007) was called "powerful" and "well written" by Romantic Times Book Reviews. Her third book, Thinking Write: The Secret to Freeing Your Creative Mind (Adams Media, coming October, 2009) demonstrates how to use the power of your subconscious mind for maximum writing creativity. Kelly's work has also appeared in numerous Chicken Soup for the Soul and Cup of Comfort anthologies, as well as Family Circle magazine, Writer's Digest, Cat Fancy, and others.

    Regular Enrollment ($25):

    MWV Member Enrollment ($20):

    Check back soon for more workshops for 2010!

    Previous Workshops (2009):

    January: Ann Schroeder, "Writing Evocative Fiction" (offered again in 2010!)
    February: workshop cancelled
    March: Delilah Marvelle, "Building Hot Sex Scenes"
    April: Patricia Tanner, "What An Editor Wants"
    May: Jessie Verino, "Fundamentals of World Building"
    June: CJ Lyons, "Break Free From the Slushpile"
    July: Kelly L. Stone, "No Matter How Busy You Are, You Can Find TIME TO WRITE!" (offered again in 2010!)
    August: Karen Wiesner, "Building Cohesiveness in Your Novel"
    September: Marcia James, "A PR Primer: Promoting Yourself Before--and Just After--the 'Call'"
    October: Jackie Ivie, "Making History Come Alive In Your Work"
    November: Karen Docter, "The 'W' Plot...or The Other White Meat for Plotters"

    last updated 11/21/09 dbw