A free private consultation about your writing
Sometimes you need to write on your own quietly. Sometimes you need to take a class or workshop to become accountable to your own writing goals. And, sometimes you need a writing coach to help you build momentum.
That's where the Attic Institute's free 15-minute phone consult about your writing comes in. We help you by listening to your situation and recommending a path forward.
"I felt energized and encouraged after our phone conversation."
~ Janet Hull, after her free meeting
A 15-minute conference call is easy to initiate, simple, and free. It could be the most important conversation you ever have about your writing. Often, after a consult, writers will register for an upcoming workshop or initiate an one-on-one Introductory Consult through our Individual Consult Group to find a writing coach selected specifically for your project.
For now, get started by registering below -- and, when you do, please let us know specifically what you're working on and want to discuss.
Then we'll get back in touch and begin to talk together about your writing.
An annual certificate program, the Attic Atheneum melds independent study under close faculty supervision, student receptions, public readings, and other special Atheneum events created around good food and great conversation, dialogue, and literary community.
How can the memoir writer research what is largely lost to them and even highly subjective? Get hold of your memory and write your first "reported" draft in this class designed to stimulate memory, recover forgotten facts and keep the writer safe from the full emotional immersion that can sometimes overcome the writer in the early stages. Become a reporter investigating your own life with mediations and interactive exercises designed to stimulate, deepen and expand memory. It doesn’t matter if you are a beginner to memoir or if you have been writing memoir for a while. This is a class for all levels. Come ready to remember, to write and leave with your first draft.
You've got this-and-that for a novel but haven't gotten started or you've written one that needs work -- that's my situation, too. So: Let's focus together on the overall framework and process of creating a novel. Me: I've got a novel I've been working on for five years. I need to restructure the theme. I need to kill a bunch of characters. I need to take what's working and re-boot. How about you? Enter this new collaborative class of creation. All you need is your novel idea.
Class #1: Cool Tools for Writers
Class #2: Obsession X Voice
Class #3: Scrivener: Learn the basics of using Scrivener to write your book
"The depth and feedback on each week’s pages was far more than I ever experienced in a workshop before.” ~ Gail Robinson. 
Re-think and re-tune your writing habits. Learn how failure is the engine of your creativity and how taking a "no consequences" approach to your writing can give you freedom and discovery. You'll learn new ways to access your imagination and generate new pieces of writing, plus you'll develop a unique method -- that's ideal to your situation -- to help you push forward in your writing even when the class is over. 
All artists need time and money. Join us for this professional development workshop and discover where and how to research grants and residency opportunities and fundraise creatively to finance your next artistic endeavor.
We know that in a bad workshop, the focus is too much on the following bad question: "Am I a good poet?" But in a great poetry workshop, the focus is on this question: "What is good?" That's what this great summer poetry workshop will focus on -- we'll look at your poems, determine what they are asking us to do as readers, assess what we believe will improve that poem (unless of course it's fabulous and then we'll say, "publish it, publish it!"), and finally make concrete suggestions for how to work on that poem going forward. A workshop designed to give you a close read of your poems-in-progress.
This is for the writer who wants to be published. It does not matter if you are ready to sell your book yet or not. This class will get you in the right mind set for when the time is right and will spark you with unique insight and new ideas. I will teach you all I know about getting your book out there in the world and help you build a map so you can make your way to that publishing dream. This class comes with an 85 pg. workbook and a three hour audio program so you can listen again and again.
Monks in Tibet will spend months, sometimes years creating intricate prayer mandala's composed of different colored sands. When they are done, they let the sands blow away in a ceremonial moment. As a writer, you do the same thing. You work and work, often in solitude and attempt to compose the mandala of your own memory. When do you know when to keep going down one path and when do you know when to let go of another and start again? This class is for the craftsperson who has these and many more questions. This is the first of what I hope will be an ongoing critique circle or "good in the morning" writers. Each week, three to four writers will have the opportunity to read aloud, hear their own voice and get facilitated feedback from their peers and myself. If you are in this class, you have a story to tell and are on your way. This is not a beginning level memoir group. This class is for those who know what they want to write, or have a pretty good idea and are ready to improve their writing in a significant way. All elements of craft will be discussed in this class but most of all, this is your community of support and this class will continue in the fall.
This is a workshop based class, meaning you will read your work and get feedback from myself and the group. We'll also put special focus on point of view, voice and dialogue and teachings on these areas of craft will be supported by examples in published memoirs, novels and essays. You'll leave with a strong sense of how your writing sounds and some solid tools on how to be a smoother, more elegant writer. Creative non-fiction and fiction writers welcome.
Short stories are special. They aren’t vignettes or scenes. They aren’t excerpts or anecdotes. So what are they? What makes them work? In this weekend intensive workshop we will go after the elusive short story. Since this is only a weekend workshop, participants will need to come with a short story and be prepared to set aside a few hours between Saturday and Sunday in which to read work. 
The Essentials workshops at the Attic Institute focus on a single craft issue with the emphasis on proven results. Tonight, learn the essentials to better revision. Develop methods to find the right distance from your writing to evaluate, fix, and re-assess. Come away from the evening with specific strategies to use again and again to improve your writing of prose or poetry.
The Essentials workshops at the Attic Institute focus on a single craft issue with the emphasis on proven results. Tonight, learn the essentials to writing well. By examining sentences from the micro and macro perspectives, this one-night course will give you new understanding about how your writing actually works, inspires and reveals thinking, and how you can manage and master outstanding writing of your stories, essays, and poems. Come away from the evening with specific strategies to use again and again to write with better clarity and precision.
Finding a public space for your writing is an important goal, and yet so many writers balk at, get worried about, or don't have a natural feel for the best steps to publish in the literary magazine world. Work with David Biespiel, founder of the Attic Institute and a former literary magazine editor, NEA fellowship judge, and National Book Critics Circle judge to get the practical, behind-the-scenes goods on how to go about thinking about and actually publishing. What are editors thinking? looking for? wanting? Experienced advice on cover letters, selection criteria, attitude, self-publishing, e-books, and the ins and outs of getting published. 
For writers ages 12-16, the camp provides a unique, supportive and cooperative learning environment where they can write, create and share their work with confidence.
Vanessa Veselka writes about her Tracking Down the Facts workshop: "Recently, I did intensive investigative work around some murders and a serial killer that required me to untangle all kinds of agencies and information. I am now also researching my next novel, which has other difficulties. It occurred to me that what I was learning the hard way could be shared. The idea for this workshop is to gather with fellow writers that are on the edge of big projects, which require research and guide them toward strategies for their particular work. What a novelist needs from research is different than what an academic or a journalist needs. Is this the kind of workshop that's better for the murder/ crime fiction folks than the high 'literary' crew? I don't think so. Everybody gets nervous about research. As writers, we benefit from sharing experience. There’s just no need to reinvent the wheel. Join this writer's weekend think tank and dive into a new and foreign world."
It's time to reboot, kick back and get some words on the page. 
Your Next Poem is a classic generative workshop, focused specifically on writing poetry. During each session, between discussions on craft, style and voice, we'll write, working off a series of prompts to generate two-to-three new poems per week. Over the course of five weeks, you'll have enough new work to build a chapbook, fill out your manuscript, and head out to readings with new pieces created in a supportive writing atmosphere. 
