The Basics:
Bi-weekly group meetings
Your personalized writing contract
One-on-one support with Annie or Tessa whenever you need it
Plus amazing perks like a monthly speaker series, a slack community, weekly online cave writing sessions, and a quarterly book club.
Meetings
1.5 hour meetings, held every 2 weeks on zoom. This is not a workshop, but a meeting to discuss progress, problems that come up in our work, creative questions, writing routines, professional advice, and brainstorm specific writing issues when it’s helpful. Each cohort has 8-10 writers.
Meeting times: Wednesdays 1-2:30 pm ET or 8 pm-9:30 pm ET, every other week.
Scholarships Available! We awarding five full year-long scholarships to writers from underrepresented groups in publishing, focusing on writers of color. Applications accepted on a rolling basis. Click here to apply!
One-on-one support
If you're stuck or want to talk anything through, send us an email. We're happy to chat via email, or to set up a time to have a phone or video call.
Cave Writing Sessions
Three times a week, writers meet on zoom for 60-90 minute cave writing sessions. These include a quick hello, intention-setting, and then a solo work sprint.
The Nitty Gritty
Price: $150/month
All genres welcome, although our focus is mostly on tackling longer-form projects, so perhaps this is best designed for novelists and memoirists. That said, we have short story writers and TV writers in our groups now, so if it sounds useful to you, all writers are welcome!
You can drop out at any time. We want writers to use us when they need us, and feel free to step back when they don’t. We imagine writers may find it useful long-term, and some writers may just need a month or two or three to finish a project or renew a commitment to a writing routine.
Payments will be made on the 1st of the month. We ask for a week’s notice if you do not plan to carry your contract into the next month, so we can fill your slot with another writer.
Contract
Inspired by an Aimee Bender essay, you will also be asked to come up with a writing contract with yourself, which outlines on your own terms of how much writing/editing you are committing to—whether that’s 2 hours a day, or 3 writing days a week, 1000 words a day—whatever—you will be in charge of your own terms. Once you sign up, we will send you a sample contract for you to see what has worked for us, and a blank contract for you to create your own stipulations.
After you fulfill your contractual obligation for the day, you’ll report its completeness via email with the word “done,” followed by a response from Annie or Tessa with the word “check.”
Monthly Speaker Series
Each month, we bring in a special guest speaker to talk to the workshop in an intimate, frank conversation. Past guests have included the writers Sequoia Nagamatsu, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, Marie-Helene Bertino, Clare Beams, Rufi Thorpe, and Jonathan Escoffery, plus the literary agent Katie Grimm, the publicist Alyson Sinclair, and a masterclass on Scrivener.
Group Support
Each cohort has their own slack channel for you to stay connected to each other between meetings, share resources, post successes, and ask one another questions.
Though not required or expected, group members also sometimes choose to provide feedback on each other’s works in progress.
