“You want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you.” —Madeleine L’Engle
The diary can offer a record of the day and sharpen our observational skills, but it can also do so much more. The diary can be a clearing house, a vetting area, a problem solving space, a private sanctuary to experiment with voice and form, to doodle or to dream, and to imagine what we want from our lives. Writing in a journal offers us a moment to connect with the sometimes-quiet inner voice that can be drowned out by the cacophony of daily life.
Want to spend an hour together writing in our journals each week? Doesn’t that sound like a great way to stay connected to self through the holiday season? Use the time to bullet journal, churn out your morning pages, or respond to the weekly prompts.
In each class session, we’ll look at a sample diary text from writers like Moyra Davey, May Sarton, Lynda Barry, and Helen Garner. Drawing (or departing) from our model texts, we’ll then write together for the remainder of our time, with a few minutes at the end to reconnect and share (always optional; note Madeleine L'Engle quote above).
These six generative sessions are low-key, low-stakes opportunities to write in community with others and start (or continue) a journal practice.
“In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could do to any person; I create myself. The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather — in many cases — offers an alternative to it.” —Susan Sontag
I can't tell you how much fun I'm having with writing this week. Not to be dramatic but my life has been completely transformed?! The knock-on effect on my mood and my motivation and even my patience in parenting is really noticeable. I'm amazed and delighted and so, so grateful to you.
I wanted a space where I could experiment without too much pressure. I liked that we didn't analyze the experience of the writing exercise too much, we just kept moving along. It made it all feel less important somehow, which made it less stressful, which made it more fun, which made for better writing. At least, for me. I also commend you, Sarah, for setting the tone of the workshop as a collaborative and supportive and curious space.
From the readings to the generative prompts and lively discussions, I came away feeling refreshed and invigorated not only to write and read, but to make writing an important part of my daily routine. I'm grateful to you for helping me to feel alive and curious again.
My writing groups are inspiring, supportive spaces to share work-in-progress as well as the emotional realities of the writer's life (e.g. the ongoing psychological seesaw of "I'm a genius!" "I'm worthless!" and other fun stuff).
This group is for writers of memoir, personal essay, autofiction, and literary fiction. It's best suited for writers with an existing practice and/or those looking for more community and accountability around their writing. You've taken classes, maybe have an MFA, maybe have even published, but you're tired of flailing out there alone.
My feedback style is encouraging, constructive, and uses elements of Liz Lerman's Critical Response Process. I am eager to tell you what’s working so you can do more of it. I ask the writer to take an active role in the process when their work is being read by the group. My goal is to give each writer the clarity and encouragement to keep going.
Participants provide verbal feedback to one another in workshop. Attendance is mandatory. If a member of group misses workshop, they provide written feedback to whomever's work was discussed.
The cost is on a sliding scale from $65–85 per month paid quarterly. There is a six-month minimum commitment, though my hope is that writers will stay on as long as the group is a source of community and accountability. We meet once a month on Thursdays from 10:30-noon Pacific. We workshop two writers per month.
There are no refunds unless a writer is withdrawing permanently from the group. Notice must be given 30 days before the next meeting.
In the Woodshed with a Woodstove is for writers looking for structure, community, and accountability around their writing practice. This class is especially well-suited for writers between projects, those starting a writing practice for the first time, or anyone looking to bust through a writing rut with generative practice.
In the Woodshed with a Woodstove is an 8-week generative course in which we will draw inspiration from winter's quiet and cold to nurture our writing practice with creative experiments, generative writing, and community. Coursework will be delivered via newsletter, and Wet Ink will provide a meeting place for discussion threads and feedback.
Before a musician can take the stage, they spend time in the woodshed. Woodshedding is more than just practice, though; it's an acknowledgment that mastery requires devotion and solitude.
In the Woodshed with a Woodstove is woodshedding for writers. We need the woodstove because we spend a lot of time sitting, it's winter, and we want to be cozy.
At the beginning of the new year, our culture screams about setting goals, intense effort, will power, and change. Everything in nature asks us to slow down and turn inward. The Woodshed is a no-fail zone where every effort is the right effort.
I felt like I was in really compassionate orchestrating hands. The experience, wisdom and energy provided at such a high level makes it really easy to just let go and go for the ride and see what you can mine from yourself. Okay....I don't want to get weird and whip out a pan flute but it's a really special blend of pragmatism, craft, inspiration, and magic. There's a feeling of it being spiritual if you want it to be without it having to be group therapy. I felt lucky to be there and definitely don't really know how to explain it's more than a writing workshop to people.
I am grateful for the way Sarah holds safe space for sharing and inspires everyone to have fun with writing.
My expectations were far exceeded. Not only did I get to read a lot of great writing and try out different forms, but the whole group exposed me to different styles of writing and I loved reading other people's work. I've also never been in a workshop before where the goal was to give positive feedback rather than jump in being critical. It was a real balm after having several experiences of being torn apart. Sarah was an incredible instructor who led with curiosity and kindness. It was one of the best workshop experiences I've had.
Past Workshops
Summer Camp
A 10-week practice-based container to vibe with the season and invite creative vitality into our (hot) days
$525
Need a payment plan? Email me at hello@sarahmccoll.com
Gather
6 90-minute meetings of writing magic - a mix of discussion, prompted writing, sharing, and solo writing practice
Read / Write / Experiment
10 weekly newsletters full of rituals, creative experiments, writing prompts, and writerly inspiration to keep your brain from going limp in the humidity
Connect
a shared group diary to deepen connections and continue the thread between meetings &
the option to be paired with a buddy for encouragement and accountability
Part of summer’s beauty is its undoneness. Our schedules fall apart (ideally replaced by shady hammocks and sandy sandwiches). In this lovely looseness, our artistic practice can suffer.
Don’t lose your art this summer! Go to LOST ART SUMMER CAMP!
SUMMER CAMP is a creative seasonal bridge and a flexible artistic container.
A magical, shared space to hold your sunscreen-smeared creative work sacred.
An intention spoken into the campfire and held for 10-weeks by an intimate cohort with a shared desire to attend their creative spirits this summer.
Some scene-setting: for three summers, I taught creative writing at an arts summer camp. Each teenager was used to being the writer weirdo at their school. Now here they were, all together: making in-jokes, swimming in the lake, ravaging the salad bar, plotting revolutions, swooning over language, splitting open their hearts, getting sunburned.
I never went to summer camp, and I remained a solo writer weirdo until college. To me, this looked like teenage writer heaven.
SUMMER CAMP is my effort to create adult writer heaven.
SUMMER CAMP is not a productivity sprint or banging out a novel draft.
SUMMER CAMP is flashlight tag, splashing in the lake, walks in the woods, ghost stories by the fire, lightning storms, intense friendship. Remember fun? Less grinding it out, more delighting in the creative act.
Through invitations to creative experiments, generative writing, and togetherness, we will collaboratively invent and imagine ways to nurture our creative lives that don’t require logging hours at a laptop.
Because the sun’s out, the mountains call, the ice cream is melting.
Our goals are two-fold: to bring lightness and liveliness to our creative lives during a season when they might otherwise get short shrift and to gather with a writing community who shares that desire.
At its root, SUMMER CAMP grows from my steadfast belief that creating the conditions for pleasure — for awe and play, connection and feeling good — positively impacts our writing life. If you feel good about your writing life, you will want to return there. We do this work in an effort to recondition our feelings about writing, from something difficult that we want to avoid because it makes us feel bad about ourselves, into a rich, welcoming relationship that feels nourishing and sustaining.
In this 2-hour workshop, we'll explore our mutual love of art and the insight and meaning it offers in our lives. That is, especially as a stabilizing, grounding, and galvanizing force in uncertain times. Under oppressive regimes, during war, amidst violence and pandemics, artists keep making art. Join us for an evening of community gathering in celebration of all the wisdom art offers. Stuffy and academic? No way. Expect a night of camaraderie and gratitude for artists and the creative process in Sacramento's bookstore treasure, Amatoria Fine Art Books.
The first part of our time together will be spent reading, looking, listening, and talking. We'll look at a poem and a work of visual art as invitations into our own creative writing. We'll spend the second half of our time in communal quiet, writing together in response to the work we've looked at, with time left at the end for optional sharing.
What you will get:
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A community of people united in a common cause (art!)
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A cozy bookstore setting on a winter evening (snacks and warm beverages provided!)
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Two 20-minute guided creative writing/journaling sessions
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Close reading and facilitated discussion of two poems and two works of visual art
This workshop is open to anyone who wants to spend thoughtful time in community engaged with beauty and meaning. All writing genres and levels welcome.
You're an introvert! Your boss is hovering over you! You want to do this yourself!
All the coursework, creative experiments, ideas, and ritualistic magic delivered via weekly newsletter that you can honor and explore on your own time — minus the meetings, group vibes, and accountability buddy. Because logistics, you're traveling too much, or whatever! You'll have the option to meet with me 1:1 for a 20-minute check-in, during which I can review a brief piece of writing, offer a pep talk, or answer questions.
$325
FAQs
Will meetings be recorded?
Meetings will be recorded so that if you have to miss a meeting for a trip to Disney (or whatever), you can still honor our creative container at another time. That said, the efficacy of Summer Camp is highly participatory. (If you don’t go to archery, you won’t learn archery.) The beauty of building community relies on giving and receiving time and attention. I hope each participant will make it a priority to attend our meetings.
What do you mean by “sharing”?
I mean reading aloud from fresh, just-written work (always voluntary, of course). I mean bringing in creatively empowering quotes and sharing helpful ideas from the lives of artists that have gone before. I mean talking about process, creative hurdles, creative desires. I mean speaking honestly from your artistic identity to a group of folks who are nurturing their own.
Like group therapy?
Nope! Like talking around the campfire with people you like and trust.
Is this a workshop where we read and critique each other’s work?
This is a workshop in the sense that we’re all hammering away at the same problems together: keeping our creative eyes open and continuing to write and think artistically through the summer months. But we will not distribute pages and respond to each other’s work as a group. In our group meetings we will, in general, write together and talk.
What’s a creative experiment?
Glad you asked! A creative experiment is an invitation to try something new on the page or in your daily life that will, ideally, call in looseness, playfulness, mindfulness, and/or some measure of delight. Each of us will experiment with these weekly creative assignments, many of which will not require putting pen to paper or typing on a keyboard. These could include suggested readings, guided meditations, places to go, activities to try, something to see or listen to, and so forth.
What does that have to do with writing though?
Everything! Being a writer is a way of moving through the world. It's a way of seeing, experiencing, and understanding the human condition.We are writing when we’re watching meteors or waiting in line at the state fair — We are in the process of transforming life’s formlessness into an aesthetic order. SUMMER CAMP acknowledges and amplifies all the creative acts of lived experience that go into a piece of writing. SUMMER CAMP brings conscious awareness to the art of our daily lives. SUMMER CAMP connects us to our practice as it exists on and off the page. It is about taking the summer to thoughtfully devise and enhance our creative inputs.
“Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?” —Annie Dillard
In this donation-based hour-long workshop, we will dig to the root of meaning and write from the heart.
In WRITING CHURCH we:
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Read aloud a piece of writing, a poem or brief prose
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Discuss that piece of writing
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Write together
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Share our work (optional)
Bring a notebook or computer, possibly a candle, a cup of tea or coffee — whatever will make the time feel special and supportive.
All writing genres and levels welcome.
These meetings occur during the holiday season as an antidote to frenzy and rushing. WRITING CHURCH feels compact, potent, and essential — like a wheatgrass shot or a brief nap from which you awake feeling profoundly rested or a burst of laughter that momentarily dispels grief.
WRITING CHURCH is available on a sliding scale from $0-50. Please contribute what you can. Those who can afford to pay help support those who can’t. 10% of all proceeds will be donated to Girls Write Now, a nonprofit organization serving girls and gender-expansive youth who attend New York City public schools and are from historically and systemically underserved communities; and 916 Ink, a Sacramento, California arts-based nonprofit organization that empowers youth through creative writing workshops.
The Inspiration
When one of my recent writing workshops ended, we continued to meet on Sunday mornings for a few more weeks. I jokingly called these sessions WRITING CHURCH, but later realized this wasn’t such a joke.
Writing is my most regular act of devotion. When we are writing with curiosity and intuition, we’re in a relationship with some other force greater than ourselves, something mysterious we can’t quite name. For ease we call it creativity.
Writing (and reading) can offer wisdom and clarity. It’s a practice from which we learn about ourselves and the world.
Writing (and reading) can pull us back from the spinning madness and put us back in touch with what really matters.
Writing isn’t a hobby or a pastime whose rewards are offered casually. Most of us make sacrifices for our writing lives—of time, money, leisure.
The purpose of these meetings is to come together in our shared belief in the power of art: to read, to talk, to listen, and to write together. To revel in and engage with language as a system of meaning-making.
The WRITING CHURCH mood board: We’re gathered in a circle in a grove of trees. We read poetry and listen to ancient sounds of the woods. Afterwards, the Indigo Girls sing about love and truth while we all drink tea and eat ginger cookies in dappled sunlight.
WRITING CHURCH reality: We meet Sunday mornings on Zoom! Bring your own tea, cookies, tree boughs, and candles.
How do we turn the loose, chaotic material of life into a shapely and artful story? How do we craft beginnings and endings from the ongoing nature of life? What drives memoir? And how do we transform the ordinary and the common into the transformative and the universal? These are some of the questions we will ask and endeavor to answer in this memoir workshop.
In this six-week workshop, we will look at some of the principles that help structure and animate memoir and personal narrative. Each week, we will read and discuss published work, including craft essays and creative texts, as well as our own drafts-in-progress by workshop participants. Readings may include Vivian Gornick, Jo Ann Beard, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Mary Karr, Yiyun Li, Carmen Maria Machado, Melissa Febos, and Barry Lopez.
Each week, we will discuss pieces written by workshop participants with our eyes trained toward encouragement and possibility. Ours will be a supportive, generative space designed to reflect back to writers what's working on the page and what readers respond to. Together, we’ll practice listening to our creative instincts and reading with empathy, attention, and curiosity.
Bring a chapter of your memoir manuscript, a fresh draft of a personal essay, or use this class as the deadline to start the memoir or essay you've been wanting to write forever. After their work is discussed, each workshop participant will receive an annotated version of their draft and a letter of written feedback from me.
This workshop is limited to 10 participants.
Week 1: Introductions; The situation and the story
Week 2: The engine of personal narrative; Workshop 1 & 2
Week 3: Weaving research & the self; Workshop 3 & 4
Week 4: But what about other people? Workshop 5 & 6
Work 5: Workshop 7 & 8
Week 6: Workshop 9 & 10
Payment plans available. Email hello@sarahmccoll.com