Write Your Way Out of a Rut with Arya Samuelson

Wake up your creativity in just fifteen minutes a day with Arya Samuelson's expert guidance.

Your Instructor: Arya Samuelson, author and editor

Where: Online — Available everywhere!

When: This class is not currently enrolling. To be notified when it is offered again, Click Here

Enrollment: 20

Price: $299

Class Description

As a writer, simply showing up can be the hardest work of all. But what if I told you that 15 days of writing could transport you to new worlds of story possibilities? All you’ll need is 15 minutes a day.

Every three days, you’ll receive a new “portal” – a launching-off point for you to explore in your daily writing. These portals will range from the somatic (body-centered), to the imaginary, to unexpected angles on a life story, and will build on each other. You’ll write in response to each portal for three days, leaning into repetition to push past the surfaces of ideas and uncover new modes of storytelling, continually pausing to reflect on what you’ve discovered from this process. You’ll emerge with an abundance of fresh material and the seeds for a new writing project.

This class is for writers who are feeling stuck, searching for their next source of inspiration, or learning how to face their fear of the blank page – even all of the above! You will post your daily writing on the discussion board, and at the conclusion of each portal, you’ll receive feedback from your teacher, Arya, about moments of greatest heat and energy, as well as opportunities for expansion.

Throughout, we will approach writing as ritual, holding our daily practice as a sacred space for play, deep listening, and transformation. As we generate material together, you’ll learn to tap into the abundant wisdom of your intuition and build a relationship to your writing practice that is curious, consistent, and compassionate.

Each portal will be accompanied by discussion opportunities and a brief writing assignment of 100-500 words, which will receive comments from Arya

WRITE YOUR WAY OUT OF A RUT is taught by Arya Samuelson, winner of the CutBank’s Montana Prize in Non-Fiction awarded by Cheryl Strayed. Her work has also been published in Bellevue Literary Review, Columbia Journal, New Delta Review, Entropy, and elsewhere. She is a proud graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing Program from Mills College and has been studying at Lidia Yuknavitch’s school of Corporeal Writing since 2017. Arya writes across genres and is honored to witness the transformations that writing catalyzes for her students.

What This Class Covers

PORTAL ONE (Days 1-3) – COMPRESSION

Beginning something new can be scary, so we’ll start by writing seven sentences. It’s enough to change how you think about your whole life – trust me.

PORTAL TWO (Days 4-6) –  EXPLOSION

We’ll explode our memories, amplifying the sensory details, lingering in the present tense, and exploring the memory from multiple perspectives.

PORTAL THREE (Days 7-9) – OBSESSIONS

What haunts you or your characters? We’ll crack open what we love or fear the most to discover new depth of meanings and storytelling possibilities.

PORTAL FOUR (Days 10-12) – IMAGINARIES

We’ll leave behind the material realm and allow our imaginations to take the wheel as we rewrite myths and invent new worlds.

PORTAL FIVE (Days 13-15) – DIGGING DEEPER

Embedded inside everything you’ve been writing are a multitude of portals, utterly unique to you. In these final days, we’ll help each other identify the most important themes, images, and patterns coming through each participants' work, and to walk through the universes they open up

Goals Of This Class

• Generate an abundance of new material brimming with opportunities for expansion
• Build a strong writing habit that will spark inspiration daily and create momentum in your creative practice
• Overcome fear of the blank page and alleviate self-censorship
• Release the notion that you have nothing interesting to say and have to sit around waiting for inspiration
• Write through five portals, that you can repeat as many times as you want, each time with different results
• Learn to dig deeper, go further, inquire more, and get to the heart of your ideas
• Draw support, inspiration, and accountability from a community of fellow writers on a parallel journey
• Receive insightful, encouraging feedback on your writing from a highly perceptive teacher and editor

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