LOCAL>> Do the Math: How to Keep Pressing Forward When We Feel Stuck – Creative Writing with Kim Culburtson

I get it. Sometimes, we just don’t feel like writing. We aren’t making any progress.

The book seems like it’s going nowhere. The blank page is taunting us. The rewrite feels stale.

In this workshop, I will take you through five exercises that have helped me when I’m feeling stuck on a manuscript, whether I’m in the first draft or fifth draft of the process. I call this “doing the math” because sometimes, you just have to keep adding and subtracting or using “guess and check” until something seems to be working.

These exercises will allow you to focus on certain elements of your manuscript like character, POV, conflict, and setting, as well as provide a final exercise to get you thinking about the big picture of your project.

“There are three rules for writing a novel:
1. Unfortunately,
2. no one knows
3. what they are…”
– W. Somerset Maugham

Kim Culbertson is the award-winning author of the YA novels Songs for a Teenage Nomad (Sourcebooks 2010), Instructions for a Broken Heart (Sourcebooks 2011), Catch a Falling Star (Scholastic 2014), The Possibility of Now (Scholastic 2016), and The Wonder of Us (Scholastic 2017). Much of her inspiration for her novels comes from the work she’s done as a high school teacher since 1997. In 2012, Kim wrote her eBook novella The Liberation of Max McTrue for her students, who, over the years, have taught her far more than she has taught them. She currently lives in Nevada City, CA, with her husband and daughter.

Registration is required. This creative writing event is a service to the public and there is no charge for participating. Dominican University of California is a nonprofit institution.