I want to teach a writing workshop.
The workshop would be called "Getting Unstuck", it would be in Encino, it would last for three or four hours, it would happen on a Saturday or Sunday in mid-July, and I would charge $20 per person. The point of it would be to help attendees learn strategies for getting unstuck as writers, whether the stuckness is because of a block, because of a fork in the road, because of some kind of lack in the toolbox, whatever. The format would go like this: We introduce ourselves and maybe do an icebreaker, I give a prompt, the attendees write for some limited amount of time, and then we share and talk about what worked and what didn't. This process would repeat itself with several prompts. There would be a break in the middle and I'd bring snacks. I would cap it at ten attendees, and those ten people could be any kind of writer - prose, poetry, whatever. Attendees would not be reading each others' work, like a table/group workshop, but reading their own (if they like) + listening to me, like a how-to workshop.
I don't need help with the content, because I know a lot of strategies for getting unstuck. What I need help with is discovering whether I should and could do this - whether I could get ten people in the room who are not just friends desiring to be kind, and whether me teaching this workshop seems like a good idea at all (the me part OR the content part).
Would you go to it? Would you spread the word about it to people who might want to go? Would you listen to me for short periods across a few hours of writing and sharing and thinking?
Tell me. And in the meantime, I'll just be thinking of this cat as my mascot for the whole endeavor.
(If $20 seems too low to you, remember that I have no advanced degrees, that I've never taught a writing workshop before [although I have taught yoga workshops, which were priced a good bit higher], and that writers are poor. So I'm not really accepting feedback on that. If this one's successful I'll hike the price.)
