So many people have a story to tell.
But they’re writers without hands.
They may have the talent, but they lack the tools that can turn a great story or idea into a great piece of fiction or non-fiction.
Those tools are hard to find.
You can buy a book – and the shelves are filled with books on writing. But a book can’t stop bad habits in their tracks and substitute strengths. A book can’t teach how to sense the indefinable things, such as where a book “begins” and where it “ends,” which is both a knack and a sense. You can’t ask a book questions or toss around ideas with a book, even if it has a blank page to write down your ideas.
That’s the reason I’m starting One Writer’s Weekends.
Don’t confuse these intensive seminars with the kind of training you’ll get at a conference – although conferences are wonderful, especially for networking and giving writers a taste of just what they need to work on.
This is the place you’ll work on whatever that is.
One Writer’s Weekend will be the kind of intensive training in structure, character development (which is crucial even in non-fiction), self-editing, pacing, starting, finishing and finally getting a book out into the marketplace that I teach in “macro” form when I lecture and do retreat teaching at universities and writer’s conferences. But I can never go deep enough even in those terrific venues because the time is to short to really accommodate eight or ten or fifty students, all of whom have the same needs but slightly different strengths and weaknesses.
The first one, in September, is filled, but the next -- October 10, 11 and 12 – still has two openings, and the final weekend in 2008 will be held October 24, 25 and 26 and has three openings.
I’ll work one–on-one and in small groups with only three writers, living and working in a beautiful house in Massachusetts.
The atmosphere will be pleasant and comfortable. We’ll start each day with guided yoga or stretching together (led by an instructor, and it’s not mandatory!). We’ll also take walks and sunset drives and enjoy a gourmet meal every evening. Lodging and food are included in the cost of the package.
But mostly we’ll work. We’ll work hard on the same exercises that led my friend and student Patricia Kesling-Wood to become a publishing sensation with her debut novel, Lottery, now a short-list contender for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. When Pat began working with me three years ago, she had only an amorphous idea of what she wanted to write about and no idea how. She did the work. My friend and student Holly Kennedy has written four novels, two optioned for film. She had already written a book to critical acclaim but says that working with me took her writing to another level.

"Jacquelyn Mitchard has the rare ability to recognize a writer's strengths/weaknesses, and then she gently nudges you down the very path you've been avoiding for fear of failure. Better yet, she instructs in such a way that you don't realize you've jumped off a cliff until you're airborne and some of your best work has been slammed down on the page!"
-- Holly Kennedy, author of The Silver Compass

There will be homework assignments in every facet of writing, as well as close editing and critiques that simply aren’t possible in the setting of a conference class.
It will be the hardest work you’ll ever do as a writer.
But if you do the work, you’ll leave armed with the tools.
You’ll have learned how to use them, with guidance. That is what has led my students to succeed – not only Holly and Patricia, but many others.
You’ll read from your work in progress, and so will I, because writing is a performing art. You’ll receive valuable reactions from your fellow writers.
All of it will take place in a beautiful setting with a sense of safety, collegiality and mutual support that I think is unique.
To find out more about One Writer’s Weekend contact Pamela English and penglish@mailbag.com.
See you by the sea!