I love teaching people about literature almost as much as I love writing! If you’d like me to facilitate a writing class for your students, writing group, social group, or business don’t hesitate to reach out now.
- đThe Five Ps of Premise Prep (best seller!)
- Book Outlining Basics
- Write a Book This Year
- Self-Revision Fundamentals
- Hire Write
- đđżPublish This Year (popular!)
- Start Selling Books
- Past Events
Course Overviews
All courses can be facilitated under different titles in order to suit your event’s or your group’s marketing needs. Each session can also be tailored to a particular audience (editors, business owners, students, etc.).
The Five Ps of Premise Prep
This is my bestselling session! The Five Ps of Premise Prep is a highly flexible session that can be completed overview style in as little as ten minutes or workshop style in as much as two hours (and any time allotment in between).
The title of the session can be customized to fit the marketing needs of your event and the content will be tailored to your specific audience (for example, I presented this as “Writing Characters Who Leap Off The Page” for the Carrollton BookFest in 2023).
For workshops, a premise will be actively created by each participant during the session. This means participants will leave the session having accomplished this step and will be ready to move on to either writing or outlining their work. Providing this workspace and a sense of accomplishment at the end of the session is a huge motivator for a lot of writers. Being able to have me in the room helping them through any struggles means that writers who need it will get the kind of support they’re looking for. Leaving your meeting or conference feeling like they have taken five more steps toward publication is invaluable!
Session Overview
Having a book idea is great, but turning it into a premise that can cater to a particular market is a different story. This session will cover the five elements of a solid premise that just about any kind of writer (novelist, business expert, memoirist, blogger, essayist, etc.) can use to either jump straight into writing their first draft or begin crafting their outline.
- Definition of a book premise
- How premises help writers (with outlining, writing, editing, sales, and promotion)
- How to create a premise
- Person
- Pain
- Prize
- Pitfalls
- Promise
- How to refine a premise
- Writing from the premise
- Outlining from the premise
- Audience-guided discussion / Q & A
Audiences
- New writers who want to better understand the basic elements of a strong fiction or nonfiction book or screenplay premise.
- Seasoned writers who find that the methods they have been using to pitch their work or structure their content haven’t been working as well as they wish.
- Editors who are seeking help explaining story / content elements to their (potential) clients.
- Professionals who want to turn their expertise into a book but donât know where to start.
- Educators who want to teach their students about the basic elements of writing anything from college essays to fiction novels.
Book me for âThe Five Ps of Premise Prepâ now!
Book Outlining Basics
This talk can be given in anywhere from ten minutes to two hours. In a workshop-style delivery, participants will be leaving the event with concrete, custom outlines for their latest book idea in hand. This session can be tailored so that participants learn about outlining for just about any kind of piece (fiction, nonfiction, blog post, memoir, essay, self-help book, etc.).
Session Overview
Writers wondering âwhere to startâ writing can benefit from organizing their thoughts before they begin creating their manuscript. The quick, simple strategies provided in this lesson help authors feel more confident that they can tackle writing their manuscript quickly and without feeling âstuckâ as often.
- The benefits of outlines for planning, writing, editing, selling, and promoting a book.
- How to create 3-, 9-, and 27-point outlines.Â
- How to review and revise outlines
- Audience-guided discussion / Q & A
Audiences
- New writers who want to clarify their book concept before they begin writing it out.
- Editors looking to better articulate the importance of content organization to their clients.
- Educators who want to teach their students to understand how to plan a project before starting it.
Book me for âBook Outlining Basicsâ now!
Write a Book This Year
Formerly “The 12-Month Manuscript,” this session is about how to complete a manuscript within a year or less. For writers who have been struggling for years just to complete their first draft, this can be the session that gets their literary life back on track. By focusing on project deconstruction and time management skills, I can help these writers finally get to “The End” in a timely manner.
This session can be presented in 30 to 45 minutes as a lecture or in 60 to 90 minutes as a workshop. For longer sessions, more time will be given for attendees to work on their manuscripts during the session.
Session Overview
The first draft of a manuscript can be completed in a year or less, no matter how busy someone is. With a bit of simple math and a few effective time-management habits, writers can get to âThe Endâ in months instead of years.
- The definition of âmanuscript.â
- Word count ranges for short stories, novelettes, novellas, and novels.
- Average writing and typing speeds.
- Doing a time inventory.
- How to establish and (re)commit to a set writing schedule (chippers vs cleavers).
- Writing tools to help with daily word count goals.
- Beat-by-beat writing versus word count-based writing.
- What to do once the first draft is completed.
- Audience-guided discussion / Q & A.
Audiences
- New writers struggling to start or finish their first draft.
- Editors looking for strategies to help potential clients create something they can hire the editor for.
- Educators who want to teach their students about time management when it comes to completing assignments.
Book me for âWrite a Book This Yearâ now!
Self-Revision Fundamentals
This session can be presented as a list of basic steps in as little as 10 minutes, or lengthened to take up an hour. For longer sessions, examples of each step will be provided. The title of the session can be customized to fit the marketing needs for your event and the content will be tailored to your specific audience.
Session Overview
Having completed the first draft of their piece, many writers donât understand the next steps in the book development process. Engaging in self-revisions is a critical component of book production and happens well before any literary professional is involved.
- Why self-revisions are important
- How self-revisions benefit the writer, the future editor, and the reader
- The steps to doing self-revisions
- Rest
- Review
- Revise
- How many rounds of self-revisions to do
- How to get help with self-revisions
- Audience-guided discussion / Q & A
Audiences
- New writers wanting to understand how to strengthen their own work before hiring a professional.
- Editors looking to better articulate the importance of self-revisions to their clients so they can make their own jobs easier.
- Educators who want to teach their students about quality control for their own written projects.
Book me for âSelf-Revision Fundamentalsâ now!
Hire Write
A session all about how to find, vet, hire, and collaborate with editorial professionals. The concepts covered will be general enough that they can be applied to various professionals (developmental editors, ghostwriters, cover designers, illustrators, etc.), but includes specific examples and time for participants to ask questions. This session can be completed in approximately one hour. The title of the session can be customized to fit the marketing needs of your event. The content can also be tailored to your specific audience.
Session Overview
After an author has completed their self-revisions, the idea of hiring a professional for continued book development may seem daunting. This lecture provides participants with the strategies and knowledge that can help them avoid scams, behave professionally, and confidently develop a personal editorial team that can serve them well book launch after book launch.
- How to define a professional.
- How to spot an amateur or scammer.
- Best places to find reputable pros.
- Pricing for professional services.
- The Service Trinity
- Partnerships vs Slavery
- Hiring
- Communicating
- Firing
- Audience-guided discussion / Q & A
Audiences
- New writers wanting to understand how to safely hire solid people for their editorial team.
- Editorial professionals who are new to their field and want to better understand how to create solid business partnerships with authors.
- Publishers who have recently opened their doors and are looking for guidance on hiring and outsourcing for editorial services.
Book me for âHire Writeâ now!
Publish This Year
This talk goes over the entire indie publishing process and can be completed in as little as 30 minutes, or lengthened to an hour. The title of the session can be customized to fit the marketing needs of your event. The content can be tailored to your specific audience.
Session Overview
Whether they are on the fence about publishing independently or are just now realizing that self-publishing exists, new writers can benefit from having a basic understanding of how the indie publishing process works so that they can make educated decisions about their literary careers.
- Defining “indie publishing”
- Planning a book
- Producing a book
- Polishing a book
- Publishing a book
- Promoting a book
- How to complete the publication process before the current year is up (based on the date the session takes place).
- Audience-guided discussion / Q & A
Audiences
- New writers who are considering publishing their own books.
- Editors new to the industry who want to understand their role in the indie publishing process.
- Educators who want to start their students on the path to becoming published authors.
- Professionals who want to publish books on behalf of their business.
Book me for âPublish This Yearâ now!
Start Selling Books
Established in 2024, “Start Selling Books” was crafted for writers who have a book on the market and aren’t sure how to get the first sale and / or writers who want to get a head start on figuring out how they’re going to sell their first few books come launch day.
This session can be facilitated in between 45 and 90 minutes. The title can be customized to for the marketing needs of your event and the content can be tailored to your specific audience.
Session Overview
- Defining “marketing”
- Defining “promotion”
- Penniless promotion
- Bartered promotion
- Low-cost promotion
- High-cost promotion
- Common selling mistakes
- Creating an ATM
- Audience-guided discussion / Q & A
Audiences
- New writers who want to learn about basic selling tactics well before they publish their work.
- New authors who want to learn ways they can get their first sale.
- Editors working with newbie clients who want to add basic marketing guidance to their customer service routine.
Book me for âStart Selling Booksâ now!
Past Events
Atlanta Self-Publishing Conference 2025
October 5th, 2024: (as “Self-Publishing 101”) I facilitated the first in a series of sessions for #ASPC25 called the “New Author Bootcamp.” This session was free and open to the public as both an educational tool and a teaser for what the ASPC has to offer.
Atlanta Self-Publishing Conference 2024
MEMBER EXPERIENCE COORDINATOR
April 27th, 2024: Thankfully, I got to step back into a supportive role for Michelle instead of directing the conference this year! Much less taxing on my introverted brain! đ Presented by the Atlanta Writers Club, this conference was created specifically for indie authors.
Carrollton BookFest 2024
April 5th, 2024: I was hired a second time to facilitate “Self-Revision Fundamentals” for conference attendees.
DeKalb County Public Libraries SkillShare Webinar 2023
April 8th, 2023: I was invited to facilitate “Publish This Year” for patrons via Zoom. Patrons were able to attend this session for free as part of their DeKalb County Public Libraries membership.
Carrollton BookFest 2023
March 25th, 2023: I was hired to facilitate “The Five Ps of Premise Prep” for conference attendees under the title “Writing Characters Who Leap Off the Page.”
Atlanta Self-Publishing Conference 2023
DIRECTOR
April 29th, 2023: Presented by the Atlanta Writers Club, this conference was created specifically for indie authors. I was lucky enough to be a volunteer for the EFA table in the first year of the conference. But in 2023, I got tapped to actually run the conference. It was the most terrifying, and most gratifying, thing I’ve ever done in my life! đ
Mercer University
Linguistic Justice Collaborative
Dates and Times
June 13th 2022 through June 24th, 2022.
Monday through Friday from 1:00 p.m. until 3:00 p.m.
Locations
- Tucker-Reid H. Cofer Library, 5234 LaVista Road, Tucker, GA 30084
- The Corner Cup Coffee, 2380 Main Street, Tucker GA 30084
Links
https://linguisticjusticecollaborative.com/
This program was meant to help youth recognize, understand, and embrace their personal language. This inaugural execution of the program focused on the participants, aged 12 to 17, conducting community interviews and publishing them on Spotify (including interviews with the ghosts of historical figures!).
This was an awesome learning experience for me because this was my first time working with minors. Even as a therapist fresh out of college, I’ve worked almost exclusively with adults. But it became clear that a love great writing is the perfect social soother and it wasn’t long before I felt like I was in my element helping to answer questions, not possible problems and solutions, and assist with publishing technology to help the participants achieve their goals.
Results
Though we were primed and ready to bring another independently published book to the world, the participants came up with a publication path that better suited their style of expression: audio files!
You can listen to some of the interviews that our group members conducted on Dr. Panther’s Spotify page.
The 12-Month Manuscript Workshop
Date and Time
Wednesday, March 4th, 2020
11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Location
DeKalb County Public Library: Decatur Branch
215 Sycamore Street
Decatur, GA 30030
Links
https://dekalb.libnet.info/event//3740639
https://www.facebook.com/events/376227883176315/
This meeting was an absolute joy to facilitate. I’ve always loved the look and feel of the Decatur Branch, falling in love with it from the moment I laid eyes on the building. Since moving to DeKalb County, the Tucker-Reid H. Cofer and Clarkston branches have been my literary havens. Like any good library system, DCPL has provided classes, gatherings, and delicious brain food in the form of paperback, digital, and audio books. Getting to facilitate a learning experience within the DCPL system meant the world to me. One of my favorite parts of workshops like these is the fact that I set it up so that people walk away with work completed. Tangible evidence that they are capable of exactly what I thought they could do!
Everyone left this session having added to their manuscript. I also created a workbook for them to take home. These are the kind of motivational nudges that I find help writers get moving towards their goals instead of stalling due to impostor syndrome, what they think is “writer’s block,” and / or a lack of respect for their literary goals.
Results
As you can see from the date, this workshop happened less than two weeks before Georgia went into lock down due to COVID-19. I was relieved to have gotten to facilitate the workshop before everything shut down. However, this also meant that there was no telling when or if I would ever get the privilege of guiding and teaching fellow writers in such an awesome library system any time in the near future.
But I won’t give up hope just yet! You never know when another opportunity to train aspiring wordsmiths within DCPL will come again. đ
NaNoWriMo Prep
Date and Time
Thursday, October 28th, 2021
7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Location
This was a virtual session that took place via Google Meet.
Links
https://www.facebook.com/events/540022863740405/
Once I had created and refined the idea of the “Five Ps of Premise Prep” I knew that people getting ready for NaNoWriMo would be able to use this life raft of a concept! So, I decided to test that theory by offering this prep course. I thought it would be especially useful for all the procrastinators, so I set the date for right at the end of October. Whereas I had expected somewhere around five or six people would show up (after all, it was a new offering by me and I wasn’t a regular in the circle of NaNoWriMo prep courses!), more than 30 participants logged on for the session.
Results
As shocked as I was, the nerves quickly dissipated and I relaxed into my normal instructional routine. By the end of the session, over a dozen participants had noted via the chat function or verbally that I had helped alter their entire perspective on setting up a premise for a book. Many had been jolted out of “writing ruts” they were in and suddenly had more motivation to get to work as their ideas became more well defined in their heads. Since helping fellow writers was the goal, I’d say the course was a resounding success.
I can’t wait for next year!
Recurring Courses
I also teach “Publishing for Free,” “Self-Publishing 101,” and “Book Kick-Starter” throughout the year. These classes were created in order to help answer some of the most pressing questions for new writers.
“Publishing for Free” addresses the major pitfalls that come along with publishing a book without spending any time or money on development such as manuscript evaluations, line editing, or professional cover design. Currently a series on Kindle Vella!
“Self-Publishing 101” is a general overview of the book development process and the major steps it’s helpful for writers to understand before going the indie route.
“Book Kick-Starter” is a review of what the ‘Five Ps of Premise Prep’ are and how to use them effectively to build solid outlines for strong content.
Contact me to set up a private virtual or in-person session for your group.