I enjoy teaching others about various aspects of writing and publishing almost as much as I love writing! If you’d like me to facilitate a class for your students, organization, writing group, social group, or business don’t hesitate to reach out now.
- 🏆The Five Ps of Premise Prep (best seller!)
- ✨Banking on Affordability (new!)
- Book Outlining Basics
- Write a Book This Year
- Self-Revision Fundamentals
- Hire Write
- 👍🏿Publish This Year (popular!)
- Start Selling Books
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.) regardless of the audience it was originally crafted for. When you’ve decided what session you want, or if you want a custom topic you’d like me to cover, head to my booking form to request it.
PLEASE NOTE: I no longer provide sessions for events that are more than 60 miles outside of Atlanta without cash compensation for travel expenses beforehand.
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 don’t 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 “The Five Ps of Premise Prep” now!
Banking on Affordability
Increasing Project Win Rates with Self-Respecting Payment Options
No matter how badly a client wants to work with a professional, if they can’t afford their rates, that creates a barrier to hiring an expert. By using payment options that allow pros to get paid every penny that they’re worth, yet still allow clients to hire them without going bankrupt, everybody wins — including their bottom line! In this session, I walk audiences through a two-pronged approach for securing lower-budget clients without sacrificing compensation. Attendees will learn to go beyond tactics like discounts and sales to serve more customers, maintain their current pay rates, and grow their business.
Session Overview
- The status quo when it comes to payment options for editorial services.
- How service segmentation boosts win rates and client satisfaction.
- How appropriate payment plan options benefit both pros and writers.
- Viewing affordability through the lens of accessibility versus classism.
- Tips for navigating the logistics of providing more accessible payment options for potential clients.
Audiences
- Editorial professionals working with writers and publishers.
- Business owners.
- Freelancers.
Book me for “Banking on Affordability” 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 “where to start” 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 “stuck” as often.
- The benefits of outlines for planning, writing, editing, selling, and promoting a book.
- How to create 3-, 9-, and 27-point outlines.
- 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 “Book Outlining Basics” 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 ‘The End’ in months instead of years.
- The definition of “manuscript.”
- 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 “Write a Book This Year” 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 don’t 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 “Self-Revision Fundamentals” 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.
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 “Publish This Year” 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.