Starting Monday January 5th
Daily one-hour meetings: Mon & Tues @ 12pm, Wed & Thu @8pm, Fri @ 3pm.
lIMITED SPACE AVAILABLE
Get your creative energy flowing with Setting the Stage — a daily workshop all about finding your rhythm, building creative habits, and actually making stuff happen.
Together we’ll work towards cultivating the mindset, habits, and structure needed to bring your creative projects to life. Through a blend of reading, discussion, and hands-on practice, participants will explore strategies for nurturing creativity, maintaining momentum, and organizing their work effectively. Each weekday session (Monday through Friday) will offer a mix of activities: group discussions of selected readings, videos, and/or podcasts—creativity, habit-building, and workflow text excerpts—reflective writing exercises, and dedicated coworking sessions. We’ll dig into ideas from some of the most helpful voices in creativity and productivity, including Campbell Walker (aka Struthless), Ali Abdaal, Cal Newport, Gretchen Rubin and more.
Together we’ll apply what we’ve learned and make progress on our individual projects in a supportive environment. Throughout the month, guest speakers will be leading special recorded sessions, sharing insights from their own creative journeys and offering practical tools for sustaining a long-term creative practice.
goals & Expectations:
Our main goal is to work toward building a consistent creative practice. Daily meetings provide accountability and support with a flexible schedule that includes afternoon and evening meetings; attend the days and times that work best for you. Guest workshops will be recorded and available to participants for one month following workshop. Along the way we’ll explore how creative people stay organized, find flow, and keep projects moving. Through readings, discussion, and coworking time, you’ll get to test out new strategies, swap ideas, and gather useful tools. Most importantly, you’ll be part of a supportive group of creators who understand the ups and downs of the process. Together, we’ll cheer each other on, share wins (and struggles), and help each other find a creative rhythm that feels good.
workshop details:
- Workshop meets live online via Zoom for one hour, Monday-Friday January 5th-30th according to weekly schedule.
- Flexible schedule includes afternoon and evening sessions.
- Daily attendance is not required, but participants are encouraged to attend as many sessions as possible.
- Participants should expect to devote between 1 to 2 hours reviewing materials outside of the workshop meetings.
- Only sessions featuring a guest speaker/facilitator will be recorded; regular daily meetings will not be recorded.
- Limited spaces available; small intimate group to ensure a sense of camaraderie and safety
- Workshop cost is $75 (plus tax & processing fees) Sliding scale options available.
Weekly Schedule
| Day | Time | Main Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 12pm-1pm | Reading Discussions/Exercises |
| Tuesday | 12pm-1pm | Coworking session |
| Wednesday | 8pm-9pm | Coworking session |
| Thursday | 8pm-9pm | Reading Discussion/Exercises |
| Friday | 3pm-4pm | Coworking session |
Schedule reflects Eastern Time Zone and may include adjustments and/or additional meetings to accommodate availability of speakers.
Guest Workshops/Presentations
Recordings will be available if you can’t make live workshop.
- Too Many Ideas, Too Little Time — Presented by Jen Jones Donatelli of Creative Groove. You never have a shortage of ideas, and that’s a beautiful thing. But what happens when you get stuck spinning in idea mode? It feels like you want to do everything and end up doing nothing. This presentation will help break down some of the causes (and effects) of idea paralysis and introduce the (b)RIGHT framework for selecting which project to tackle next. Let’s move from inaction to inspired action!
- Cut, Paste, Write: Creative Writing with SoulCollage® — In this workshop, AWA facilitator Kimberly Lee will guide us through a gentle introduction to the enchanting practice of using intuitive collage to access creativity. Using images, imagination, and intuition, we’ll create powerful collages to inspire a piece of writing. With gentle guidance, we’ll excavate the meaning of our creations, finding the story that only we can tell. A background in art or writing is not necessary or required—anyone can enjoy this process!
- Donna Sokol of Power Writers — Are you finding it hard to keep consistent with your writing practice? Are you going two or more days without writing each week? Drawing on 15 years of working with fiction writing groups, Donna will share strategies to keep you accountable to your creative writing and help you reach your goals. In this workshop, we will:
- Craft a Creative Contract for yourself to establish your commitment
- Determine which Visible Accountability Display (VAD) works best to track your accountability
- Becky Tuch of Lit Mag News — The landscape of literary magazines is overwhelming. With thousands of journals on the market, how do writers even know where to begin? Why should writers be submitting to literary magazines anyway? And what about contests? Print versus online? Top-tier or more accessible? How should writers handle rejection letters? In this talk, Becky will break it all down. Drawing from almost two decades of experience reading and reviewing lit mags, plus knowledge gleaned from interviewing hundreds of journal editors, Becky will help you understand the vast world of lit mags so that you can find the best places to publish your short fiction, personal essays and poetry.
Meet the Facilitator
Alexis M. Collazo is a Brooklyn bred writer, now living in Pennsylvania. She writes in a variety of forms and genres inspired by a wide range of interest including horror, music, and other creative arts. Her poetry has appeared in Common Unity: An anthology, Gnashing Teeth’s Making Room Zine, and Trashlight Press. She is the pdf designer and a reader for Painted Pebble Lit Mag. In August of 2021, she was certified as an Amherst Writers and Artists workshop facilitator and has since been offering a variety of online workshops including Tarot Tuesdays, Poetry As Spiritual Practice, the Creative Chaos Workshop and more.
See the about page for more on Alexis’ work and the Creative Chaos Workshop.
As leader, Alexis exudes such warmth, humor and acceptance. Pure pleasure.
Betsy Bowen Wrenn
Alexis always gives enough structure to inspire and enough space to create. I appreciate that the prompts can be stretched to generate both new work and support ongoing projects
Taste Creative Chaos Workshop Participant
Thanks so much Alexis for a truly immersive writing course experience that was fun, interactive and insightful.
Sue Goode
Guest Speakers/Facilitators
Jen Jones Donatelli is a certified coach (PCC, CPCC), creative facilitator and founder of Creative Groove—a small business offering courses, coaching programs, and community around the art of creative living. Jen has also led workshops and programs for schools and organizations including Loyola Marymount University, Ohio University, MediaBistro, StoryStudio Chicago, Literary Cleveland, and Chautauqua Institution. Prior to her work with Creative Groove, Jen worked in various forms of media and entertainment for nearly 20 years. Her resume spans feature films,award shows, talk shows, sitcoms, red carpet reporting, and print/online journalism for outlets including Glamour, REDBOOK, Business Insider, TODAY, Los Angeles Confidential and many more. She is a proud graduate of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University.
Kimberly Lee, JD, is the author of the captivating thriller, Have You Seen Him. A versatile writer, workshop facilitator, and editor, she has a passion for nurturing the imaginative spirit and helping others reveal their creative gifts. Kimberly holds degrees from Stanford University and UC Davis School of Law, along with certifications from Amherst Writers & Artists, SoulCollage®, Guided Autobiography, the Center for Journal Therapy, and the Center for Intentional Creativity. Recent collaborations include Esalen Institute, Hollyhock Retreat Center, Omega Institute, The Huntington, and West LA Veterans Administration. Kimberly’s stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies, and she has served on the staffs of Literary Mama, F(r)iction, and Carve magazines. She lives in Southern California with her husband and three children.
Donna Sokol founded Capitol Hill Writers Group in January 2011 after the birth of her second child. The close-to-home writing group allowed her to pursue her passion for creative writing and find balance in her life. In April 2023, Donna launched PowerWriters—a fiction writing membership for writers in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia metro area. Three times a year, Donna launches several new writing groups and brings together writers in daily writing sprints, weekly accountability group meetings, and monthly in-person writing events. Donna began writing creatively as a child; then she went to college, where creative writing was all but beaten out of her. She is currently working on a thriller. Donna has worked in libraries since age 12 and currently works in a library but not as a librarian. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband (whom she met in a library), two sons, and two Labrador Retrievers.
Becky Tuch is a fiction and nonfiction writer, based in Philadelphia. She has been honored with awards and fellowships from Moment Magazine, The Somerville, MA Arts Council, and The MacDowell Colony. Her writing has appeared in dozens of publications including Virginia Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and several anthologies, including Best of the Net. She is the Founder of Lit Mag News, a newsletter dedicated to helping writers navigate lit mag publishing.
Starts Monday january 5th 2025
Daily one-hour meetings: Mon & Tues @ 12pm, Wed & Thu @8pm, Fri @ 3pm.
Limited space available.