A one-day writing workshop with Alan Watt
Saturday, June 23 | 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
READ MORERegister now for our upcoming workshops.
“Our sole purpose is to build a body of work.”
– Alan Watt (founder of LA Writers Lab)
We are a Los Angeles-based creative writing workshop catering to writers at all levels. Home of the 90-Day writing workshops, our goal is to teach writers a process of getting the story from their imagination to the page by marrying the wildness of the imagination to the rigor of story structure. There are no rules, but there are principles, tools and techniques that help us to see beyond our initial ideas to the deeper truths in our work.
News
May 2012
“The past is prologue.” – William Shakespeare BACKSTORY Hi Writers, When we are feeling stuck, it is inevitably because some part of our backstory is unclear. Backstory refers to what happened before our story began, and is often revealed through … Continue reading
April 2012
“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination.” – Albert Einstein STAYING CONNECTED TO THE SOURCE The rewrite uses the left and right brain simultaneously. We’re shifting gears between our imagination … Continue reading
March 2012
“You become a good writer just as you become a good joiner: by planing down your sentences.” – Anatole France BUILDING SENTENCES There are no rules that limit the length of a sentence, but when our sentences are strung together … Continue reading
February 2012
“Nothing changes more constantly than the past; for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what happened, but of what men believe happened.” – P.L. Berger OUR CHARACTERS ARE MALLEABLE In the rewrite we’re like detectives, trying … Continue reading
January 2012
DILEMMA: The Source of Our Story “Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but to get better.” – Sydney J. Harris At … Continue reading
December 2011
TEN GUIDEPOSTS TO A GOOD WRITING INSTRUCTOR “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” – William Butler Yeats Choosing a writing instructor is a big decision. Here are some guidelines and suggestions that … Continue reading
November 2011
“A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.” – Albert Camus ONE THING READERS HATE One thing readers hate are coincidences. Sure, coincidences occur in our lives every day, but in a story, they are … Continue reading
October 2011
“Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith; Nothing we do, however virtuous, … Continue reading
August 2011
TWELVE MAXIMS OF THE 90-DAY NOVEL 1) When we stay out of the result, we move in the direction of our story. 2) Story involves a transformation. There can be no transformation without surrender. 3) Our idea of our story … Continue reading
July 2011
BANISHING REDUNDANCIES redundant: 1 a: exceeding what is necessary or normal : superfluous b : characterized by or containing an excess; specif : using more words than necessary. Redundancy is not only a sign of lazy writing; it can also … Continue reading