Facilitated By: Linda Kohanov — Introductory and Advanced

Time: 9:30a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily

Cost: $2500 tuition includes workshop materials, snacks, beverages, and lunch.

This in-depth writer’s workshop draws on Linda’s extensive experience as a professional journalist and best-selling author. For those who would like to expand their writing skills and learn how to market their work, while accessing greater creativity through reflective work with horses. This workshop is designed to give participants plenty of time to write in the inspiring setting of the scenic desert surrounding Elephant Head Mountain while also offering writing hints, creativity expansion exercises, and advice on getting published, from newspaper and magazine articles, to engaging agents and book publishers.

This workshop is limited to four participants.

“This is a retreat with focus where you can build upon [the writing skills and ideas you have], and explore in a safe, purposeful environment,” notes Diane Ratkovich, who attended the fall 2015 Writing between the Worlds workshop. “Having the horses and the beautiful environment allows you to access deep inside yourself in ways you did not know existed, and you will have the structure to complete a project. To me, this was the perfect group size. I learned a lot from the other participants. For this group, we all want to be together again.”

“The whole experience was so much more than I ever dared hope for,” adds Iva Peele, who also attended the fall 2015 workshop. “It would be hard to improve the balance between the horse time, the writing time, and the sharing time. I wish I could do this at least twice a year. More than any other workshop I have attended, Writing Between the Worlds creates access to the TRUE writing zone, where you learn how to translate your deepest experiences into words.”

“I found the small group valuable,” says Angela Shcolnik. “Listening to one another was inspiring, eye-opening, and emotionally moving, and sparked considerable insight. Having Linda share three different edits of sections in her new book was very helpful—seeing how you make changes in each version to help the reader stay engaged, and not get confused or lose interest. These four days were turbo-charged in helping me get to the next level with my book. It could have taken me months to get this in-depth.”

“Being with the horses both alone and with the group was fantastic,” adds Yongkai Ow. “Being able to learn together with a group of like-minded and open individuals was also valuable. Linda’s guidance and expertise, gently but firmly nudging us toward doing a completed project and finding focus made a real difference for my sometimes scatter-brain style of writing. We also did a guided journey for assistance on a particular topic relevant to our individual projects. This brought everything to a beautiful closure and allowed me to proceed with confidence and inspiration in my writing style and with life in general. Definitely my favorite workshop so far.”

Genesis of this Workshop

As a bestselling author and a journalist with 30 years experience in book, magazine, and newspaper writing, Linda Kohanov regularly receives manuscripts and inquiries from people interested in getting published. “It’s really quite amazing the amount of material that comes through my office,” she marvels. “I actually spend a significant amount of time looking through the heartfelt stories and powerful experiences people work so hard to capture in writing. And I do send the more highly developed ideas and sample chapters on to my agent and/or publisher. Rarely, however, do these projects make it to publication. Over the last 14 years, I’ve gained a deeper understanding of why through extensive conversations with my agent, editor, and other published authors I’ve come to know.”

“While I have been successful commercially as a writer,” she continues, “it has been an amazing journey of expanding consciousness to learn how to translate pure experience into narratives that move others. I have been told many times that the power of my writing is being able to say what others have felt but could never translate into words, making scientific and philosophical ideas accessible by relating them to my own experience, and grounding mystical experiences into this world. This is what I will be teaching writing wise, in addition to sharing how I got an agent and the process we went through to find just the right publisher, as well as insight into how to break into other outlets like newspaper and magazine writing which I have also done, and as you know, can lead to interest from book publishers.”

While some past participants used Linda’s techniques to get more clarity on a short story or novel, autobiographical narrative will be a significant topic in the workshop. It is the basis of what made Linda’s books unexpectedly successful, allowing her to draw together a wide variety of philosophical, historical, psychological, mystical, and equestrian-oriented subjects.

“As for the horses’ involvement in our retreat,” Linda reveals, “I will be facilitating experiences with them that open sensory awareness, intuition, and creativity, coaching participants in doing some short writing projects about these experiences. Then I will be assisting people in editing, ‘reaching between the lines’ to go deeper into drawing out the most powerful yet most elusive nonverbal experiences and translating them into words.”

Along the way, Linda will share her insights into these commonly asked questions: How do you get your writing to the level that will attract readers? Why do even some of the most emotionally arresting, well written, strongly reviewed projects sell dismally, making publishers increasingly skeptical of personal experience narratives? When do deeply felt personal experiences warrant the wider audience publishers are seeking? How do you turn your most significant ideas into words that captivate, inform, and literally change readers’ lives?

What is that extra something that publishers are looking for? How do you capture of the interest of an agent who will truly champion your work? What pitfalls do writers face in the publishing world? How do you write a query letter to an agent? What does a winning book proposal cover? When is self-publishing the best option? When and why should you consider magazine/newspaper outlets, and how do you go about tapping this market?

And most importantly, why should you write, regardless of whether you are planning to be published?

“The answers to these questions are way too complex for me to convey in a simple email or phone conversation with the writers who contact me,” Linda emphasizes. “Good writing seems so clear, so simple, so straight forward, so obvious, but as most writers will tell you, it’s hard work. Hard work with a big payoff, that is—in personal satisfaction, in greater awareness of yourself and the world around you, in the very development of your soul.”

Cancellation Policy: Cancellation up to 30 days prior to the event start date results in a credit of one-half the workshop tuition. There is no tuition credit for a cancellation 30 days or less before the event start date.

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