• Upcoming Workshops & Events

     

    Monthly Prompt Workshop

    Start every third Saturday with a dose of creativity. We will write to prompts and provide supportive feedback on what is strong and what works in our writing. Workshops are based on the Amherst Writers Method.

     

    Once you have registered, you will receive information on the location.

     

    Saturday June 17 | 10:00am - 12pm Pacific

    In Person, NE Portland

    $20

    RWA Kiss of Death: 4-week Editing Bootcamp

    Get your scenes in tip-top shape – join the 4-week online Editing Bootcamp. Get ready to make your fiction shine. 

    Sept 4-29, 2023

     

    History Quill Masterclass: Editing on the Fly

    Learn a step by step method to learn your own patterns, create intentional emotional rhythms and structure, and edit your work-in-progress on the fly.

    Monday 2 October 2023, 6:30pmBST / 1:30 ET

     

    Women Writing the West Virtual Conference

    Join the best writers, editors and agents at this virtual conference. Kim will be teaching an Editing Bootcamp class on October 13.

     

    October 12-14, 2023

  • Past Workshops

    I would love to present any of the following workshops to your writing group or organization.

    Workshops can be structured from 90-minutes to 2-or 4-week courses.

    Writing the Heart of Your Story (or Tell Your Tale in 100 Words or Less)

    Tell me your story in 100 words or less. Tell me it's heart, what makes it tick. Why your should write it and someone should pick it up off the shelf. In this dynamic workshop, you will work on your novel's description - the one that can serve both as the focus as your write, and the main event in your query letter. Plan on workshopping, editing, sharing, and giving feedback to others. Let's make our story description shine. Presented by Kim Taylor Blakemore

    Query and Synopsis

    Bring your query and synopsis for feedback from the other writers in the group, then have time to revise and reshare the final, improved product. This workshop is for:

    • Writers ready to submit to agents or editors
    • Writers actively submitting to agents or editors
    • Self-published authors looking to add a synopsis to their novel
    • Self-published authors looking to hone their sales page book description

    Editing Bootcamp

    We love it. We hate it. Without it, a story is doomed. This fast-paced interactive webinar will walk you through a specific process for deep editing of scenes, paragraphs, sentences, and words. These are practical tools you can use on the fly to make your scenes shine. Please bring TWO copies of three pages of a work-in-progress.

     

    Available as 90-minute overview or in-depth 4-week workshop

    TECH POP | Using Plottr

    Plotter is an inexpensive, terrific, powerful, visual way to see your story beats and outline. Panster? It's got tons of flexibility. Plotter? You will be in love. Use in conjunction with brainstorming, plotting, Scrivenering, and any other way you write your stories. This workshop will demonstrate how to setup a project; create timelines, with chapters, places, and notes; and show an example of a work in progress.

    So the Book is Done...Now What? | with Kim Taylor Blakemore

    Your book is done. You have an idea you want to look for an agent, that the agent will find a publisher, that the publisher will publish the book. But what are all the steps between? Who does what in publishing? What are my roles and responsibilities? What are first serial rights? Right of first refusal? What's a style sheet? Using my own experience publishing with Lake Union Publishing, Viking, and HarperCollins, and indie publishing through my own imprint, Sycamore Creek Press, I will walk you through the steps from "The End" to your book's release day.

    Plan Your Creative Year

    It's our annual Plan your Creative Year workshop! Let's gather to focus our dreams into goals and those goals into tasks. We will use a handout based on The One system to get a head start on the upcoming year. Less chaos, more time to write, more time for life.

    Custom Workshops

    Please let me know what your group is interested in learning! I can create custom workshops on Craft of Fiction, Writing Historical Fiction, Amping the Tension, and other writing skills.