This October and November, you can join SmokeLong for a series of webinar/workshops focused on generating drafts, refining drafts, and finally—finally—polishing drafts for publication. When you sign up for this workshop series, SmokeLong Fitness is automatically included.
What is SmokeLong Fitness?
SmokeLong Fitness is the community workshop of SmokeLong. We work on one writing task each week in small groups of around 15 helpful and kind writers. We love workshopping, and we hope you do too. Hundreds of our participants each year get their work published and are therefore eligible to enter The SmokeLong Workshop Prize–first prize $500–a free-to-enter competition.
The Webinar/Workshops (All recorded for participants unable to attend live)
October 5. Noon NYC online. High Intensity Interval Training for Flash Writers: Autumn 2024 Edition – with Ingrid Jendrzejewski
Bring a pen, lots of paper, and your water bottle: this is a high-intensity guided-writing work-out designed to kickstart creativity, and push you into new territory, and exercise flash muscles you didn’t even know you had.
Maybe you’re stuck in a story and looking for a way to proceed. Maybe you’re looking to generate new ideas. Maybe your inner editor is holding you back. Maybe you’re in a rut or have writers’ block or are just wanting to shake things up a bit. This session is designed to tackle all these issues and help you level up your flash fitness.
Writers of all backgrounds and experience levels warmly welcome, and the workout has been updated with brand new prompts and exercises to offer new challenges to those who joined in last season. Come along, roll up your sleeves, and trust the process!
Ingrid Jendrzejewski received a BFA in Creative Writing and BA in English Literature at the University of Evansville before going on to earn a BA and MSci in Natural Sciences (Physics) at the University of Cambridge. She has worked on text input tools that use probabilistic predictive language models and also as a developer for a popular mmorpg, where she wrote and coded a number of quests, minigames and in-game events. Ingrid currently serves as Co-Director of National Flash Fiction Day and Editor in Chief of FlashBack Fiction. She has published hundreds of shortform pieces and her short collection Things I Dream About When I’m Not Sleeping was a runner up for BFFA’s first Novella-in-Flash competition. You can find her at ingridj.com and on Twitter @LunchOnTuesday.
October 26. 3pm NYC online. Draft Done! Now What? – with Sara Lippmann
Huzzah, draft done! But the end, of course, is just the beginning. In this lively 90-minute webinar, we’ll discuss various approaches to revision. How to dig deeper into our intentions? How do we unearth those intentions if they’re murky in the first place? What warrants expansion, compression, or belongs on the cutting room floor? Honoring our individual styles and sensibilities, we will put intuition and integrity to the task of “seeing again” as we best excavate the story we want to tell. Bring all your questions for candid discussion.
SARA LIPPMANN is the author of the novel Lech and the story collections Doll Palace and Jerks. Her fiction has won the Lilith Prize, been honored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, and her essays have appeared in The Millions, The Washington Post, Catapult, The Lit Hub and elsewhere. With Seth Rogoff, she co-edited the forthcoming anthology Smashing the Tablets: Radical Retellings of the Hebrew Bible for SUNY Press. A freelance manuscript editor, she has been teaching creative writing for over 20 years to students of all ages, most recently with the teaching cooperative Writing Co-lab, of which she is a founding member.
November 10. 11am NYC online. Polishing for Publication – with Christopher Allen
What does it mean in flash for a narrative to be polished, solid, and ready for publication? In this 90-minute webinar/workshop we’ll examine our works in progress with nuance in mind to reach beyond formula to produce final drafts that are compelling, innovative, and exciting.
Christopher Allen is the publisher and EIC of SmokeLong Quarterly. Each year Allen and the editors of SmokeLong read nearly 12,000 flash narratives. He is the author of the flash collection Other Household Toxins and the satire Conversations with S. Teri O’Type. His work has appeared in over 100 journals and anthologies including Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton), The Best Small Fictions, The Bath Flash Fiction Award anthologies and more. Allen has judged The Bridport Prize, The Bath Flash Fiction Award, The Cambridge Flash Fiction Award, New Zealand’s Micro Madness and more. He and his husband are nomads.
Pricing
All 3 webinar/workshops, All SmokeLong Events and SmokeLong Fitness during October/November, General Feedback on one draft from 3 SmokeLong senior editors — $155 BOOK HERE
All 3 webinar/workshops (no participation in SmokeLong Fitness/Events), General Feedback on one draft from 3 SmokeLong senior editors — $125 BOOK HERE
Each webinar individually (in shop 10 days before each event) — $39
Pricing for SmokeLong Fitness Participants*
(Payment details in the workshop!)
All 3 webinar/workshops (2 already included in SmokeLong Fitness), Senior Editor Critique (specific feedback from one editor) — $55
The third webinar only — $29
*If you are signed up for SmokeLong Fitness by September 30.
Included in the price of SmokeLong Fitness: