Catapult Your Writing: A Three-Day Workshop

HOW IT WORKS

This workshop is a three-day intensive which will expose writers to the critique process in a positive environment and foster the idea of collaboration as an imperative skill. The fine art of critiquing will be taught so writers are ready to work with editors, understand that criticism is not personal, and look at their own work in a clearer, more honest way. Topics addressed in the workshop include: Craft, style, plot, characterization, grammar, and more. This community experience will expose writers to each other at all stages of the development. Every work will be considered by its intention in a supportive and safe environment with the focus on making the manuscripts the best they can be in the time shared.

• Students must be accepted into the workshop by submitting a ten (10) page writing sample.
• Once accepted, students will be expected to critique three (3) pieces of writing, ten (10) pages each, and participate in class.
• There will be a limit of twelve (12) students in this workshop.

WHAT IT INCLUDES

• Three days of “workshopping” manuscripts (Thursday-Saturday: 9-11 am, 1:15-2:15 pm)
• Plus, access to ALL of the sessions for the Virtual MWW20

HOW TO APPLY

Submissions must be emailed by June 1, 2020, to ensure that all students have plenty of time to complete the three (3) necessary critiques before the workshop begins. This is a hard deadline. No extensions will be given for any reason.

• Submissions must follow Standard Manuscript Format:
  • Send all manuscripts as attached Word document (.doc/.docx)
  • Font: Times Roman, Arial, or Courier, 12 point
  • Margins: 1 inch on all sides
  • Paragraph indentation: 0.5 inches
  • Left justification; one space between sentences
  • First page: your name and contact information in the top left corner
  • Manuscripts: double-spaced
• Email to midwestwriters@yahoo.com with Subject Line: Catapult Your Writing Application
• Acceptance letters/emails will be sent no later than June 15.

THE FACULTY

MATTHEW CLEMENS and his collaborator, Max Allan Collins, have penned 17 TV tie-in novels including CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: Miami, Dark Angel, Bones, and Criminal Minds. Twilight Tales published the pair’s collected short stories in My Lolita Complex and Other Tales of Sex and Violence. They have also authored the Reeder and Rogers thrillers You Can’t Stop Me, No One Will Hear You, What Doesn’t Kill Her, and Supreme Justice, Fate of the Union, and Executive Order for Thomas & Mercer.

LARRY D. SWEAZY is a multiple-award winning author of fifteen Western and mystery novels, including The Lost are the Last to Die, See Also Proof: A Marjorie Trumaine Mystery, A Thousand Falling Crows, Vengeance at Sundown, and The Rattlesnake Season. He won the WWA (Western Writers of America) Spur award for Best Short Fiction in 2005 and for Best Paperback Original in 2013. Larry is also a two-time winner of the Will Rogers Medallion Award for Western Fiction for two books in the Josiah Wolfe Texas Ranger series–-which returns in 2020. He was nominated for a Derringer award in 2007, was a finalist in the Best Books of Indiana literary competition in 2010 and won in 2011. He also won the inaugural Elmer Kelton Book Award in 2013 and the Willa Award in 2019. Larry has published over 80 nonfiction articles and short stories.

“As a writer I’m essentially just trying to impersonate a first-time reader, who picks up the story and has to decide, at every point, whether to keep going.” — George Saunders