Hi Writers,
Andrea Firth here. I’m your instructor for The Forever Workshop—Finding Your Essay’s Heartbeat. During this course, we’ll be reading and discussing a wide range of personal essays and writing our own essays, too. Sometimes, a personal essay requires us to re-imagine what happened in the past because our memories are incomplete, but we’ll still be writing true stories as best we can.
In this workshop, we’re going to take a deep dive into what makes an essay work and discover what your personal story is about and what it means. Each lesson will include 2-3 readings, short (but still craft fantastic) essays to make the load manageable.
We’ll cover all the essential parts of creating an essay including:
Tapping Memory and Finding Ideas
Scene Building and Structures
Dialogue and Points of View
Meaning Making; Beginnings, Endings and Titles
The Craft at Work
Revision Strategies
Get the vibe: Lesson 1 is free for everyone.
Paid subscribers can access this and all our workshops for $10/mo(cancel anytime)
Feedback from subscribers who took this workshop
“I’ve taken a lot of online courses over the years, and this one blew my mind! The lessons, readings, craft techniques, exercises…all of it was next level for me. I felt like I was in an MFA class. I especially gained a lot from Andrea’s lesson on finding the heartbeat in essays. Finding it in other writers’ work is helping me locate (and hone) it in my own. Thank you, Andrea!”
“Can you keep teaching more - lol- I got so much out of this. Thank you for doing this.”
“I have taken "many" writing courses over the past decade (memoir, poetry, hybrid, flash); this one was, indeed, stand-out and outstanding. The pacing was perfect, the instructor (Andrea Firth), enormously informed and involved, and the sample essays—superb. I will, undoubtedly, revisit this material often. I now have a brilliant set of 'practical' craft tools to further my study of this form.”
“I was impressed with the quality of each lesson. I feel like I can revise and submit some of my previous drafts and update previous pieces that were rejected and submit someplace else.”
Hi Vedika. Thanks! and yes more great essays to come. And yes, we'll follow a six-art prompt in Lesson #6 that will guide you to get a full essay down in one sitting. Plus I'll provide ideas to get you writing along the way too. Happy to have you here.
Hey Andrea! The listed essays are so wonderful! Can’t wait to read & learn more and of course write :p