Three great workshops coming soon: Writing & Revising, How to Make Yourself Write, and Writing Your Life & Other True Stories

Writing and Revising

Saturday, May 26, 2018

10:00 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Oakville Central Library, Auditorium, 120 Navy Street, Oakville, Ontario. (Map here)

If you want to refine your story-telling skills and cut the time you will need to spend editing, this workshop is for you. You'll learn how to step back from a manuscript in order to find – and fix – flaws in your plot, structure, characterization and style. You'll learn how to rethink, rework and rewrite so that your manuscript will live up to your vision.

Special Option: You’re invited to bring the first 500 – 1,000 words of one of your pieces of writing. You don’t need to bring anything, but if you do, three copies could be helpful.

Fee: $43.36 + 13% hst = $49 paid in advance or $46.90 + 13% hst = $53  at the door

To reserve a spot now, email: brianhenry@sympatico.ca

How to Make Yourself Write

A Creativity Workout

Saturday, June 9, 2018

1:00 – 4:30 p.m.

London Public Library, Tonda Room, 251 Dundas St, London, Ontario (Map here)

Let's get motivated! This workshop is designed to help you find the time and the inspiration to write. No more staring at a blank screen. Come to this workshop and give yourself a kick-start, and then learn how to keep going. This creativity workout will get your words flowing and help you make the breakthrough into the next level of writing.

Fee: $37.17 + 13% hst = $42 paid in advance or $39.82 + 13% hst = $45  at the door

To reserve a spot now, email: brianhenry@sympatico.ca

Writing your life and other true stories

With guest author Ross Pennie

Saturday, June 23, 2018

10: a.m. – 4 p.m.

Unity Church, Unit 8, 3075 Ridgeway Drive, Mississauga, Ontario (Don’t look for a steeple. Unity Church is a unit in a business mall and looks nothing like a church. Map here.)

Have you ever considered writing your memoirs or family history? This workshop will introduce you to the tricks and conventions of telling true stories and will show you how to use the techniques of the novel to recount actual events. Whether you want to write for your family or for a wider public, don't miss this workshop.

Ross Pennie is the author of The Unforgiving Tides, a doctor’s memoir of Papua New Guinea (Manor House Publishing). Ross also writes medical mystery novels, published by ECW Press. The first of these, Tainted, came out in 2010 and won Arts Hamilton Literary Award for Fiction. He’s followed up with three more medical mysteries: Tampered, Up in Smoke, and Beneath the Wake. (For more about Ross's mysteries or to buy one, see here). 

At the workshop, Ross will speak on how to turn ordinary life into dramatic material and will answer questions about how he wrote his memoir and got it published.

Fee: $37.17 + hst = $42 in advance or $39.82 + hst = $45  at the door

To reserve a spot now, email: brianhenry@sympatico.ca

Workshop leader Brian Henry has been a book editor and creative writing instructor for more than 25 years. He publishes Quick Brown Fox, Canada’s most popular blog for writers, teaches creative writing at Ryerson University and has led workshops everywhere from Boston to Buffalo and from Sarnia to Charlottetown. But his proudest boast is that he has helped many of his students get published, including Ross Pennie, the guest speaker for the Writing Your Life workshop.

See reviews of Brian's classes and workshops here.

See Brian’s complete current schedule here, including writing workshops, weekly writing classes, and weekend retreats in Algonquin Park, Bolton, Barrie, Brampton, Burlington, Caledon, Collingwood, Cambridge, Georgetown, Guelph, Hamilton, Kingston, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Midland, Mississauga, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Saint John, NB, Sudbury, Toronto, Windsor, Woodstock, Halton, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York Region, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.