Finishing School

All the resources you need to reach the end.

An asynchronous course teaching you new organizational skills, time management, and mindset practices to help you finish a long-term writing project.

Finishing School: Asynchronous Edition

What does it mean to be an expert or a novice in writing?
What attitude do you need to have in order to finish drafts effectively?
How to course correct and how to keep the ‘fun’ parts of writing while making progress
How to record progress and determine your own unique process
How to utilize community
The best way to sort through feedback and approach your work in a new way
My history with finishing projects/revision
Overcoming the idea that it has to be the hardest or longest part of a project
A new approach and perspective on revision + finishing

How to make writing feel safe
Switching from logistics mode to creativity mode
Creating a physical and temporal space for writing
Identifying organizational success in your life
Understanding how you view your work and yourself
The influence of identity on motivation and how to harness it to make progress
Identifying the value in your work
Estimating time, effort, and difficulty to predict project timelines
Situating yourself in the art community
Predictions, timing, and when your work makes it into the world
What do you have control over and what is an experiment?

How to enjoy your work
What happens in private vs. public
How to sustain work through faith, enjoyment, and promotion,
Forming a healthy relationship with your unique goals vs. wanting the work to be universally liked
How to consistently move through the draft by making progress in different areas
How to tackle unpleasant tasks within the project
Where to put complex ideas
How to write freely while still working towards the goal of publication
Separating the work from self-image
Re-framing the goal of publication to focus on being a part of the literary community

Exercises for figuring out if a project is a short story or a novel
Making decisions based on your relationship to a story
Identifying character arcs
Examples of satisfying endings
Clarifying your relationship to the reader and the story
Giving up control and taking control
What to offer readers and what to withhold
Practical tips for writing the ending first or creating the story out of order
How to leave your future self clues while writing
Creating complex yet self-contained stories
Evaluating when the work is finished

Identifying your revision stages
How to put them in order
New possibilities for what revision could look like and take less time + be less painful
Valuing and bringing in more realization to the story
Capitalizing on notes, vibes, story ideas
How to make sustainable progress in a way that matches the story
Intercepting overwhelm and frequent negative inner voices
How to wield community, accountability, readers, inspiration, and structure to make progress and get where you’re going
Practical tips for actions to take in a draft to move it forward
When and how to apply practical skills to create space for your creativity

Upon registration, you gain immediate access to the classroom portal where you can study your video lectures + pdfs of lecture slides.