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Why this workshop?

If you are an aspiring novelist or narrative non-fiction writer looking for in-depth feedback on your work, this is the writing workshop for you. Please join me as we work together to bring your dreams to fruition.

The Essential Writer Workshop  will be a craft-oriented workshop with the focus squarely on your work-in-progress, and what I can do to help you unlock the potential of the story you want to tell. The workshop will be limited to 10 students in order to provide each participant an opportunity for a small group learning experience as well as two one-on-one consultations with me.
  • Come if you are at the very beginning of your first novel or memoir, with little more than an idea and a few scenes, and you're looking for some direction and a lot of encouragement.
  • Come if you have a complete manuscript and feel the need for some considered feedback, as well as suggestions for how to tackle your next draft.
  • Come if you are in the midst of your work-in-progress and feel as if you could use a few road signs to help you find your way to the destination.
  
Join me for a 10-week adventure, and welcome!
                                                                              Carol Dougherty

Please note: the workshop is currently being offered on a weekly basis by invitation only. If/when that changes I’ll put it on the website. Thanks!

Why Write?

...because you have something to say, and have no other way to say it

...because you are passionate about your story

...because, as Lin-Manuel Miranda (Pulitzer Prize winner for the Broadway musical Hamilton) said to the 2016 graduates at the University of Pennsylvania, "Your stories are essential."
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Carol Dougherty, Instructor - Photo by Gail Provost-Stockwell

Why Essential?

It sounds a bit pretentious or arrogant to say this workshop is essential. However, when I chose the workshop title The Essential Writer Workshop WRW the word essential did not refer to the workshop. Take a look at Lin-Manuel Miranda's quote in the left column - it is you, the writer, that is essential. You and your stories.

Everyone has experience that is completely unique to them as a human being. Even identical twins have a different experience of life from one another. That uniqueness is what makes you and your stories essential. No one else but you can share them in the way you can, with what you know and feel.

This workshop is not essential - you are!
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L to R: Carol Dougherty, David Corbett, Donald Maass, Grace Wynter at Writer Unboxed Unconference November 2019 - Grace, David, and Don have all taught at the residential workshops, Don for more than 25 years!
100 WAYS GIVEN NEW LIFE!
WRW founder, the late Gary Provost's book,100 Ways to Improve Your Writing has been given new life by Penguin Random House in the form of an updated/revised edition. WRW co-founder, Gail Provost Stockwell worked on the project for years, and finally commissioned the revisions herself (done by WRW director, Carol Dougherty, Nushka, and PRH editor Tracy Bernstein), and Penguin Random House gave it the go-ahead. The original edition was published in 1985, long before laptops and tablets and the Internet we know today, and it's never been out of print. Now available wherever books are sold!
"Your voice as a writer is the sum of all the choices you make."
                                                                                                                     Gary Provost