The COMPLETE Coffee Shop Writer Series: Blast through barriers to start and finish projects!
The Complete Course Bundle Includes the 4 Coffee Shop PDFs!
Who is Coffee Shop Writer for?
My methods are designed to help new writers begin and experienced writers finish a challenging project by going back to some basics. These simple methods fast-track your writing goals. Just print out the work book, or work through the lessons on your laptop with this fillable PDF.
All 4 Course Descriptions Below:
ONE: How to Start Writing a Book, Article or Screenplay with Stuff You Already Have!
Writers block happens when new authors fear their writing won't be any good, or they don't know what to write about. Or they want to make a living as a "full-time writer" and don't have a clue how to make that happen.
Your productivity will make it happen!
My 20-page workbook provides simple and fun writing prompts and methods for creating fiction, nonfiction, screenplays, poems or articles by gathering all the "stuff" you've created for other reasons. I use them all the time and believe you'll benefit.
We don't hesitate to write tweets, Instagram posts, emails or diary entries. It is only when we say "I want to be a writer" that we cramp up and worry. My Coffee Shop Writer Series helps you soar over hurdles to enjoy your free, fun creativity.
Coffee Shop Writers Stay Mobile
You don't need a writing room or even your own desk to begin. Stay mobile. Grab 10 to 30 minutes in a coffee shop or on a park bench.
Print out your workbook and make notes on those pages, or work with the course on your laptop -- it is a PDF with fillable spaces.
Your mobility helps keep the writing natural and without anxiety. Find new spaces to explore your art. Avoid staring at a blank page with the Coffee Shop Writers workbook.
Do you scribble notes on napkins, scraps of paper or whatever is available? That stuff is gold. Hold onto it.
Do you have a purpose for becoming a writer? Or a purpose writing a particular project? Great. We'll use that to keep you on track.
Do you have crazy dreams and daydreams? Jot them down quickly. They are telling you something about your genius.
Each section of the Coffee Shop Writer workbook is concise and includes simple tasks to get you started. Once you have read the contents, go back and do each step. Action builds confidence. It is a great feeling to finish what you begin!
Creation Strategies: Make it Happen
Starting Here, Starting Now
Chapter Creation
Story Force!
Your Rough Draft
Summary
Create a Book, Article or Screenplay
Move Forward with Short Tasks
Second Draft
Essential Next Step
Summary
Continue Creating: Social Media, Purpose and Crazy Dreams
New Social Media, Purpose & Crazy Dreams
Make Sequences
The Driving Force of Purpose
The Multi-Purpose Method
Do You Have Crazy Dreams?
Screenwriter Welcomes “Anything”
Master Simple Techniques
In Conclusion: Never Stop
TWO: When Fiction Calls: Creative Writing Prompts for Coffee Shop Writers
Is Your Novel or Short Story Collection Ready to Happen?
Part 2 of the Coffee Shop Writer Series builds on the lessons taught in "How to Start a Book, Article or Screenplay" by focusing on creating writing prompts and methods for fiction.
In this 19-page workbook is designed to help you overcome writers block and start writing. I share personal challenges and the creative writing prompts I used to write my novel The Memory Songbook. You'll discover strategies and techniques for shaping your first draft and then polishing your story so that it can be published.
Do you have a novel or screenplay you began but could not finish? Let's go back to that material with a fresh plan for using what is best in your writing and blending it with new dimensions.
The paradoxical method of Purpose vs. Crazy Dreams is an important element for moving forward and imagining new scenes and characters for your story.
I also go into the details of my game plan for dealing with the emotional ups and downs of creating your fiction. You'll have glorious days of near endless creativity and dark days when you doubt your story. This is typical and a maddening cycle you can overcome -- with a plan.
Another unique aspect of the Coffee Shop Writer Series is using the time you have -- even if it means stealing small portions of your day and week to move forward. It is not necessary to be a "full time" writer to make progress. In fact, in the beginning, it may be liberating to write only for yourself in the time that you have.
The contents of When Fiction Calls is divided into two sections!
These initial steps encourage you to gather what you have, while also borrowing from other projects. The second section explores goes deeper into the emotional aspects of writing fiction while sprinting toward the finish line. There will always be more to do, so get on track early and stick to the plan.
Fiction Creation Strategies: Gather and Borrow
Seminal Events
Plan the Work, Work the Plan
Challenges, Setbacks, New Rules
Fiction Expansion Strategies: Writing is Revision and Re-Seeding
Mood Swings, Adapting to Circumstances
Titles, Revising, Editing
Find Your Form
THREE: Impress & Win a Literary Agent: Leverage 'Old School' with Social Media
Times change, but the 'old school' methods of courtesy, clarity and respect will strengthen your appeal to agents. This is true for fiction and nonfiction authors, screenwriters, poets and playwrights.
Yet many writers have found representation by being savvy with social media. Likely you already have a presence online. Now use it as a substitute for the classic query letter many writers use when contacting agents.
This concise 4-page workbook gives you the 'old school' language and format that you can revise and repurpose to suit the projects you wish to share via social media. Use the same techniques I share in How to Start a Book, Article or Screenplay.
Simple yet powerful techniques will help you get the attention of experienced professional agents!
The 13 insights for writing to an agent will give you confidence by clarifying your strategy. Here are a few:
7. If you’ve had anything published, mention it: articles, short stories, fiction or non-fiction, self-help, etc.
8. If you’ve won, or got to the finals of any legitimate writing contest, mention it.
9. If you’ve studied in a respected writing program, mention it. (UCLA, USC, NYU, Iowa Writers Workshop and some others are respected.)
This may sound obvious, but I've listened to many agents and other professionals say they lose patience with queries that don't spell their names correctly. Really? Be a pro. Know who you're talking to.
Some authors freeze when they attempt to describe the novel, screenplay or nonfiction book they wish to sell. The sample letters reveal simple ways to describe your story. Sometimes a comparison within a genre of other titles can help focus your pitch.
A blend of 'old school' and online savvy can take you a long way. Get the basics right and you may be the next talented writer to land a literary agent!
FOUR: The Memory Songbook -- "What if your favorite songs could bring back memories?"
A forgotten manuscript. A lifetime of memories. One moment from the past could transform his future.
When Frank first touched a guitar, everything changed. Years later, with his music career’s next big moment on the horizon, he’s called home to care for his ailing mother.
As he loses her bit by bit to Alzheimer’s, Frank finds a manuscript he wrote that describes a miraculous day during the Summer of Love. Between the lines, he recalls the passions that shaped his youth — first love, worship of guitar god Pete Townshend, and the accidental discovery that music has the potential to cure memory loss.
Frank is pulled back in time—in the magical way a favorite song can take you back—and he reconnects with all the things his 17-year-old self found exciting. But it’s one more treasure, the forgotten memory of one magical day, that could save his mother, his music, and his future...
The Memory Songbook is the first installment in the Songbook series. Like John Carney’s films "Sing Street" and “Once” the novel blends the enticement of music with the illumination of lyrical storytelling that shifts between the winter and summer of a prolific songwriter’s life...
Buy The Memory Songbook and unveil the magical mystery of why some songs have the power to take you back! Way back!
"A true treasure!"
"At 17 Frank didn't think he had a past. At 50 Frank feared he had no future. They are both wrong." "Cool. Good book. More like a YA thing. Not a bad read ..." By the author of The Christmas Guitar Songbook and The Sideman Songbook and other stories."Brings to light the raw emotions that young people are feeling towards the elderly."
—Midwest Book Review