September 19-23, 2022 11:00am-1:00pm PST | 7:00pm-9pm GMT

Cohort 3

Learn how to overcome imposter syndrome, achieve flow, and gain the right tools to finally create your life's work. 

Alexandra Kostoulas

Finding Your Creative Spark Bootcamp

Whether you write novels, blog posts, stories, plays, or poems, this 3-day workshop will take your self-doubt, inertia, fears, and change them into confidence and a never-ending flow of ideas. Get expert guidance to rekindle your creative spark. Write your best work in the new year. Map out your whole year and set goals for your writing with a trusted coach.

Find Your Creative Spark

Novice Writers. You've always wanted to write, but up until now, life has gotten in the way.&nbsp;

Seasoned Writers. You've been working on your writing project for a long time, but you're currently encountering a block.

Content Creators. You've been suddenly tasked with writing as part of your job.

Who is this mini bootcamp is for

Topics covered

Whether it's due to lack of support, micro-aggressions, or a difficult world, artists are sensitive and often our own worst critics. We'll uncover what causes imposter syndrome in all of us and use simple but proven effective techniques to address the root of what silences us.

How to Deal with Imposter Syndrome in a Creative Context

No matter whether we are beginners or professional writers, we all face the blank page. In this workshop you'll learn how to leverage those anxieties and integrate them into your process.

How to Find Joy In Writing & Not Just Having Written

We'll use the universal elements that run through all types of narrative writing in our own writing through guided writing exercises engineered to help you immediately apply them to your work.

How to Use Universal Storytelling Techniques to Craft Hot New Work

We'll begin drafting work in class and you will receive both instructor and peer feedback on your writing that you can immediately implement to make your specific project come into focus.

How to Get Better at What You Struggle With Using the Creative Process

We'll go over how to use goal-setting techniques and forecasting and how to use these strategically to map out the rest of your month and year creatively, always careful to allot for real life situations and the creative context. We'll plan out our creative year together.

How to use Goal Setting and Forecasting as a Creative Person

Author, All That's Left Unsaid, and 
Los Angeles Times Reporter

Author of “Cauldrons,” San Francisco high school teacher

See what people are saying

This bootcamp is broken up into three main parts: <ul><li>Mindset</li><li>Creation</li><li>Envisioning</li></ul>

We will focus on mindset and dive right into writing new work before we even know what's happening.

We will focus solely on shaping the narrative and the writing, feedback and critique.

We will envision the future, the end of our piece and map out our year.

What we will cover each week

Meet your maven

We'll expose imposter syndrome as writers, break down where the term came from and I'll show you a simple but effective technique for thwarting it when it rears its ugly head in your own creative process.

Mindset- Overcoming Imposter Syndrome & Obliterating Fear

We'll create new work from several writing prompts that help you get at the core of what you want to say and talk about the dynamics of storytelling in the pieces you just wrote and how to write ideas on the page.

Practice - Writing Prompts to Get You Unstuck

We'll go over some universal principles of good storytelling together as they apply to the structure of a narrative in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, or dramatic writing. You'll ideate and begin to draft a new piece or a new part of an old piece you want to finish in class with these principles as a guide, leaving the session with promising new work

Creating - Crafting a Narrative

You'll share your new work with the group and accountability partners, receive peer and instructor feedback and an individualized strategy session how to move forward with your work.

Deadlines - Submit Work For Class Feedback & Support

We'll go over the work that we liked and provide a sounding board for the artist to pitch new ideas and try out new pieces of writing on our ears.

Applying - Instructor Feedback & Critique

We'll use techniques like scripting, goal setting, forecasting, recasting to plot your writing goals on a timeline for the rest of the week, month and year. Together we will derive strategies to hold ourselves accountable and produce a metric for what success looks like for ourselves in each of our unique projects.

Envisioning - Goal setting & (Gently) holding yourself accountable

Course syllabus

More about SF Creative Writing Institute

This course focuses on live workshops and hands-on projects

Active learning, not passive watching

Surround yourself with like-minded people who want to grow alongside you

Learn with a cohort of peers

Form bonds with people just like you from all over the world.

Meet creative people from all over the world

You got this! You have it in you. Imagine how good you'll feel on the path to accomplishing your goals in 2023!

Finish the piece you've been dreaming about

This course was designed from years of working with creatives. Gain insight and understanding from a working artist.

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