MERCURY INTENSIVE FICTION WRITING WORKSHOP

Seeking participants for a first-time DIY Philly fiction writers workshop series, intensive for the month of June 2021, facilitated by M. Téllez (aka me, check the About if you need more info). If you are interested in participating, READ THIS PAGE and fill out the interest survey at the bottom. The survey will close on May 17th, 10pm EST, and you will hear back by May 21st.

• Storytelling critique focused
• Sci-fi, fantasy, magic, smut welcome
• No MFAs
• No career path academics or those currently connected to school resources
• Priority to Philly native and long-time residents

Logistics

Must be able to commit to meeting 2-3 times a week. Sessions will be 2 hours and start with a brief 20-30 minute mini lesson or topic overview, followed by a 40-50 minute writing period, with 50-60 minutes for sharing and critiquing. Exact schedule, size of class, and other scheduling procedures will be set based on survey feedback.

Participants will be asked to submit brief, anonymous feedback after each session for the sake of improving the subsequent sessions.

Materials needed: Your favorite writing implements, your voice, imagination, fear, and hope. Be prepared to read your work and others’ aloud.

Meeting place TBD but very likely digital with some in-person moments, depending on the capacities of the group. Currently considering utilizing Discord as the virtual meeting space, which has capacity for different 24/7 chatrooms and audio/video sharing on desktop and mobile.

We will have a celebratory reading event at the end of the intensive.

Guiding Principles

This workshop is intended to be an alternative to prohibitively expensive, physically inaccessible writing workshops that center values of the publishing industry, art and academic institutions, and the imperialist/Eurocentric conception of the written word in general.

Participants will build up a reciprocal teaching-learning practice with each other, gaining technique, discipline, and confidence in our abilities to write, critique, speak witness to truth, and tell powerful stories. We will hone our PURPOSE for the stories we tell, consider our AUDIENCE, our INTENT and REPERCUSSIONS, and sharpen our abilities to know how, what, and why we are communicating in the long form of THE STORY.

Consider this as though entering into a martial arts practice that requires your dedication and follow-through.

We will use what we already have on hand.

Divination tools welcome.

Tentative Schedule

Throughout the intensive we will cover facets of storytelling such as drafting, characters, plot, setting, style, research, editing, self-publishing, and performance. Classic Western conflict-driven narrative will be decentered if so we choose, along with other “supposed-tos” of writing for the professional, academy, and publishing industries.

Each week will utilize a prompt point. We may write new stories or work on existing pieces, depending. I will not necessarily lead every session, and some may find themselves invited or called to facilitate as we forge our practice.

WEEK 1 – “A FANFIC”

WEEK 2 – “AN OBSESSION OR POSSESSION”

WEEK 3 – “A CHANGE”

WEEK 4 – “THE END OF A STRUGGLE”

Backstory

On May 1st, 2021 I found out that I didn’t get into yet another writing workshop I was really hoping to get into. I was like, damn I’m tired of this—I was looking forward to being forced to write a bunch of short stories, I’m having a hard time finishing my novel’s first draft, and I just feel myself at this juncture where I neeed help and feedback from a community of peers damn. I decided that morning I was going to start my own workshop, and do it in a way that myself and my peers all benefited. So this is an ambitious, experimental, DIY, first-time thing that will largely be determined by our own efforts and capacities. I hope we all get everything we need from it.

This intensive is not tied to any institution and does not have any funding from outside sources (aka I’m taking a financial loss to do this). Anyone who wishes to financially support this endeavor can purchase items from my shop, get a paid subscription to my newsletter, or send funds with note “♊️♍️” or “mercury” to $magusm0nk (cashapp) or @cyborgmemoirs (venmo). Interested participants, there is NO pressure on you to pay to participate here.

Interest Survey aka the Application

https://forms.gle/Fh8WAEumLKvAT62W9