Whale Rock Workshops

Gary Schmidt and Patti Gauch team up for the novel workshop by the glorious shores of Lake Huron. Writers will come together for a week of workshops, craft talks, one-on-one editing and mentoring sessions, and readings.

The heart of our days will be good writerly work. In large group sessions, we'll talk about the major elements of fiction and how those might be used in your stories. In small group sessions, we'll focus on your writing, workshopping it and testing it for voice, for meaning, for alternate perspectives and for point of view. You'll learn to hone your writing skills as we workshop and come away, we hope, with a stronger sense of writerly gifts, with a new community of writers, and with pieces that might be sent out into the world to reach young audiences.

This class is for experienced writers ready to work hard! You will write and learn from morning until night. You will be given on the spot prompts and writing assignments with short turn around times, and you will be expected to make revisions and edits as well. If you are someone who does not like writing under pressure, this is not the workshop for you, and we encourage you to explore our mentorship and retreat programs which are more self-driven.

PLEASE NOTE: We continue to give tremendous thought to your health and safety as well as the health and safety of our staff and instructors. Our in person workshop is designed to make use of outdoor space and a large, screened in porch during inclement weather. All events will be held outdoors except in the case of strong winds, forest fire smoke, or rain. For the safety of our instructors, in person students will be asked to exercise caution for two weeks prior to our workshop. They may be asked to test for Covid, and wear masks when indoors or close to our instructors for the first half of the week.

Please read the following webpage for a more detailed description of our time together: https://www.whalerockworkshops.com/young-adult-and-middle-grade-master-skills-workshop