Building a Confident Writing Voice with Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond

One of the biggest hurdles to confident expression is fear (of what others might think or say; that your story isn’t good enough or worth being told). How can we push through these insecurities and free ourselves to write authentically? In this 4.5-hour writing intensive, we’ll confront those fears in a series of writing prompts and exercises designed to help you tap into and free your truest, strongest voice.

Course Outline

Hour 1: Tapping Into Your Voice
Tapping into your voice begins with sitting with the question(s) that consume you. In other words, the things you wonder about can lead you to the wonder of the unique way you see, hear, feel the world we share. In this first hour, we will engage in a series of writing exercises which will help you access what distinguishes your voice from other writers.

Hour 2: Freeing Your Voice
Voice is choice. In other words, our voice is expressed in the choices we make to highlight certain details, omit others, and what we decide to focus on. In this hour, you will “rewrite” a provided passage based on what you choose to prioritize.

Hour 3: Expressing Your Voice
Every notice that your favorite writers tend to return to the same topics and themes across their body of work? One of the most important choices a writer makes is expressing what matters to them. In this hour, a series of prompts will help you access and write into the subjects/themes you are most passionate about.

Hour 4: Strengthening Your Voice
Building authority on a topic you are passionate about strengthens your voice, and you can do that by increasing your knowledge through reading, research, and interviews. In this hour, you’ll take turns interviewing different writers in the workshop about the subject that matters most to you.

Last Half-Hour: Sharing Your Voice
In this last half hour, we’ll celebrate each other’s voices with a reading of your work.
You can choose to share something you started in this workshop or anything else that you feel reflects your voice.

Capacity: 20