Chelsey teaches online creative writing classes with WOW! Women on Writing. Here is some info on her upcoming (and previous) classes:
FLASH TRAUMA NARRATIVE
START DATE: Monday, January 1, 2024
END DATE: Sunday, February 11, 2024
DURATION: 6 weeks
LOCATION: Private Forum
FEEDBACK: Weekly instructor feedback and edits with weekly or bi-weekly peer feedback
COST: $250
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Taking an experience and condensing it into under 1,000 words can be challenging. Taking a life-changing event—such as an experienced trauma—and condensing that into under 1,000 words can at times feel impossible. But trauma events are the perfect experiences to use in a flash piece because they are such huge, highly emotional moments that fitting those big EVENTS into tiny narratives is what can make for amazing writing. The class will explore different readings of trauma narratives and will invite participants to write about their own trauma—however they define that.
Flash Trauma Narrative will focus on generating flash essays through various approaches. Then, participants will pick one of their pieces they created in the class to refine and prepare for publication. The course will look at the importance of writing in scene, how structure can affect the way you tell your story, fun things you can do with literary devices and point of view in flash writing, and the best approaches for revising flash nonfiction. The class will also guide participants in the submission process and there will be some brief discussions about self-care and writing about trauma.
This 6-week class is asynchronous, meaning you work at your own pace throughout each week. Readings, lessons, discussion questions, and writing exercises will be provided every week. Every student will receive feedback on their weekly essays from both their peers and the instructor. All course materials will be provided by the instructor.
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER AND FOR MORE INFORMATION
WRITING IS REVISING: HOW TO BECOME A BETTER EDITOR by Chelsey Clammer
START DATE: Monday, February 19, 2024
END DATE: Sunday, March 17, 2024
DURATION: 4 weeks
COST: $180
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Writing Is Revising: How to Become a Better Editor is a 4-week online class in which participants will learn and practice different skills, tips, tricks, and perspectives on the process of revising—which isn’t just about commas and grammar rules you learned (and promptly forgot) way back when. Making revisions is its own type of creative process and it’s where the realwriting happens. Anyone can write, but the key to being a successful writer, is being a great editor of your own work. Whether publication is your main goal, or perhaps it’s just figuring out how to best convey what goes on inside your head, editing is what separates piles of word vomit from well-polished (and published!) tidy lines of words.
On the first day of class, students will submit to the instructor an essay they wrote and have been struggling with in terms of doing revisions. Over the course of the next four weeks, that essay will be revised by the instructor and other workshop participants every week so that the author can see how to edit different aspects of the essay. Through this, participants will gain knowledge of how to revise any piece of writing, will be able to identify and fix problem areas in their own work, and how to give and receive helpful feedback.
This class includes a 30-minute phone consultation.
More information on the class can be found HERE.
Not What But How: Improving Essays with a Focus on Craft, Not Content
START DATE: Monday, March 25, 2024
END DATE: Sunday, April 21, 2023
DURATION: 4 weeks
COST: $180
COURSE DESCRIPTION: You have a story to tell, but what’s the best way to tell it? Should you write about your relationship with your mother in the first person point of view or second? What about tense? Past, present, future? And how about the actual structure and organization of the story? Is a clear chronology of events the best way to write about your life?
In this four-week class, participants will be provided with 2-3 essays to read every week that will get us to explore different narrative structures. We’ll also look at a number of craft techniques such as juxtaposition, narrative time, rhythm, subtext, and metaphor that can all influence the essay in subtle, yet very significant ways. The goal of this workshop is to discover how the way we decide to tell a story is just as important as the story itself.
Click HERE for more information.
THE WOMEN WRITERS' BOOK GROUP: CRAZY GOOD WRITING
CLASS START DATE: Monday, April 29, 2024
CLASS END DATE: Sunday, May 26, 2024
DURATION: 4 weeks
COST: $180
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The purpose of this group is to act as a writer’s book group. What that means is that we will read a book together and learn different writing craft techniques from it. This month, we will be reading Madness by Marya Hornbacher. Reading the memoir as a guide, we will explore how we can write about mental illness in a way that is insanely good! It can be hard to convey an unbalanced mental state to the reader in both a clear and vibrant way. How can we describe what the lethargy and hopelessness of depression that will interest and engage the reader? How to write coherently about a psychotic state? We will look at both the larger aspects of an essay (narrative arc, structure, etc.) and the smaller mechanical aspects of writing (pace, rhythm, etc.) to discover the ways we can creatively and clearly convey what goes on in ours and others’ brains.
Sign up for the class HERE.
CURIOSITY AND CREATIVE NONFICTION
START DATE: Monday, June 3, 2024
END DATE: Sunday, June 30, 2024
DURATION: 4 weeks
LOCATION: Private Website
COST: $180
FEEDBACK: Weekly instructor feedback and edits with weekly or bi-weekly peer feedback
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Where do we get ideas for our writing? As nonfiction writers, we are inspired to write because of our experiences. But sometimes we don’t know how to put our experiences into words or how to write about them. This is where curiosity and research come to the rescue. This class will look at the different ways in which being curious about an experience, an event, an object, an anything that catches your attention can fuel your writing and bring a deeper level of meaning to what you write. By combining (fun!) research and personal experience, your writing can take on new meanings. Whether it’s looking up facts about caskets to write about your depression, or finding new forms to use as structures for your essays, this class is all about honing in on our curiosity and research skills to improve, fuel, and inspire our writing.
More information on the class can be found here.
PREVIOUS CLASSES
What Our Bodies Have To Say
START DATE: Monday, May 33, 2022
END DATE: Sunday, June 19, 2022
DURATION: 4 weeks
COST: $150
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The body is an unavoidable fact of our lives. As writers, we also know that the need to write is also an unavoidable fact of our lives. In this four-week class, students will read a variety of authors to explore the different ways that the body can be a part of our writing.
Participants will be provided with 2-3 essays to read every week that will get us to explore different narrative structures. We'll also look at a number of craft techniques such as juxtaposition, tone, use of metaphor, integrating research, and gestures that can all influence the essay in subtle, yet very significant ways. The goal of this workshop is to discover how the way we decide to tell a story is just as important as the story itself.
Click HERE for more information.
WHEN LIFE FISSURES: WRITING ABOUT GRIEF IN FRAGMENTS
CLASS DATES: Monday, July 4, 2022 - Sunday, July 31, 2022
DURATION: 4 weeks
COST: $150
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Grief is an experience that never feels complete. Yes, you can explain the chronology of what led to someone’s death and its aftermath, but the way that we experience grief is both cyclical and fragmented. How could it not be? There is something missing from our lives now, and so it makes sense to write about grief in a way that reflects our experience of it. In this course, we will read Bluets by Maggie Nelson and a handful of craft and other literary essays that explore different ways to write about grief. We'll look at the impact that metaphors and imagery have on grief narratives, and also focus on the importance of rhythm and pace to reflect our experience.
Sign up for the course HERE.
THE WOMEN WRITERS’ BOOK GROUP: IT’S OKAY, YOU CAN LAUGH by Chelsey Clammer
How to Write a Hilarious Truth-Telling Essay
START DATE: Monday, November 7, 2022
END DATE: Sunday, December 4, 2022
DURATION: 4 weeks
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The purpose of this group is to act as a writer’s book group. What that means is that we will read a book together and learn different writing craft techniques from it. This month we will be reading Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson and engage in an online discussion about different craft elements of the book, what works and what doesn’t. The book will help to guide our discussions on how we can take a not-so-funny situation or experience (say, mental illness or bad relationships), and approach writing it in a hilarious way. This isn’t to belittle or undercut the challenging aspects of life, but rather to conceive of them differently—something that can bring even more readers to your work! We’ll look at how structure, word choice, organization, and narrative voice can help readers relate to our struggles through a spot-on, call-it-like-it-is, hilarious truth-telling essay.
Each week, book group members will have the option to post her response to one of the writing exercises and/or the latest draft of the essay she started at the beginning of the course. Members will give brief feedback on every person’s work, and the instructor will provide thorough comments and revision suggestions each week. The group will be coordinated using a private forum on a website.
Click HERE to enroll!
FACE YOUR FEARS II: WOMEN WRITERS ANONYMOUS
CLASS DATES: Monday, September 26, 2021 - Sunday, November 7, 2021
DURATION: 6 weeks
COST: $200
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Face Your Fears II: Women Writers Anonymous is a 6-week online creative nonfiction class in which all of the participants are anonymous (with the exception of the instructor). Students will face the stories and situations in their lives that they swore they would NEVER write about, and then not only write them, but also receive feedback based on craft, not content. Students will read assigned essays to see how authors have written about traumatic/shameful events. By the end of the class, students will have a complete draft of their brave essay, as well as the knowledge and skills to help them revise a personal essay in a more objective way. NOTE: this is not group therapy.
This is an updated version of the original class. There will be new readings and topics explored.
Sign up for the course HERE.
Humor II: The Best Defense Against the Hot Mess that Is the Holiday Season
START DATE: Monday, November 15, 2021
END DATE: Sunday, December 12, 2021
DURATION: 4 weeks
COST: $150
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Holidays are stressful. We know this. What’s the best way to battle the annual holiday-induced chaos? Humor! Because making your relatives die of laughter does not carry the same prison sentence as actually killing them. Starting a few weeks before Thanksgiving, this four-week class will gleefully prance around the different techniques that make a piece of writing humorous.
Participants will be provided with 3-5 essays/stories/odd visuals to read every week that will be our tour guides of sorts in an exploration of literary humor. Focusing on imagery, word choice, format, tone and structure, we’ll discover the various ways we can give readers—and ourselves!—a good chuckle just from the inventive ways we put words on a page. The goal of this workshop is to understand the function of humor in literary texts and how it reaches beyond the ability to entertain. More important, the class will probably become a type of therapy to get you through the holidays. You’re welcome.
This is an updated version of the original class. There will be new readings and topics explored.
The Women Writers' Book Group: How to Write an Essay that Reaches Beyond Personal Experience
Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
START DATE: Monday, March 30, 2020
END DATE: Sunday, April 26, 2020
DURATION: 4 weeks
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The purpose of this group is to act as a writer’s book group. What that means is that we will read a book together and learn different writing craft techniques from it. This month we will be reading The Empathy Examsby Leslie Jamison and engage in an online discussion about different craft elements of the book. The book will help to guide our discussions on how to write an essay that reaches beyond personal experience and brings the larger world into our personal writing. Other aspects that we will look at are the use of description, narrative voice, structure, and even grammar and punctuation!
Sign up for the class HERE.
The Women Writers' Book Group: Writing About, Writing with the Body
Season of the Body by Brenda Miller
START DATE: Monday, September 4, 2017
END DATE: Sunday, October 1, 2017
DURATION: 4 weeks
COST: $125
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The purpose of this group is to act as a writer’s book group. What that means is that we will read a book together and learn different writing craft techniques from it. This month we will be reading Season of the Body by Brenda Miller and engage in an online discussion about different craft elements of the essay collection. The book will help to guide our discussions on how to write about the body, how to bring your own body more into your work, and how to express the body’s movement (and its stillness) on the page. We’ll look at specific craft techniques such as juxtaposition, word choice, imagery, narrative structure, and pace.
Click HERE for more information.
FACE YOUR FEARS: WOMEN WRITERS ANONYMOUS
CLASS DATES: Monday, June 5, 2017 - Sunday, July 16, 2017
DURATION: 6 weeks
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Face Your Fears: Women Writers Anonymous is a 6-week online creative nonfiction class in which all of the participants are anonymous (with the exception of the instructor). Students will face the stories and situations in their lives that they swore they would NEVER write about, and then not only write them, but also receive feedback based on craft, not content. Students will read assigned essays to see how authors have written about traumatic/shameful events. By the end of the class, students will have a complete draft of their brave essay, as well as the knowledge and skills to help them revise a personal essay in a more objective way. NOTE: this is not group therapy.
Sign up for the course HERE.
HUMOR: Your Best Defense Against the Hot Mess That Is the Holiday Season
START DATE: Monday, November 13, 2017
END DATE: Sunday, December 10, 2017
DURATION: 4 weeks
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Holidays are stressful. We know this. What’s the best way to battle the annual holiday-induced chaos? Humor! Because making your relatives die of laughter does not carry the same prison sentence as actually killing them. Starting a few weeks before Thanksgiving, this four-week class will gleefully prance around the different techniques that make a piece of writing humorous.
Participants will be provided with 3-5 essays/stories/odd visuals to read every week that will be our tour guides of sorts in an exploration of literary humor. Focusing on imagery, word choice, format, tone and structure, we’ll discover the various ways we can give readers—and ourselves!—a good chuckle just from the inventive ways we put words on a page. The goal of this workshop is to understand the function of humor in literary texts and how it reaches beyond the ability to entertain. More important, the class will probably become a type of therapy to get you through the holidays. You’re welcome.
Sign up for course HERE.
Past Classes Taught:
WRITEFEST HOUSTON
CONFERENCE DATES: March 6-12, 2017
WORKSHOPS: 4 days
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Chelsey will be the nonfiction workshop instructor for Writefest this year. She will also be teaching a mini-workshop, be on a few panels, and will conduct an informative interview about literary journals. Writefest is a week-long writers festival taking place March 6-12th, 2017 in Houston, TX. The festival kicks off with a series of Monday-Friday workshops and culminates in a weekend filled with panels and presentations by local and national writers and literary journal editors of all genres, a Literary Journal Fair, and readings by local and nationally-recognized authors.
Go to www.writefesthouston.com for more details.
The Women Writers' Book Group: Building Meaning in a Memoir
Lying by Lauren Slater
DATES: Monday, March 13, 2017 - Sunday, April 9, 2017
DURATION: 4 weeks
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The purpose of this group is to act as a writer’s book group. What that means is that we will read a book together and learn different writing craft techniques from it. This month we will be reading Lying by Lauren Slater. Reading the memoir as a guide, we will explore the different stages of building an engaging narrative that fully engages the reader. Along with this, we’ll look at what “truth” is in regards to how the narrator grows throughout the memoir. Concentrating on specific craft elements such as voice, tone, structure, organization, description, and word choice, this course will show the possibilities of how we can get our readers hooked on our true stories by toying around with what “truth” in memoir writing means.
Throughout the course, book group members will take turns giving and receiving feedback on participants’ writing, and each participant will receive line edits on her own writing from the instructor every week. Members will also engage in discussions online through the course’s website. The group will be coordinated through email and a private forum. We’ll be reading about 50 pages of the book per week.