Writing Workshops
Join the Weekly Writing Circle & Salon
Every Saturday, writers from six continents meet on Zoom for an hour of live writing followed by open conversation, in the spirit of the old Paris café salons where writers gathered at back tables to talk about what they'd just written.
Allegra and James open with a prompt. We build a word list together, write for ten minutes, and read what we wrote aloud in small breakout rooms. Officially, it's one hour. Unofficially, most of us stay on well past that, because the conversation afterward is often the most interesting of the week.
No criticism, no grades, no performing — just people actually listening to each other. If the last few years have left you feeling adrift, this is one hour a week built entirely against that.
You don't need any writing experience, a project, or a plan to join. Some people come once to see what it's like. Some have been coming every Saturday for five years. Be warned: this has a way of becoming a habit you'll be glad you have.
It's pay-what-you-want: $20 is the suggested donation, and no one is turned away for lack of funds.
If you're not sure where to begin, begin here.
There is no single right way to be a writer, so there is no single workshop that fits everyone. Imaginative Storm's creative writing workshops span the whole range, from a free hour on a Saturday morning to a ten-week training that reshapes how you work. What they share is a belief that the page opens up once you stop straining for the perfect sentence and start writing the true one.
Every workshop runs on the same engine: short timed prompts, real craft instruction, and a small group that reads your work with attention. You write during the session, not after it. You hear your words out loud, and you find out what you actually made. Wherever you are in your writing life, there is a workshop here built for that stage, and a next step waiting when you are ready for it.
We run online writing workshops for writers anywhere in the world, alongside in-person experiences for those who want to gather in a room. You choose the level of commitment. The method stays the same, and so does the result: writing you did not know was in you.
Beginners sit alongside published authors here, and both leave with something. The point is never to sort writers by skill. It is to give each of them the conditions to do their best work, then get out of the way.
Online Creative Writing Workshops for Every Stage of Your Journey
The 10-Week Writer Training Program
When you’re ready to go deeper into your writing, the 10-Week Writer Training gives it structure. Over eleven Tuesdays, you work through the foundations of storytelling,: voice, narrative, character, setting, and more, guided directly by James Navé. As your imagination grows in power, your craft strengthens and your insight into your own writing process grows.
By the end you will have written forty new pieces and assembled a creative toolbox you will keep using long after the course is over. You also write inside a steady cohort, the same faces week after week, which is its own quiet engine of accountability. This is the workshop for writers who want momentum that lasts, not just a good weekend.
Online Writing Courses
The Imaginative Storm online writing courses Write What You Don’t Know and The Manageable Memoir help you start, develop, and finish any type of creative writing: fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction. Learn writing skills with our self-paced audio and video courses, which use the Imaginative Storm method and direct instruction that will open up a new approach to writing—whether you use it for an existing project or to jump-start a new one.
It's the difference between a class you sit through and a course that changes how you write.
What sets our video and audio writing courses apart is an unusual combination of free-writing and insight into how to make your writing authentic and powerful. Most courses do one or the other. So you either have raw pages and no idea what to do with them, or dry craft theory with nothing of your own to apply it to. The Imaginative Storm self-paced audio or video writing course gives you both at once. Generative freedom and real technique, in the same course. And you can go through the course at your own pace whenever you have time.
Sometimes a weekly hour is not enough, and a multi-day retreat is more than your schedule allows. A virtual Intensive sits between the two. It is a concentrated online session, longer and deeper than a Circle, with room to push past the surface and make real progress in a single sitting.
Each Virtual Intensive is focused on a particular topic, and all follow the Imaginative Storm method: prompts, appreciative feedback, and community, delivered in a focused block of time you can join from anywhere.
An Imaginative Storm Virtual Intensive is the fastest way to feel your writing shift without leaving home
Online Writing Intensives & Workshops
Which Writing Workshop Is Right for You
Not sure which one to choose? Start with what you need right now. Want to test the waters with no risk? The Writing Circle. Ready to build a real practice? The 10-Week Training. Short on time but hungry to go deep? A Virtual Intensive. Craving a room full of writers? In-person retreats. Use the guide below to find the fit that matches where you are today.
What Writers Say About Our Workshops
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“You have a jewel here; the world needs Write What You Don't Know! It took me into seeing things so much deeper and from different angles. This experience has been beyond anything I could have imagined.”
— Krista Thornburg, North Carolina
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“This course has been transformative for me. It opened a gate to a kind of expression that I can't shut again - and I wouldn't want to. There's something about the Imaginative Storm process that evokes extraordinary depths from each of us.”
— S. K., New York City
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“I appreciated how the Write What You Don't Know course focused me. That first leap was like I had to jump over a canal, and then I was on the other side, and writing! This course has been really helpful, and it's been valuable to be part of a community.”
— Raechel Bratnick, San Miguel de Allende
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“The course was full of rich, dense, and thought-provoking content. It was less like a class and more like an experiment in humanity. My limitations never limited me."
— Arlene Shapiro, Los Angeles
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“Because of this course, I'm on a roll now. I've got momentum. More than anything, the Write What You Don't Know course has kept me sane in a crazy time and helped me make some sense of a lot of nonsense.”
— Katerina Tana, Los Angeles
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“When I started, I didn't have the path I have now. My writings in this course have revealed what I want to do with my writing. I haven't written like this before!”
—Kelsey Walters, Oklahoma City
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“This has really been valuable. For me the best thing was learning how to develop plot—something I've always struggled with. The variation and quality of writing in the group were amazing.”
— Kaye Roll, Torrance, CA
Books About Writing by Allegra Huston & James Navé
