WHAT:
Fearless Writing™ is Crescent Dragonwagon’s flagship twelve-part writing-and-creativity program. A lighthearted, exuberant approach to the emotional and practical challenges of writing, Dragonwagon developed the course three decades ago. She has taught FW all over the world, to hundreds of people, both writers and non-writers (who are interested in exploring their creative side, and/or becoming better equipped to deal with fear). Many of those who aspired to write have gone on to publish successfully. (To watch a quick video on how Fearless changed the life of one Fearless Graduate, now much-published writer Monica Clark Robinson, click here.)
Fearless teaches you how to work with and overcome the inherent anxiety that surfaces for most creators when they sit down and try to actually bring into form the delectable ideas about which they’ve been cogitating, dreaming, and “mentally writing.” (Except there’s no such thing as “mentally writing” — the word for that process is thinking.)
At this renowned breakthrough writing workshop, whether you aspire to write professionally or not, you’ll:
- find your authentic, one-of-a-kind voice — even when you’re not sure you have one
- find your juice — even when you think, “Oh, I’ll take a nap.”
- cozy up to your fears; get rock-solid about how to use them
- learn to “write your way out of it” and “write your way through it.”
- get jazzed and energized, even in these most uncertain and frightening of times
- surprise and delight yourself
- experience “creative community” … in class, but also, even, when you’re alone
- start, and finish what you start
- discover how to write the hard stuff
- experience the magic of practice
- dismantle procrastination; alchemize fear and reluctance into action and energy
Dragonwagon occasionally teaches this class in person over an extended weekend or in connection with a travel experience (see Fearless in Italy).
But these days, most often, she offers it in live Zoom classes.
Each session, whether in Zoom or in the flesh, includes writing, lecture, and discussion. All sessions radiate Crescent’s easygoing, compassionate, tough-tender, interactive personable teaching style. She makes it easy to ask questions; she’ll help you find your own answer to the problems that inhere in writing and creativity (some are universal, some are individual).
In addition to in-person workshop sessions, you’ll receive loads of other Fearless Writing™ resources, including:
- three months free membership in the Fearlessly Onward Facebook page (which includes interaction with alumni from previous Fearless Writing™ workshops, weekly Fearless Friday passed-on wisdom and commentary – very inspirational! – , and relevant writing-and-creativity links, articles, essays and more)
- a password-protected resource page on Crescent’s website, from which you can print out class notes on each percept, information and how-tos on various writing forms, reading lists and helpful writing-and creativity- related links
- for extended Zoom courses: a private group Facebook page for use over the duration of the course
Unlike workshops where the glow lasts only as long as the workshop, you’ll leave with lasting self-mentoring skills and strengthened resilience. The percepts of Fearless Writing™ will stay with you… and many of them apply not only to writing but to life as a whole.
Practical, effective, serious and playful, Fearless’s twelve foundations (percepts) turn seemingly insurmountable obstacles into material — from which we write, and can build all-around thriving lives. Its practices and principles spill over, cornucopia-like: from writing, to creativity, to problem-solving, to business and personal life. You’ll leave you with the skills, tools, experience, and understanding by which writers, would-be writers, and non-writers alike can grow stronger.
As you experience how Fearless works, its benefits spill over cornucopia-like. You’ll be better able to walk through the difficulties and setbacks inherent in writing — and in life.
WHEN:
CD offers Fearless Writing once or twice a year, generally once by Zoom and once in person. Generally there are twelve sessions, one for each percept (don’t know what a percept is? Keep reading!).
2023:
SPRING SESSION, February-June. SOLD OUT; completed.
FEARLESS IN ITALY: twelve days in Italy, December 22, 2023 January 2, 2024. Full delicious details here; registration here.
FEARLESS’S TWELVE PERCEPTS: WAIT, WHAT’S A PERCEPT?
A percept is an idea that shifts one’s perception and understanding. Percepts have an oh-now-I-get-it quality, an ah-ha recognition leading to organic, ongoing shifts in thought, thinking, behavior, and ultimate outcome. Don’t confuse PERcepts with PREcepts: precepts are commandments, thou-shalt-not kinds of rules. Percepts are much, much friendlier, flexible and individual than precepts.
Here’s some of what we’ll dismantle with each percept.
In addition to exploring one percept per session, we’ll spend time writing, exploring different forms as taught by Crescent in session. Experienced and inexperienced writers alike will surprise themselves!
THE PERCEPTS WE’LL COVER IN FEARLESS
- In Percept 1, we explore why some aspects of writing frighten many people, and learn how we can approach, dismantle, and even USE fear. A powerful shift!
In Fearless, you will understand, experience, and even come to enjoy the messy, anxious-making, transcendent experience of writing. - In Percept 2, we look at the ways we stop ourselves, and explore the reasons why we do this. We learnto stop stopping ourselves, and why we need both accelerators and brakes (but not simultaneously).
- In Percept 3, we examine and dismantle the I-Need-a-Guarantee-that-Other-People-Will-Approve-of-Me Trap. We’ll replace it with something far more powerful.
- In Percept 4, we’ll explore a secret which will teach you how to fall in love with the work itself…even when it’s hard and doesn’t seem to be going well.
- In Percept 5, we look at the famous “flow state”. Can you reach it? Maybe; maybe not; sometimes. But watch what happens when you learn how to show up, no matter what.
- In Percept 6, we dive into the Specific Ocean. Here we move from state-of-mind to craft. You’ll learn how to improve your writing, whatever level you’re at: you’ll learn the secrets of self-editing, revision, critiquing, and being critiqued.
- In Percept 7, we look at our own unique material and areas in which we are experts. Here, we’ll discover and explore how to find and own ours. “Write from experience,” they say. But what is experience, and how exactly do you locate yours, and write it well and truly? And we’ll shine some light on how matters that are so individual can also be universal and relatable.
- In Percept 8, we look at what to do when your material is or includes hard stuff: atrocity, murder, abuse, emotional illness, war, Covid, death, grief, depression, oppression, prison, addiction. Learn about writing your way through the things you never thought you could or would … as well as the challenge of writing happy material in a manner that’s dramatically and emotionally engaging.
- In Percept 9, we start putting all this together, learning the simple but arcane truths of becoming habitual working writers: no matter how little time we think we have, and how big our fears may be. We put into play the three-part secret of how to get good at anything, including writing.
- In Percept 10, we look at the dues of writing: for every craft, every guild, requires the paying of dues. What do we owe our craft as writers? What we can expect, how we can continue to develop and grow? We’ll learn practices and resources that will make our work-life ever more luminous and interesting.
- In Percept 11, we examine the whole enchilada; incorporating writing into the helter-skelter of life itself without becoming (as so many writers have), embittered, an alcoholic, or a starter-who-never-finishes. Self-soothing, strengthening, and nurturing the whole person serves the writer; we’ll learn techniques that work.
- In Percept 12, our final percept, we integrate all this. And we end not with “closure” but with “open-nature” — a practice that is likely to keep you going even after you leave the lovely cocoon of our group and its structure.
WHERE:
Zoom classes take place right in your own home, or wherever you feel comfortable and can get online. Feel free to attend in your PJs, if you like! You’ll receive the link each week, by email and on our pricate Facebook page, before class begins.
Details of when and where in-person in-real-life Fearless Writing™ sessions are given as part of the individual course confirmation, for example when CD teaches a Fearless in Italy.
HOW MUCH:
FEARLESS WRITING™ VIA ZOOM
(Note: 2023 Fearless Zoom classes sold out and have been completed; email office@dragonwagon.com if you’d like to be on the waiting list for zoom classes in spring 2024):
The cost per participant is $1750.00. This may be paid in any denomination, in any amount that is comfortable for you, over time. But to entice you to go for a single payment, we usually offer a bonus that’ll save you $250: pay in one payment for $1500.00. Each time we open for registration on the page for the upcoming FW course, you’ll find a button for each payment option: pay all at once, or pay by installment.
Zoom classes include 12 sessions of two-hour classes, backed up by extensive online “hand-outs” and other resources, plus a private Facebook group page for the duration of the course, and technical and personal support.
LIVE IN-PERSON-AND-IN-THE-FLESH FEARLESS WRITING™ +
The fee varies depending on location and what’s included with the venue at which we’re offering Fearless. Most of these immersive Fearless experiences include lodging, meals, and other travel experiences (Fearless in Italy , for instance, our remaining 2023 offering, includes a truffle hunt and pasta-making class.and much else: see here for details).
On an in-person Fearless you receive everything you get on the Zoom version except the private Facebook group page — 12 sessions, extensive online “hand-outs” and other resources, technical and personal support. There are also some small group break-out sessions: fun, insight-rich, and impossible to do by Zoom,
2023’s Fearless in Italy fees include $1000 (for the course) and € 7,250 per person double occupancy; if you are traveling solo, add € 750 for a single supplement. (Here is a currency converter.) Register here for Fearless in Italy.
ABOUT CRESCENT DRAGONWAGON:
The author of 58 traditionally published books, Crescent is well known in different genres. Her novel, The Year It Rained, was a New York Times Notable Book and published in 4 foreign editions. Her cookbooks include one James Beard Award winner and three nominations for same; she is also a four-time nominee for the International Association of Culinary Professionals Awards. Her children’s books include a Coretta Scott King Award winner, a Golden Kite Award Winner, a Social Sciences Book of the Year, and numerous Parent’s Choice Award. The daughter of two writers, she serves as literary executor for her late mother, Charlotte Zolotow, and in this role has edited and written forewards and afterwords for numerous other titles.
Her teaching style is unique, friendly, and approachable. Perhaps that’s because she has a learning disability that was not diagnosed until she was in her 50’s. Her unrecognized dyscalculia (like dyslexia but with numerical), meant she did not do well in school. However, this also made her sympathetic to students, receptive to many different styles of learning, and flexible.
To read about why Crescent is passionate about teaching, and why Fearless Writing™ was literally a matter of life and death for one of her students, the late award-winning Raghavan Iyer who took the course several times, see the story FIERCE LIFE, FEARLESS LOVE, WRITING, & CURRY.
We are sold out