ABOUT FEARLESS WRITING™ WITH CRESCENT DRAGONWAGON

In Fearless, you’ll experience how to harness the anxiety generated by chaotic or unknown conditions or apparently immutable limitations as a powerful creative force.

Instead of being stopped by fear, you will learn to work with it — to increase your tolerance level and act anyway, instead of waiting for the uncomfortable feelings to end.

You’ll get the essentials within the first hour of working with Crescent. Yet you’ll be learning and drawing on Fearless Writing™ for the rest of your life.

A working map of the creative process: you choose where to go

Fearless Writing™ is an unfailing map: one Crescent has used herself and taught thousands of students. One map; countless possible journeys. Like all accurate maps, Fearless helps you see clearly where you — you, individually — are at present. It then provides clear information. You’ll understand the routes you could take and recognize the landmarks as you reach certain points in the trip. This is how Fearless gets you from where you are to where you — you, individually — want to go.

How can a single approach be both individual and universal? Fearless Writing™ is built around twelve percepts. (Percepts are working concepts which are understood through an individual’s perception; when you get them there’s a sense of “Of course! How obvious! Why didn’t I know that?”)

Fearless’s percepts are foundational. Though called by different names and not always articulated, the percepts are used by all working writers, much-published as well as novice. Those who don’t discover them, in one way or another, no matter how sincerely they want to write, remain stuck in thinking about writing, or do stop-and-start-writing, or begin with enthusiasm but peter out before completion. If this sounds like you, you need Fearless Writing™.

How can this be? Because the percepts inhere in the act of writing; across all genres and skill levels. They are the base of all creative action. Understand them, and you will know where you are on your journey and how to reach your own one-of-a-kind destination. Use them, and you will be guided every time you start to get bewildered and fear you are losing your way. That is why they are percepts; they are perceived at a level far deeper than mere learned ideas.

Crescent, as master teacher, will take you through these percepts, and guide you into experiencing them in your own way. Always compassionate but never wimpy, she will help you locate and begin to travel your own route. Unfailing and accessible, you’ll discover that while that route will always be challenging, it will never againnseem impossible.

Fearless Writing™ is taught in four formats. Regardless of which you pick, the workshops themselves are:

• practical: you’ll recognize common patches of psychological quicksand
  
• effective: you’ll have myriad techniques and tools to avoid getting stuck
  
• creative: you’ll be eager to try them, because they work a little differently each time
  
• serious: you’ll start giving your work and its process the respect and time it needs
  
• playful: you’ll have fun — truly! — and be surprised by what happens next, over and over, long after you return home
• tough: you’ll quit dancing around the stuff that holds you back, and dissolve or use it
• tender: you’ll be in a compassionate, attentive, collegial atmosphere
  

Fearless Writing™ turns what look like insurmountable obstacles into the material from which we write, and indeed, from which we 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.

Different Fearless Writing™ experiences: which is right for you?

Do you like the energy of working face to face in a small group, or would you prefer to stay home and attend in your PJ’s? Would you rather submerge for a few ultra-focused retreat-style days, or would your choice be a once-a-week class over ten weeks time? Are you someone who decides to dive straight into the pool or would you rather wiggle a toe first and test the water? Do you want to learn Fearless’s percepts outright, or would you rather just have the experience of writing with a master teacher and let the percepts sneak in the back way?

The Fearless Writing™ Exploration

WHAT: The Fearless Writing™ Exploration is a two-to-three hour introduction to the approach and techniques: just a taste of the exhilarating, anxiety-free FW experience.

IDEAL FOR: Those who want to sample the approach (and see if they relate to Crescent’s teaching style) at a low-cost fee, and with a minimum time commitment. Also an excellent choice for event planners who want Crescent to lead a workshop at a conference: she has taught specialized versions at children’s book, creative non-fiction, educative and culinary writing conferences, such as those of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP), and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

OFFERED: Live and in person, online, or as a hybrid (some attend online, some in the flesh).

Click here to see when and where the next Fearless Writing™ Explorations are scheduled.

The Fearless Writing™ Whole Enchilada Weekend Intensive

WHAT: The Fearless Writing™ Whole Enchilada 3-Day Weekend Intensive is an insight-rich, life-changing 16 to 18 hour deep-dive. Intense but in no way tense, twelve of those hours are devoted to writing and the percepts, while the other four to eight go to integrative practices (some physical, some restorative, all science-based) that allow the saturated learning of FW sessions to permeate without burnout. 

• The Whole Enchilada Weekend is a retreat, often held in a beautiful place, generally close to nature but a bit luxurious — and private.
• Usually delectable meals are included.
• Recreational opportunities and options abound: restorative yoga, improv, places to swim or hike, downtime for massages or naps or solitude are included (a lovely and helpful adjunct).
  
• The weekend’s longer length allows for such options.

HOW LONG: The Whole Enchilada Weekend is most often held on a three-day weekend. Usually sessions begin on a Friday night, with classes taking place on and off all day Saturday and Sunday (including some of the down-time options). You’ll wrap things up Sunday night with a final goodbye session on Monday morning.  

IDEAL FOR: Those who learn best in person, in a focused immersion setting, away from the usual life-hustle. Those who enjoy retreats and are comfortable with an integrative approach that supports writing, but is not writing per se. If you like the stimulation of interesting brain-work, applied creativity, working hard and then relaxing deeply, seasoned with a little goofiness and fun plus some pleasure, the Whole Enchilada Weekend is for you. Those have caregiving or work responsibilities may also sometimes find it easier to arrange being out for a period of a few days back-to-back than to attend a once-a-week class (where they may be at home, but are likely to be distracted).

OFFERED: Live and in person only.
Click here to see when and where the next Fearless Writing™ Whole Enchilada Weekend Intensives are scheduled.

The Fearless Writing™ Course

WHAT: The Fearless Writing™ Course takes place in 10 two-hour evening sessions held over ten weeks. Gradually and gently, you’ll experience Fearless’s life-changing insights in an ongoing small group setting. You’ll grow familiar with the twelve percepts, experiencing them first hand as we write. The Course leaves enough space to absorb the ideas and practices more slowly, and to incorporate them into your every day life. A live class, in real time, it does include some videotaped portions as well, yours to replay whenever you like. Over time, many groups become their own tiny creativity community, and collegial relationships that outlast the ten weeks are not uncommon.

IDEAL FOR: Those who learn best over time, and enjoy the regularity and soft-focus discipline of weekly classes. Those who are homebound, or have caregiving or work responsibilities which make it impossible to travel or be out of communication for several days. Those who enjoy time to think over what they learn, and to ask questions only after some thought. Those who take pleasure in shared collegial experiences, and are seeking a supportive writing “tribe.”

OFFERED: Online, and as a hybrid (some attendees online, some in the flesh).
Click here to see when and where the next Fearless Writing™ Course are scheduled.

Camp Fearless™: coming in 2021

Click here to see the news about when and where our newest Fearless Writing™ adventure, the five-day Camp Fearless, will take place, and what it will include.

Other classes and courses which are loosely in the Fearless Writing@ family include Tuesdays with Crescent and Works-in-Progress: The Next-Draft Mentoring Process. These have their own pages.