CLASS OF 2013

You hear the term “life-changing experience” tossed around a lot, and usually it doesn’t mean much. Usually, it’s a marketing cliché. But with Odyssey, I can’t think of a more accurate descriptor. My life has been changed.

Amazing course, amazing lectures, amazing classmates, and an amazing instructor—I’ll never forget my time here.

There are so many courses that pass around the same rules of writing. At Odyssey, I learned far more than I thought there ever could be to know, in greater depth and detail than I thought possible. Odyssey has transformed how I view the act of writing, and how I view myself as a writer and a person.

I felt like I had won the lottery when I was admitted, and now that I have been here I have discovered that the pot was many times greater than I first thought.

These have been the most impactful six weeks of my life. Jeanne combines generosity with knowledge. She really believes in the material she teaches and in her task to share that information. I will be eternally grateful to her.

If you want to be a writer, you need to go to Odyssey. For six weeks, fearless workshop leader/evil genius Jeanne will help you take your writing apart, pick out the flaws and start to build it back up again. You’ll meet people just as weird and geeky as you are. You’ll throw yourself into your writing 100 percent, you’ll sweat and cry, and you’ll come out the other side a different person.

Jeanne is Gandalf, Merlin, and Dumbledore all rolled into one. My writing improved in ways I didn’t even know it needed to be improved with her teaching.

If you are serious about writing speculative fiction, do yourself (and your readers) a favor and attend Odyssey.

If the world legalizes cloning for humans, Jeanne needs to be the first. She can only counsel and mentor so many writers, but every writer who wants to be a writer who writes, not a writer who dreams, should come here. Therefore she should be cloned and placed in strategic places around the world so every writer can go and learn from her.

I’ve learned so much from living writing 23 hours a day for six weeks, and meeting so many amazing writers and editors. If you’re ready to put in hard work on your science fiction, fantasy, or horror writing, then Odyssey is your next step.

Odyssey has changed my life. My fellow attendees (my Odfellows!) have changed my life. Jeanne has changed my life. They have had this effect on me because they have significantly changed me as a writer, and because I have learned, through all that Odyssey offers, that I am a writer, with all the wonderful and painful things that entails.

Jeanne’s talent is that she cares deeply. Well, she has many talents, actually, but I think they all stem from her compassion. Her insight is spot on, her knowledge of writing, editing, and the profession is impressive, her critiques are more helpful than I could have hoped or imagined they could be. She has continued to amaze me throughout these six weeks. I am ever so grateful to her for creating such a supportive, honest, diligent, and fun(!) atmosphere and culture.

Jeanne is brilliant, compassionate, insightful. Odyssey, by virtue of her guidance, is transformative. I will never be the same again, never write the same again for having attended. The bar has been raised and it has been raised high. Go fly! Because of Jeanne, I will shake out my wings and fly.

If you haven’t written a bestseller yet, you need to come to Odyssey. You know you’re a good writer, your friends love your stuff, maybe you’ve had a few small publications. Awesome. You’re ready to come here and discover you have no idea what you’re doing.

At Odyssey, you will learn a methodical, structured, tool-oriented approach to every major aspect of writing fiction. You will apply these tools and do an extensive critique of at least two stories every day. You will discover that you can write a new story every week, and that you can survive seeing your story crash and burn over and over again as each of your fellow writers gives a critique.

You will learn that “writing” means organizing words in specific ways to induce imagination in complete strangers. The story as a whole may always remain a mystery, but so many elements of writing can and must be studied and practiced deliberately if you are ever going to write for real. Stop slogging down the same cul-de-sac in isolation. You deserve to learn this craft. Come to Odyssey.

It’s hard for me to imagine a workshop experience better than Odyssey. Even the Clarions don’t provide the amount of incisive, technical knowledge that I learned over the past six weeks. Jeanne is probably the best writing teacher in the world. She will show you your flaws and strengths, tell you how to improve on them, and support, guide and celebrate with you as you make breakthrough after breakthrough. If you think you have writing figured out, or if you feel dissatisfied with your work but don’t know why, apply to Odyssey. I almost didn’t, and it would have been the worst mistake of my writing life.

Odyssey is one of those rare and terrific places that can’t be described, only experienced. It was challenging, exhilarating, terrifying, and inspiring. It has revolutionized how I read and how I write.

Jeanne and the Odyssey writing experience have helped me address problems I didn’t even realize were there and have helped me with tools and mechanics to make my writing stronger.

Jeanne never stopped being a scientist. Scientific process is about what is observable, measurable, and repeatable. She helps students identify and target precise writing weaknesses, address them strategically, and make measurable progress. This method, when repeated on each of a writer’s personal weaknesses, creates observable success. Most artists don’t naturally operate this way. More would be successful if they did.