Graduate Essay: “From Inspiration to Submission: Writers Toolkit with Gregory Ashe” by Chana Kohl

Chana Kohl works in Jerusalem in clinical trials and research, writing speculative fiction in her spare time. Her stories have appeared in Analog SF, Luna Station Quarterly, and Stupefying Stories. She was winner of the 2022 Analog SF Emerging Black Voices Award and will be a participant in the 2024 Your Personal Odyssey Writing Workshop with the generous support of the Fresh Voices Scholarship. For more updates, visit her on most social media @chanakohl or www.chanakohl.wordpress.com.

If you are like me, you’re relatively new to creative writing and mainly self-taught. You picked up your writing pen (or opened your laptop) thinking it would be fairly easy to capture all the gripping images and emotions churning in your brain, that it would be a simple process writing that amazing story or novel or trilogy that you’ve been ruminating on for years.

You may have delved into learning craft a bit, explored some websites, or found some instructive YouTube channels, or happened upon some excellent writing books on Amazon or Audible. You have Google Drive folders crammed with writing advice, story templates and study notes that you’ve used to create some pretty decent attempts at speculative fiction. (Keep every single one of those organized and backed-up, by the way, they’ll be handy in the future.) You may have attended one or two free seminars or cobbled together a writing group that meets more or less on a regular basis.

And, if you’re like me, you may have even sold one or two of these stories. (Yay, you!)

Or perhaps, you’re not like me at all. You prefer a less methodical approach. Your story ideas flow effortlessly with little to no staging. Your ideas float onto paper like soap bubbles or butterflies onto green grass, bursting with evocative language and transmuting into lithesome prose.

At some point, however, maybe after writing thirty or forty short drafts, or one or two novel drafts, you may notice your writing seems to have stagnated, or those graceful “butterflies” appear more like the creatures in Stephen King’s The Mist. Maybe you’re able to get a rough draft onto paper (something that feels story-shaped: Freytag’s Pyramid, Seven-Act Structure, Five-Tentpoles, Save the Cat, Kishōtenketsu, etc.) but it takes many slow and frustrating nights of revisions to get the final result you’d imagined. Or perhaps you can create a lovely, poetic work with intriguing characters, but it lacks direction. The drafts start to pile up because you really don’t feel they’re ready for publishing or you’ve submitted them only to rack up rejections. You may find yourself wondering what more advanced writers, who seemingly write so much more than you, are doing.

If any of this sounds vaguely familiar, you should consider the option of taking an Odyssey Online Class. Last year, I took Writer’s Toolkit: Taking Your Story from Idea to Manuscript with Gregory Ashe. It encapsulated all aspects of the writing process, from inspiration to submission, in an easily digestible format. It was suitable for beginning to intermediate writers whether they’d been writing for months or for years.

In so many ways, this class was perfectly organized to help you examine your writing process and revamp your storytelling skills, but be forewarned: clear your calendar. Don’t be surprised if you spend more than the suggested hours per week during an Odyssey Online Class; this is certainly a minimum.

Before the first class, we were given a pre-workshop reading assignment that asked us to re-read our favorite works of genre fiction, forcing us to clarify our thoughts on critical story aspects. This was not an assignment to be taken lightly and for me, personally, required significant time for both reading and research. Every hour spent, however, only prepared me for what came next.

The three classes were held over six weeks, giving us a week between each class to self-assess and practice what we’d learned. When practicing a new technique, don’t be afraid to stumble. Failing at trying something new is much more important than repeating what you’ve already mastered. At least by attempting something new, you’ll discover another aspect of your writing whether you fail or succeed.

The course material ranged from identifying what excites you about writing in the first place, to examining and re-framing your writing process, and finally troubleshooting the common problems that arise when you write. We were assigned to critique groups with specific instructions on constructive criticism. Both the critiques you give and the ones you receive will be an important part of your development in an Odyssey Online course.

Gregory is an engaging, empathetic and encouraging instructor who teaches with a deep, professional experience—but not so much that he cannot remember what it’s like to struggle with the blank page. He openly shares examples from his own writing struggles that he’s overcome, and it is truly inspirational. 

The course was super-organized and managed by Jeanne Cavelos, founder of the Odyssey Workshop. Together, Jeanne and Gregory thoughtfully created discussion questions that kept us connected throughout the flow of the course and allowed us to reflect on what we’d experienced so far. This was a helpful exercise in identifying problems that were specific to our writing and the solutions we were trying, whether they had worked or not. In fact, as follow-up to one of the reflection questions, I came across an important breakthrough in my own drafting process that I’ve incorporated in my writing ever since.

I cannot recommend enough investing in this budget-friendly learning experience. If you have the desire and time to commit to the process, your future readers will receive the dividends.

Gregory Ashe will be teaching the Odyssey Online class Mix-Up, Mash-Up, Hybrid, Fusion: How to Write a Blended-Genre Story in January. The application deadline for that course and two others Odyssey is offering this winter is November 22. For more information, visit https://www.odysseyworkshop.org/odyssey-online/upcoming-classes/