RETREATS AND CLASSES
Looking to catalyze your work? I offer a variety of online workshops and writing retreats. Email me to inquire about upcoming dates for the next series of workshops and retreats.
ONLINE WORKSHOPS
The Story Catalyst I: Writing First Pages That Sparkle
| SOLD OUT! NEXT CLASS: SEPTEMBER 2020
You want to write a story that’s bold, illuminating and true, but where do you begin? You want gripping characters, a plot that’s off-and-running, powered by sentences that sparkle. Here’s how to get those first pages going, whether you’re polishing them for an agent or you’re just getting started.
The Story Catalyst II: Writing Pages with Presence
| SOLD OUT! NEXT CLASS: SEPTEMBER 2020
This six-week workshop is aimed at honing your writing craft and practice so that whether you’re at the beginning, middle or end of your work, you write pages with presence. This workshop for emerging and experienced writers seeks to give you sustainable craft techniques, and it’s ideal for writers who wanting to get a good solid 30 to 60 pages. It’s a generative class, so you will write write write!
The Brand Catalyst
| COMING SPRING 2020
Maybe you’re blogging toward a book, or maybe you already have a book and you want to build your following. The Brand Catalyst class is offered online and as a weekend intensive for emerging and established authors who want to maximize their impact on social media and engage in illuminating conversations with their now-and-future readers.
This class includes hands-on tips for blogging, press releases, email newsletters, website design, podcasts, video channels and social media posting on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. It includes tools for brand story development, which is the engine that truly builds engaged followers. It’s designed to teach you how to lead a team that can help you maintain your brand or equip you to do it yourself.
The Memoir Catalyst
| COMING FALL 2020
This class series drills down deep into the memoir, offering a closer look at this genre, which has evolved in recent years to encompass many new forms. This genre is at the leading edge of what story can do, and that’s why it’s exciting for me to offer this class. I am currently working on a memoir titled You’ve Gone Too Far as part of The Lighthouse Book Project, pieces of which have been published in Fourth Genre and other publications.
This class is in development for Fall 2020. Sign up for my email list to be posted when registration opens.
Uncommon Hours:
Time Management for the Writing Life
How to Organize Your Time So You Can Say Yes to Your Sacred Yes
In this online workshop for writers and other creatives, we take you way beyond the common advice about time management and help you tap into the inspirational soulfire that will carry you. When you combine that with sensible organizational and time management techniques, you are on your way to what Henry David Thoreau must have been talking about when he said, “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
This class is in development for 2020. Sign up for my email list to be posted when registration opens.
Book Proposal Accelerator
| NEW COHORT FORMING JANUARY 2020
CAN’T WAIT THAT LONG? OR WANT CUSTOMIZED ATTENTION TO YOUR BOOK?
CLICK HERE TO WORK WITH ME ONE-ON-ONE
Ignite Your Vision for Your Story and Get Your Book Out to the World with a book proposal. You know your story, but you seek the path to a book and a place for it in the publishing world. The book proposal is the way — part appeal, part story map, part platform-builder. It is a business plan for your book and your brand. To get an agent or a publisher, you must have a pitch-perfect calling card. You’ll need to envision your book and the way its message engages with people. And trust me, the book you write will be easier to write – and better for it.
WRITING RETREATS
Story Catalyst retreats are generative and restorative—meaning you have time to write, time to be mentored and time to be restored. I offer retreats in soul-stirring settings such as Santa Fe, Taos, Zion National Park in Utah, the Wild Atlantic Way in Ireland and a horse farm in Kentucky.
Join our interest list by emailing me here.
Ireland Writing Retreat on the Wild Atlantic Way – June 21-25, 2020
A generative and restorative writing retreat at Delphi Resort in County Galway, Ireland
Facilitated by Carolyn Dawn Flynn, the Story Catalyst, and writer and poet Jona Kottler
Let the soul-stirring beauty of Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way be your inspiration for this generative and restorative retreat for writers of fiction and creative nonfiction. Whether you’re writing essays or a book-length memoir, whether you’re writing short stories or a novel, this retreat is designed to help you deepen and refine your work-in-progress, emerging with clarity and vision.
Acclaimed writer and TEDx speaker Carolyn Dawn Flynn and award-winning American writer and educator Jona Kottler are your facilitators.

RETREATS AND CLASSES
Looking to catalyze your work? I offer a variety of online workshops and writing retreats. Email me to inquire about upcoming dates for the next series of workshops and retreats.