Workshops coming in January: 1. Reaching Story through Simultaneity, a Standalone ; 2. Essential Elements of Story, a 10-week intensive with Anya Achtenberg
Groundbreaking teacher, mentor, manuscript consultant, award-winning author of fiction, poetry, and a bit of nonfiction. For registration, contact information; other workshops offered and individual writer’s services; publications, testimonials, and my blog Writing in Upheaval, see links below.
Why these workshops? Some notes on each
First, notes on Simultaneity in Story, to begin to share the rich applicability of this aspect of craft!
You’ll get more from me than, say, let’s write about the color yellow. Of course, that is a fine thing, a rich opening, but will it help you write story? Will it yield a knowledge of elements and concepts of story that make a story rich, that make a story work? Likely no.
This writing workshop will not only give you some wonderful writing time in community, and very generative (through human intelligence) writing ideas you’ll use in and beyond the workshop—
—it will nourish you with short excerpts from writers who are our true teachers, and give you actual techniques to open and enrich your stories, land them in fuller truths, and—
I’ve seen it happen—might even give you the bones of a story you can’t help but fully write after the workshop.
Have you thought about the story next to the story?
Do you want a neat preplanned story, an unsurprising surface story, or one rich with the story’s context, in which is often found the deeper causes and inevitable contradictions of human behavior?
Do you love film? Then you’ve seen simultaneity in narrative quite a bit, but how to work with it in writing?
What do you care about? How are your concerns related? How to show that in story?
Ø If this interests you, I wouldn’t miss this workshop— Reaching Story through Simultaneity (a Standalone/Write-Together Workshop in the Say it! Digalo! series). January 8, 2026.
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Now, some notes on Essential Elements of Story in Fiction, Memoir/Creative Nonfiction, a 10-week intensive.
If you are looking for fuller development, a real leg up for working with all the elements of story—if the brief definitions and “5 rules for narration” or “what does the character really want”—as if it is one thing madly driving every action—if you are looking to develop your story craft in a way that leaves room for YOU not to have to follow formula but to create with the depth pushing you to write in the first place—It’d be wise to sign up for—
Ø Essential Elements of Story in Fiction, Memoir/Creative Nonfiction. 10-week intensive of written lectures, Zoom workshops, constructive written and oral feedback—to reframe and expand each element of story beyond prefab formulas. Begins January 14, 2026.
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Payments? Yup.
If you can afford full payment for these workshops, you’ll likely get more than you pay for, and will also be helping to sponsor someone who cannot. I want to build a community of writers not limited by income, but one in which my hard work is also supported. If you’re interested, write and ask me what else I am doing and have done for writers freely and for free. And if you can, begin a paid subscription on my Substack, Writing in Upheaval, at AnyaAchtenberg.Substack.com although there is no “paywall.”
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Now, to fuller workshop descriptions and details on registration
- Reaching Story through Simultaneity (a Standalone/Write-Together Workshop in the Say it! Digalo! series). January 8, 2026. 1 pm NYC; 6 pm Dublin; 7 pm Berlin (check your time zone).
In this workshop, I’ll reframe the use of simultaneity in story, to get you writing something entirely new, or for writing into a work-in-progress. This tension-building craft tool liberates story into richer content and context—we’ll discuss this craft element in an expansive way, and look at how some brilliant writers use it. We’ll write together with highly generative writing explorations in our Zoom, and I’ll send you off with a takeaway exploration to work on in solitude, also using the craft tool of simultaneity to build story (or work into poetry). Thought-provoking, effective, and nothing prefab.
January 8 (Thursday), 2026. At 1 pm NYC; 6 pm Dublin; 7 pm Berlin (check your time zone).
Fees: 65$ or equivalent GBP. Email me to register. 4 scholarships are available. Email me for the protocol at aachtenberg at gmail dot com
This is a single-event workshop, the first in the continuing Say it! Standalone/Write-Together Workshop Series.
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2. Essential Elements of Story in Fiction, Memoir/Creative Nonfiction. 10 weeks of written lectures, Zoom workshops, constructive feedback—to reframe and expand each element of story beyond prefab formulas. This course will give you intensive written and spoken critique and support from me, and from your colleagues in class, for the pieces you post, and for developing the larger vision of your work and writing projects.
Begins January 14 (Wednesdays), 2026. At 1 pm NYC; 6 pm Dublin; 7 pm Berlin (check your time zone).
This 10-week workshop helps writers find the real story. And the in-depth individual feedback you get from me is the kind that individual clients pay considerably more for, by the hour.
We’ll address larger writing issues through expanding your understanding and use of the essential elements of narrative, by going beyond mechanical and conventional approaches to craft; and beyond limiting definitions of the elements of story.
This workshop opens your writing mind to new thinking, greater depth and creativity, complex and surprising character development, and language that not only works but amazes—as you generate new writing along with a better sense of both the knots and the coherence in your work.
Enter here for illuminating development with: your narrator[s] and point[s] of view. By writing into the mystery of human behavior, you’ll deepen characterization and discover plot rather than be constricted by it. You’ll work with subtext—the whispers underneath your story. You learn to use context and simultaneity; dialogue; the music of prose; the story’s metaphor and its power; and revision that surprises rather than merely subtracts!
Start new stories and complete old ones, in an atmosphere both challenging and supportive.
Begins January 14 (Wednesdays), 2026. At 1 pm NYC; 6 pm Dublin; 7 pm Berlin (check your time zone
Fees: 660$ USD or equivalent GBP. Email me to register. Scholarships and payment plans available. Email me for the protocol.
This workshop is part of The Disobedient Writer Workshop Series.
[A little note!
I love writing. I love teaching. I’m not a fan of doing promotion. If you would like free entrance to classes and workshops, and are part of, or can organize, a group of writers who want to register for a workshop—poof! Free for you! That’s for both online and in-person workshops. Contact me on email or here on Substack and let’s work it out, ethically and respectfully. For other questions about registration and payment, email me.]
Contact: aachtenberg at gmail dot com
For more workshop information, and a look at my books and other publications—
See: https://anya-achtenberg.com/workshops/; https://anya-achtenberg.com/published-work/
Find my blog, Writing in Upheaval, at AnyaAchtenberg.Substack.com
Anya Achtenberg 