Summer in KanMoWriCo

Hello Writers!

We’re sending our quarterly newsletter a little early, because we want to get you ready for our exciting programming addition for the summer:

Summer Workshop Group!

What is it?

The Summer Workshop Group will be a round-table discussion group of Kansas City writers reading one another’s work and offering honest, constructive feedback. The workshop setting is a place to get fresh eyes on your writing and better understand the mechanics of storytelling through reading and critiquing others.

Our workshops will be led by our co-organizer Natalie Wallington, who holds a degree in fiction workshopping from the Writing Seminars program at Johns Hopkins University.

What is required?

Participants will be asked to submit one piece of writing up to 5,000 words (around 10 single-spaced pages) to be read and critiqued during the month of July. Your workshop piece can be a self-contained story or an excerpt of a larger work. All genres are welcome, including fanfiction.

As a workshop participant, you will be asked to read and annotate 2-3 pieces per week and be prepared to discuss them in person. The series will run during the month of July.

When & where is it?

Workshop sessions will be held in person on July 7, 14, 21 and 28 at 4 p.m. immediately following the Sunday write-in. All July write-ins and workshops will be held at Central Library. Please plan to attend all four sessions— your participation as both a reader and a writer are vital to the workshop experience.

How do I sign up?

Fill out this short form to sign up for the workshop series! You do NOT need to have a piece ready to submit in order to sign up to participate— we’ll ask you for that later. Sign ups will be available through June.

Inspiration Strikes!

Listen, we all know Kansas City can be… a bit miserable during the summer. So let’s dig into the environment of your piece! What’s the climate like? How about the humidity? Think about how the environment is shaped by the civilization your heroes live in? How does the environment fight back? Use these questions to jump off either into a new scene or to give your existing environments some kick.

Look How We Grow!

When we wrote to you in spring, we promised to plant seeds for growth and we are pleased to say that our seeds are sprouting! Our Sunday afternoon write-ins regularly have at least 6 and  up to 12 participants, which is the largest turnout we’ve seen outside of November since 2016. 

We also added a Tuesday write-in during April for Spring Sprint. This was the first time we’ve been able to hold more than two write-ins per week outside of November, and each week we had writers present! We’ve also seen 18 new people join our Discord since our inauguration as an independent organization on March 13.

We are spreading fastest by word of mouth, it seems, with our current participants inviting friends and at least one person seeing our new sign during a write-in and joining in! Our goal is to help as many writers as we can let loose their creativity and actually see words flow onto that page.

Thank you so much to everyone who has donated this year. As of April, we have already raised $185– over half of our proposed budget! Donations are accepted at our ko-fi.

Remember that you can always help us with our goal by spreading the word about KanMoWriCo! Send our newsletter to other writer friends, follow us and share our Instagram and Facebook, or just tell people who are looking to connect with other writers to check us out! 

As always, happy writing from your KanMoWriCo organizers!

Joanie, Bee, & Natalie