Gang! Registration opens for my Bizarro writing workshop this coming Saturday, June 18th 2016 at 12:00pm CST. The last workshop sold out in less than 48 hours! For full details on the Bizarro workshop, click here. 

Why should you take a writing class taught my two time Wonderland Award nominee Kevin Strange? Well, several former students are here to tell you why. I’ll be posting their testimonials over the next few days as we lead up to registration day. Here with the first one is the Kevin Strange Award for Excellence recipient Michael Malubag to talk about his experience in my workshop:

“I had been writing on and off for as long as I can remember, trying to learn the craft, but not getting the results I wanted consistently. It had always seemed very hit and miss, as far as the process from start to finish. Neil Gaiman talks about how to become a writer, and mentions that you have to write, and you have to read. Those were always easy. But the kicker is, he said you have to finish things. This was my problem a lot of the time.

I had always wanted to take some sort of writing workshop, but was somewhat paranoid about the motives, and background of those teaching. Were they doing it just for the money, would they pay special attention to each student, did they have the credentials to actually teach a class? Were they teachers who decided to teach a writing class, or actual writers who were sharing their craft?

When I saw Kevin Strange was going to teach a class on writing, all of these doubts were washed away. I had been following him for awhile, and saw he was already sharing his passion and knowledge on the craft in videos online, for free, in between his busy schedule, just to help aspiring writers out. The class was more than reasonably priced, and Kevin Strange absolutely had the credentials to teach a class. He had several novels out, many of which I had already read, and is a winner of several awards. So the passion, credentials, and price were all right, and I signed up.

The class was extremely eye opening. It was a horror writing class, and although I didn’t have a huge interest in writing a horror story, I was not going to pass up a chance to learn from an established author for the price the class was being offered at. I had a feeling, and it was confirmed during the class, that this class would have non genre universal tips for writing. Specifics to the horror genre were discussed in depth, but the class helped me with writing a story in general as well, regardless of genre.

The class was all encompassing. We started with pitching some ideas, deciding with Kevin on which ones would work best, coming up with a really good pre first draft process, then on to the first draft, some edits and rewrites after one on one discussions with Kevin, and finally a polished short story, with suggestions on which markets to submit the finished story to.

The weekly live classes were amazing, and full of information about questions and problems I’ve always had in writing, as well as information I had never even considered. These online seminars were never rushed, and in fact, Kevin would often have so much information to share, and his passion for the craft would get a hold of him, which resulted in even more time than scheduled. I still watch the videos of those classes to this day, when I feel stuck.

Kevin Strange’s class was eye opening, and I still refer to the lessons to this day, which makes my writing so much more efficient than it has ever been. The class went over ideas, the processes and mechanics of writing a short story, the importance of finishing that first draft, editing, character, themes, right down to correct formatting, and the mindset of the people you will be submitting your work to. The value from Kevin’s class was a lot more than I could have hoped for. Since taking the class I’ve had a piece accepted, have a few more out in the submission world, and am steadily writing more things. And finishing them.”