**This workshop has been rescheduled as an interactive online event via Webex. We are also opening tickets up to non-members. Registration is now closed for this event. Attendees will receive login instructions via email in the week preceding the workshop.

Do you have unfinished manuscripts in a drawer? Does it seem easier to start new stories or articles than to complete and submit existing projects? Maybe you yearn to write a memoir, play, or novel but can never find the time. Don’t wait for retirement or a period of freedom that may never come. We all have commitments to family, work, and community that compete for our time.  Write Better Faster teaches writers to finish projects, relieve anxiety, and produce more in less time. Enjoy better life balance and finish that big project despite creative resistance, time constraints, and competing priorities. Rediscover the calm, inspired sensation of writing in the zone. It is possible to increase your word count without sacrificing quality. Writing is much more fun when it gets done!

Detailed synopsis

Participants will use surveys and reflection to diagnose their areas of challenge and opportunity to write more efficiently. Maaja will demonstrate the advantages of writing in the zone, as well as the many impediments created by modern life that block this kind of creative flow state. This is a responsive workshop in which the challenges expressed by the participants will determine the proportion of time spent learning techniques of journaling, writing in the zone, training for and hitting word count goals, using community and shared challenges to inspire and motivate, and managing ideas to reduce distraction for maximum creative potential.

Participants will learn how to…

• diagnose personal blocks and challenges to finishing
• diagnose areas of challenge and opportunity for more efficient writing
• get into the zone (a mental state of heightened concentration ideal for creativity and productivity)
• use journaling and planning to discover most productive times of the day and week
• efficiently balance personally relevant writing activities (incubating ideas, planning, choosing projects, draft writing, editing, pitching, platform-building, and submitting to markets)
• choose (or not choose) public challenges like NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), Camp NaNoWriMo (for writing outside of November), for increased productivity and accountability for finishing
• decide which Facebook/ online groups are helpful depending on personal goals, and which are time-sucking vortexes
• decide whether online writing platforms like Radish and Wattpad are helpful or a distraction
• create a human support system or writing group for mutual inspiration and motivation
• decide whether and when to hire professional help
• choose dictation, transcription, or efficiency apps to boost word count
• write on the go and profit from lost moments to boost productivity
• capture, sort, and incubate writing ideas for maximum inspiration and efficiency
• create a personalized writing practice for ongoing success
• write a novel in a month, two months, or three months

Maaja Wentz is an award-winning writer of chilling and quirky speculative fiction. “Inside of a Dog,” appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. “You,” won a short story prize in the national Norma Epstein Foundation competition for Creative Writing, University of Toronto. She is a member of WCDR, 20 Books to 50K, and Sisters in Crime.

Maaja’s first novel, Feeding Frenzy: Curse of the Necromancer, received over 143 000 reads on Wattpad. Chosen as a “Featured Story,” it went on to win a Watty award. Feeding Frenzy has since been professionally edited and published.

Currently working full-time as a teacher-librarian, Maaja holds a B. A. in French and English literature, a B. ed., and an M.A. in Comparative literature from the University of Toronto.