What is Vision Season?
Vision Season is a seven-week, virtual master class in tending your creative garden with award-winning author Elana K. Arnold. Each week, Elana sends a video lecture and transcript, followed by a series of assignments designed to help you put the week’s lessons into practice. Additionally, each week features a recorded conversation between Elana and an expert in the topic. A weekly live call (recorded if you need to listen later) gives writers the opportunity to engage in conversation about the work at hand and creativity in general, as well as to ask specific questions. And a private, moderated forum provides a space for Vision Season writers to connect with and learn from each other. By the end of Vision Season, writers will have reacquainted themselves with their existing body of work (whether a few seedlings or a cornucopia), will have grown a wealth of new story ideas, and will be equipped with tools and resources to continue the forward momentum.
Who is it for?
Vision Season is for anyone who wants to know more about their creative potential and befriend the back of their brain. It’s for anyone who wants to remember their past, engage with their present, and look toward their future in search of meaningful, personal creative work.
What’s the curriculum?
Week One: Return to Your Early Self
An important part of being a creative person is remembering the creative person you were. All humans are natural storytellers, and all children are excellent payers of attention. This week, we will dredge through our own creative histories, consider the children we once were, and engage in a series of exercises to remember and reconnect. With special guest Lisa Jahn-Clough.
Week Two: Alter Your Consciousness
There is more than one way to skin a cat, and there is more than one way to be in conversation with the back of the brain—or to access our creativity. This week, we will engage in a series of exercises to shift our perspective and see the world—and our own creative work—from different angles. With special guest Sherri L. Smith.
Week Three: Creative Constraints
Elana believes that creative constraints are beautiful things, and that they can be used in both micro and macro ways to enhance our work. In Week Three, we will explore this concept, play with a series of creative constraints, and consider ways we can employ limits to create space. With special guest Martha Brockenbrough.
Week Four: Balance
Ah, Balance, that elusive beauty. What is it? How can we find it? When should we let it go? This week, we will explore the importance and challenge of balance—both in life and on the page. There will be a series of exercises to give writers different lenses through which to view their work. With special guest Meg Medina.
Week Five: Channeling Pain
One of Elana’s core beliefs is that we don’t get to choose what life fills us with, but we do get to choose what do with it. Elana chooses to transform her lived experiences—even the painful ones—into art. This week, we will explore how to do this, as well as how to take care of yourself, and just as importantly, we will explore if you really want to delve into your pain as a creative source at all. With special guest Anna-Marie McLemore.
Week Six: Exploring Pleasure
Sometimes, writers feel squeamish about exploring pleasure in their creative work. They may be unsure about how to do so without it seeming like “too much,” or may worry of being accused of writing “purple prose.” As wholeheartedly as Elana explores pain in her writing, she equally invests in exploring embodied pleasure. We are alive, after all, and in these bodies but once, right now. During Week Six, we will give ourselves permission to invest in the sensory delights, and to fully enjoy the practice of being a creative person… and a person, as well. With special guest Nina LaCour.
Week Seven: One Day, You Shall Die
It’s desperately sad but absolutely true. Not one of us will live forever. Though Elana wishes it were different, she also knows that her relationship with her own mortality fuels her creatively and presses her to be more present in her life and on the page. This week, we will make friends with our deaths, both literal and metaphoric. And, we’ll acknowledge that out of death and rot can spring new life, turning our gaze to creative germinations that have begun to sprout throughout the time we’ve spent together. With special guest Joanna Ebenstein.
Will my work get read and critiqued?
Writers do not submit work. Vision Season provides a large amount of material—in video lectures, recorded conversations with special guests, and written Packet Work—that is designed to help each writer deepen and grow their creative gardens.
Vision Season writers may find other writers in the Forum with whom they’d like to exchange work, though there will be no obligation to do so.
Who is Elana K Arnold?
Elana writes books for and about children and teens. Among other honors, her novel Damsel was a Printz Honor Winner and a finalist for the California Book Award; What Girls are Made Of was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award and the California Book Award and the winner of the Golden Kite Award; and her middle grade novel A Boy Called BAT was a 2018 Global Read Aloud selection and has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Elana holds a master’s degree in Creative Writing/Fiction from the University of California, Davis and teaches in Hamline University’s MFAC program.
Elana deeply believes that humans are storytelling animals, and that everyone, from the youngest child to the oldest grown-up, has stories worth telling.
When is the next Vision Season?
The 2024 Vision Season will be announced soon. Subscribe for updates.
Enrollment for Revision Season is now open!
How much does it cost?
The cost for the course is $950, payable in full or in 4 monthly installments.
What if I still have questions?
Please email questions to Elana K Arnold’s teaching assistant at revisionseason@gmail.com.
For updates, subscribe to Elana’s newsletter and follow @RevisionSeason on Instagram or @ElanaKArnold on Twitter.
