Writing Your Life Roadtrip
An Online Class March 16 - April 26
Climb in for the Writing Your Life Roadtrip, an exuberant online writing workshop (with some Zoom sessions and a bit of one-on-one coaching) to write your stories, poetry, and more about your life's arrivals and departures, discoveries and recoveries, and pit stops that chang everything.
Come together in community to write, read, listen, and create while deepening our own writing practice (all genres welcome!) through online lessons, reflections, resources, and vibrant writing prompts you can do on your time each week. You'll find ample support and guidance through encouraging responses to your writing from Caryn and peers, two Zoom sessions, and a mini-coaching session with Caryn.
See your life anew by exploring the open road of your writing.
Scroll down to Registration to sign up.
Early bird rate until 2/1/26
Who Is This Class For?
This workshop meets you where you are, whether you're just getting started, returning to writing after a stretch, or looking for renewed inspiration to generate new writing. It's also open to people wanting to create poetry or creative non-fiction (such as memoir, essays, etc.). Feel free to write poems or stories about what you're perceiving in and around you. This class is a springboard for writers of all stripes and spots looking for new ways into their words.
If you took this class when it was offered four years ago and are considering jumping in again, please do! I'll be adding new writing prompts, and each class road trip has its own spirit.
If you have questions, please email me here.
Week by Week Roadmap
Week 1: Packing For and Planning the Trip: Our first week will be a time of surveying what calls to us most in our coming writing, including creating and writing from our own best writing prompts and lists of fence post moments (times that are especially significant to us).
Week 2: Starting Out: Begin and begin again could be the credo of human existence. This week, we're dive into new starts in our lives, including childhood through our current age beginnings and new beginnings, all of which give us ample material for compelling writing.
Week 3: Getting Lost: Most road trips -- metaphorical or literal -- include getting lost along the way or, as Buddhist nun Pema Chodron writes, "dwelling in uncertainty." Writing into when we didn't know which end was up can show us new ways of seeing, and from the confusing and chaotic, we can land on a lot of writing that wants to come out and play.
Week 4: Getting Found: Belonging is a strong pull for most of us, whether it's a sense of belonging to ourselves, a family, community, friend group, or the places where we live and explore. Here we'll investigate what we have to say to the page and ourselves about true belonging, and the freedom and vision it can bring us.
Week 5: The Gifts of the Unexpected: Surprises and detours, sometimes catalyzed by road blocks, thwarted plans (and other ways we can make God laugh) give us ample material for deepening our writing. After all, good writing brings writers and readers into fresh and original experiences, juxtaposing like with not-like to spark new fires to warm and illuminate ourselves.
Week 6: Points of Arrival: In writing about hard-won wisdom and other deep learning and transformations, when we suddenly aren't who we thought we are or used to be, we can open the door to strong poems, stories, and more. "I am not yet done with my changes," Stanley Kunitz writes in his poem, "The Layers." This week we'll be looking at what the layers of our lives show us about what we can create on and beyond the page.
Class Ingredients
The class includes two hour-long Zoom sessions from on Thursdays March 19th and April 26 at 7-8 p.m. CT/ 8-9 p.m. ET/ 6-7 p.m. MT/ 5-6 p.m.
Each week's online material includes:
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A short reflection on the weekly topic,
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Creative prompts for your new and evolving writing (which you'll receive positive feedback on from fellow students and me),
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Examples in poetry and prose of a whirlwind of astonishing writers to further inspire you,
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Craft lessons on making your writing as vibrant, rhythmic, and powerful as possible, and
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Resources for further reading, listening, and exploration
You'll also have a one-on-one 20-minute coaching session with Caryn.
Registration
Early Bird rate: $310 until 2/1/25 (regular price: $340). You can register by:
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Venmo (Caryn-Goldberg-2, and please email Caryn so she has your contract info.),
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Check (email Caryn for details), or through
Cancellation Policy: Full refund minus $30 handling fee for all cancellations six weeks before start of the class. One-half refund for cancellations three weeks before the class begins. No refunds within three weeks of the class, but if there are extenuating circumstances (hospitalization, death in the family, etc.), please contact me about a credit for future classes.
Testimonials About Caryn's Classes
I have fallen in love with your writing instruction within the last year. You make us all feel fulfilled and artistic in our striving to express ourselves. Your class has, indeed, saved some lives! ~ Georgia Copeland
As a once upon a time educator before my disability, I recognize superlative teaching. And I just want to say that your handout, the poems you chose, the prompts, the way you hold space for your students, and the rhythm of the workshop you offered all demonstrated that you are a top-notch teacher. Your kindness and understanding were like a salve to my hurting and struggling writer self. And I just want to say that aside from your mastery of teaching, who you are shines loving kindness into the dark and difficult spaces. ~ Marya Summers
Caryn’s skill, talent, wit, and wisdom have shown me the way to begin writing again, which is a restorative healing process. Caryn has taught me to reach deep within and unabashedly, without apology or shame, to tell my own story. ~ Julie Flora
After each class I recognize the peaceful place the class creates in me. My response to listening to others and hearing your responses to our work fills me with contentment, joy, and satisfaction. The level of trust that we experience opens us to heartfelt honesty even as deeply painful experiences are shared. Thank you for the sparks your words create. ~ Patricia Durkin
You are truly one of the best facilitators I’ve ever seen, and your ability to create a safe space for all of us is so magical. ~ Beverly Stewart
Having taken several classes with Caryn, I find her expertise and thoughtful critique helpful to my writing. She is a teacher I want to continue studying with, and I am grateful for her work. ~ Jan Stanton
I have taken three online classes with Caryn and have enjoyed them very much. She encourages a very positive online community atmosphere, provides an inspirational variety of readings and writing prompts, and gives useful and supportive feedback on student writing. ~ Anne Marvin
Caryn’s workshops provides both hope and a distraction from the issues of those suffering. ~ John L. Swainston
I found the course to be a gentle invitation to probe one’s life experiences and bring them to the present in a nurturing and kindly way. I especially liked how the course was structured from the immediate to the universal and opportunities for growth. Readings were relevant and inspiring, and it was refreshing to interact with the other participants. ~ Jennifer Pratt-Walter
I was not expecting your course to change my life, but I was very eager to have the immersion now in more poetry, as well as a structure (which I need) to start up writing again. I also appreciated your very inclusive approach to teaching online, including acknowledgement that people could engage with the material at any level they wished, up what you called “living in it.” ~ Jan Hitchcock
