Alongside Hour

Have a creative question or dilemma?

An Alongside Hour is about showing up with a question and seeing what unfolds from curiosity and conversation.

I'm a creative thinker who loves talking about ideas from writing and life, and all the stuff that overlaps in between.

I love talking about ideas, and I love seeing what happens when we're curious about the problems we encounter in our writing projects and writing minds.

An Alongside Hour is 60 minutes of free-flowing conversation between you and me about whatever creative thing is on your mind.

I'll ask you questions, share my curiosities, and together, we'll try to get to the heart of things.

The goal of an Alongside Hour isn't to "solve" anything, though I do consider myself a creative problem solver. But more than that, I think of myself as a problem identifier.

When we're curious about what's going on, we're often led to a place where we can see that the problem isn't a problem at all. It may be a challenge, but it also presents opportunity: the opportunity to get weird (which is in my view, the best!), get creative in new ways, and to uncover whatever it is we're really trying to say.

Book an Alongside Hour

You can come to an Alongside Hour with:

The idea you want
to write about

...but have no idea where to start, or whether it's a direction you want to go.

The barriers that stall your creative process

...and keep you from progressing, whether in word count or ideas.

The multiple creative projects you're trying to juggle

...and how they work together,

or don't.

The worst writers' block you've ever experienced

...and what keeps you from picking your project back up again.

The thing you KNOW is a story, but you're afraid to tell it

...and you just don't see a way

around that fear.

A character identity crisis

...aka, the feeling that you don't even know the person you invented.

A question that's slowing down your manuscript

...like uncertainty about the timeline, point of view, characters, and beyond.

Hangups about publishing or sharing your writing

...that keep your work hidden in drawers or hard drives (spoiler, this one's VERY personal to me).

Whatever is on
your creative mind

Seriously. You don't need to have cohesive thoughts about it. Just a question and curiosity is enough.

SPECIAL FOR JUNE

Alongside Hours: Pride Edition

One thing I've found to be true about my own creative ideas that relate to queerness: these ideas catch me off guard and resist any attempt to "pin them down." Once I think I've figured an idea out...it changes into something new.

This is a good, beautiful thing, of course.

And to be honest, I didn't think I'd be writing a novel that explores queerness at ALL. But then, early in my first draft, a few sentences fell out of my brain onto the page that made me say, "Okay, wow, that is not what I expected to write. That's very Not Straight. Is that my character? Is that me?" And suddenly, Iife was different.

Queer ideas, and the stories that follow from them, are powerful. They are often tender and deeply personal. At the same time, they're often really, really fun. There is a wild amount of joy in spending time with ideas like these.

Pride Edition Alongside Hours are here to support your creative ideas and questions that really, REALLY don't fit into boxes. In these sessions, I will hold space that celebrates your identity and your creativity. I want to be very clear that I will treat your stories, ideas, and selves with the utmost care. These sessions are here to celebrate you with abandon!

Please also know that you don't have to identify as LGBTQIA+ to enroll in these special Alongside Hours. If you feel it's right for you, that's all that matters. And if you have any questions before signing up, my inbox is open to you.

Book an Alongside Hour: Pride Edition

You'll leave an Alongside Hour with all or some of the following:

A clearer sense of the creative challenge or idea you're facing
Choices and actions you might choose as your next step
Clarity around what opportunities you have in front of you
Permission to get as creatively weird as you want
Reassurance that questions like yours are intrinsic to the creative process and that by asking the question, you're on the right track
More questions. A good Alongside Hour yields lots of questions to think about, dig into, chew on...choose your idiom.

Book now

I can't wait to talk about whatever it is that's on your mind. All creative questions are welcome--we'll puzzle through together.

Alongside Editorial