by Writing Workshops Staff
3 hours ago
Adam Popescu does not want to talk about passion. Ask him what he wishes someone had told him earlier in his career, and he will tell you it was never about talent or inspiration. It was about patience, perseverance, and yes, pain. That unglamorous truth is the foundation of The Art of Pitching: Cold Pitches, Story Craft, and the Business of Getting Published, a live seminar at WritingWorkshops.com, the official education partner of Electric Literature.
Popescu is a journalist whose reporting has appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic, Vanity Fair, and the BBC, and he is also a published author: his first book, Nima, grew out of his reporting on Everest. In this seminar, he teaches writers how to sell the story once it is written.
Students will workshop a real pitch live in class and leave with practical, editor-level feedback on their own work. They will also walk away with a pitch packet built from real examples, pitches that sold and pitches that stalled, broken down by subject and publication, plus a one-page cheat sheet and a working understanding of how to think about story ownership and IP. It is a class built on the same principle Popescu describes below: not talent, but effort, applied consistently.
Here is our Meet the Teaching Artist Interview with Adam:
Writing Workshops: Hi, Adam. Please introduce yourself to our audience.
Adam Popescu: I write about the way the world is changing, often using the impact of the modern world on the natural world. That can have wide range, and that's why I find it so interesting, the connections in our world that may seem tenuous but are really quite strong. If I write about a rare species a world away, or a company or cultural figure, I try and connect it to a wide audience. That way, these aren't niche topics, they're relatable, and reliability is what good narrative is all about.
Writing Workshops: What's the thing you wish someone had taught you earlier in your writing life, and how does this class address that?
Adam Popescu: I hate the word passion when it comes to writing. It's really not about passion. It's about patience, it's about perseverance, it's about pain. Alliterations aside, it's true. Talent isn't as important as working hard, that's just a fact. You don't need to have talent to write. Of course, it helps, and that's why writing and teaching writing is such a black box, but while style and form and perspective can take years to build and develop, the work ethic is something anyone at any stage can pick up. And that's what I try to focus on in these courses: forget talent. That we can't control. Sometimes those with talent think they don't have to work as hard and that's a disservice to them, the work itself, and the talent. But what we all can control is effort and time and if you put those in, the work will be better no matter who you are or what you've accomplished --- or how well you can write. That's something key I try to focus on. So is reading. If you don't like reading, why would you want to be a writer?
"I hate the word passion when it comes to writing. It's about patience, it's about perseverance, it's about pain."
Writing Workshops: If a student walks away from this class with one skill or shift in their writing they didn't have before, what is it?
Adam Popescu: I hope you walk away with the feeling that if you really want this life, if you're really open to the time it takes to build and develop--and if you're real with yourself--then there are skills you can build. Reading helps, it really does. And I don't mean summaries.
Writing Workshops: What's the last sentence you read that made you stop and reread it? Type it out for us.
Adam Popescu: I'm going to pick up the book that I'm reading by an author from Chile named Roberto Bolaño who maybe rings a bell, maybe not. This isn't premeditated, just typing out the page I dogeared to give a sense of his style (translated from Spanish and god it's long and I have no clue what he's even talking about but wow is it packed with ideas and images and tone, so I'm willing to be sort of bewitched by it). The book is called Nazi Literature in the Americas and it's a literary experiment sort of apropos because each chapter is about a fake person and their fake book which is what this sentence describes.
Adam Popescu: Anyway, it's long, I warn again, but think of the energy it took, and the balls, to write something like this. Ok, here goes: "One of Quantrill's Raiders crossing the state of Kansas as the head of five hundred cavalrymen; flags inscribed with a sort of primitive, premonitory swastika; rebels who never surrender; a plan to reach Great Bear Lake via Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and the Northwest Territories; a Confederate philosopher whose fanciful dream was to establish an Ideal Republic in the vicinity of the Arctic Circle; an expedition unraveling along the way, beset by human and natural obstacles; two exhausted horsemen finally reaching Great Bear Lake, dismounting. Such, in summary, is the plot of JMS Hill's first novel, published in 1924 in the Fantastic Stories series."
Writing Workshops: Describe a moment in a workshop, one you were teaching or one you took as a student, where something clicked for someone. What happened?
Adam Popescu: My workshops are very interactive and it's for that very reason. I can see it in peoples' faces and in their voices when we talk about craft and structure and the ins and outs of narrative. That way it's not just a one-way street. Knowing the rules is how you break them and that's the level you want to get to.
Writing Workshops: What's a craft move you're slightly obsessed with right now? Not a big concept, a small, specific technique.
Adam Popescu: I don't have a trick. But I will say if you're using AI you're not sounding like you. You're sounding like other people and the goal should be to develop your own voice.
"If you're using AI you're not sounding like you. You're sounding like other people, and the goal should be to develop your own voice."
Writing Workshops: What's a book you press into people's hands that has nothing to do with writing craft?
Adam Popescu: Right now I'm having an affair with El Boom, but not so much Gabo: I love Mario Vargas Llosa and am trying with Carlos Fuentes and recently discovered Eduardo Halfon (he is not part of El Boom and writes from Guatemala but pick up The Tarantula and you'll see what I'm talking about). And Bolaño as I mentioned from the 80s and 90s is also someone I've recently disordered. What I do is I read a writer then read their peers and then go deep in their list. I always love Conrad and Tolstoy and can go on and on, which is what makes reading so special. It's a time machine, it's a portal, it's a window into a mind.
Reading like Popescu reads is one way to develop your voice. Learning to sell that voice to real editors is the other half, and that's exactly what happens in this seminar.
Enroll in The Art of Pitching →Writing Workshops: What's the worst writing advice that sounds smart?
Adam Popescu: That you can teach writing.
Writing Workshops: Finish this sentence: "Most writing classes won't tell you this, but..."
Adam Popescu: You can't teach writing. No one can. But you can teach how to read and think and that's how you learn to write.
Writing Workshops: Who was your first literary crush?
Adam Popescu: My father. My favorite writer of all time: Petru Popescu.
Writing Workshops: What's your teaching vibe, in one sentence, not a paragraph?
Adam Popescu: Honest.
That single word, honest, might be the best description of what happens in Popescu's seminar. Real pitches, real feedback, real explanations of why a pitch worked or didn't: nothing sanitized for comfort. If you have a story you keep circling instead of sending, this is where you learn to send it. Enroll in The Art of Pitching and bring the pitch you have been afraid to show an editor. Popescu will tell you exactly why it is or isn't working, and you will leave with the tools to write the next ten.
Bring a pitch. Leave with a plan, a packet of real examples, and an editor's honest read on your work.
Save Your Seat in The Art of Pitching →WritingWorkshops.com is an independent, artist-run creative writing school and the official education partner of Electric Literature. Since 2016, we've helped writers strengthen their voice, develop a greater understanding of craft, and forge a path to publication.
