Saturday, April 4th, 2026

Class will meet once via Zoom from 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM ET

🌍 Class Times by Time Zone: Los Angeles (PT): 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM / Chicago (CT): 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM / New York (ET): 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM / London (BST): 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM / Berlin (CEST): 8:00 PM – 10:00 PM

Any questions about this class? Use the Chat Button to talk with us. 

Instructor Elizabeth Austin's writing has appeared in The New York Times, Time, Harper's Bazaar, McSweeney's, Electric Literature, and others. She is currently working on a memoir about being a bad cancer mom. She lives outside of Philadelphia with her two children and their many pets.

Who is this class for?

This online writing workshop is for writers across all genres who find themselves writing about the same subjects, images, or questions repeatedly, and who want to start leveraging this pattern strategically. It is appropriate for essay writers building cohesive collections, memoirists seeking thematic throughlines, book writers ensuring thematic coherence, multi-genre writers seeing patterns across forms, and any writer wanting to understand and articulate their unique creative territory. This class is open to all levels.

What to expect:

This intensive 2-hour creative writing workshop guides writers through identifying their thematic obsessions and creating a visual map that becomes a content generator for years to come. Through a structured "seven-layer excavation," you'll uncover patterns you've been unconsciously repeating: recurring images, relationship dynamics, persistent questions, emotional landscapes, opposing forces in tension, material you habitually cut, and themes that feel scary because they hit too close to home.

These seven layers of data reveal your unique creative territory: the combination of obsessions that only you can explore in your particular way. You will create a thematic map with your core obsession at the center and 3-5 satellite themes radiating outward. This map shows connections between themes and identifies intersections, with each intersection framed as a potential essay. When two themes that haven't explicitly met in your work collide, new content emerges.

The workshop provides six concrete strategies for generating endless work from your map. You will learn to use your themes as filters for submission calls and feed your obsessions through cross-pollination practices outside writing. Through case studies of successful obsessive writers, you will see how the best writers mine the same territory for decades across multiple forms and genres. This Zoom writing class is perfect for writers who feel stuck writing about "the same things," writers building essay collections needing thematic unity, anyone unable to articulate what they write about, or writers avoiding their most powerful material because it feels too repetitive or too revealing.

What are the writing goals?

In this course, students will complete a seven-layer excavation of their existing work to identify recurring patterns, then create a personal thematic map that includes one core obsession and 3-5 satellite themes with visible connections between them. Students will generate a minimum of 5 new essay ideas using six specific strategies (intersection method, inversion, deep dive, question-as-title, constraint game, missing piece). By the end, students will be able to articulate their creative territory in one clear sentence and will have established a quarterly review practice for updating their thematic map as obsessions evolve. This class does not include individual manuscript feedback; however, students will receive real-time guidance during the workshop.

Readings

No pre-class reading required.

COURSE OUTLINE

Hour 1: Excavation and Discovery

• Why Your Obsessions Matter
• The Seven-Layer Excavation

Hour 2: Mapping and Generating

• Building Your Thematic Map
• Generating New Work from Your Map
• Building a Sustainable Obsession Practice
• Q&A and Closing

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

• Complete a seven-layer excavation of your existing work
• Create a personal thematic map with core and satellite themes
• Generate 5+ new essay ideas using proven strategies
• Articulate your creative territory in one clear sentence
• Establish a sustainable obsession practice for ongoing content generation
• Embrace repetition as a strength rather than a limitation

Can't Make It Live?

No problem! The session will be recorded and available to watch after the seminar concludes.

ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:

This one-time seminar will be conducted live via Zoom. The session will be recorded and available to watch after the seminar concludes.

Tuition is $99 USD. You can pay for the course in full or use Shop Pay or Affirm to pay over time with equal Monthly Payments. Both options are available at checkout.

• Instructor: Elizabeth Austin
• Begins Saturday, April 4th, 2026
• Class will meet once via Zoom from 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM ET
• Tuition is $99 USD.

🌍 Class Times by Time Zone: Los Angeles (PT): 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM / Chicago (CT): 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM / New York (ET): 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM / London (BST): 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM / Berlin (CEST): 8:00 PM – 10:00 PM