Learn to cultivate a writing process that provides fertile ground for unexpected discoveries and how to make the most of moments when you’re surprised by your own writing.

For creative nonfiction, nonfiction, and all writers eager to find more spontaneity in their process.
Included in the Season Pass

Sometimes the exact thing your writing needs is the thing you least expect: the subject you weren’t meaning to consider, the turn of phrase you didn’t know you had in you, or the connections you never realized you could make. These “Lucky Drafts” are happy accidents, turning serendipity, coincidence, and unwitting juxtaposition into exquisite nonfiction. And often, these drafts surprise us with their flow and power, transcending the labor of writing to reach our strongest authorial voice. 

I never meant to be an essayist. The first long-form piece of creative nonfiction I ever wrote was meant to be an 800-word contribution to a roundtable on race and poetry. It turned into a 9000-word essay that went explosively viral upon publication. Nearly every essay I’ve published since has similarly arrived while I was writing something else entirely. This is true of many of my poems, too. 

Other writers across genres—poets, novelists, and essayists—have shared with me their own adventures in happy accidents, to borrow a phrase from legendary painter and PBS fixture Bob Ross, and how inadvertent nonfiction can become the best essays we never meant to write.

In this webinar, we’ll consider why and how the inadvertent can so often be so much more interesting and satisfying than the thing we were meaning to write. We’ll discuss strategies for cultivating and embracing happy accidents and learn to create the circumstances (and welcome the surprises!) to generate exciting new work that surpasses our own expectations for our writing.

In this webinar, you will:

• DISCOVER examples of accidental turns in essay writing
• EXPLORE how and why the unintentional can result in potent and memorable writing
• LEARN how to embrace the unexpected and let it lead us to fresh and exciting new essays
• RELEASE over-control of your writing to allow yourself to surprise yourself

This webinar is ideal for writers who…

• feel stuck or blocked
• are writing a ton but publishing less than they hope to
• seek to differentiate their work from everyone else’s in an oversaturated media moment
• are waiting for their writing to “flow” instead of pushing

Closed captioning is available. ✔
All registrants receive the recording. ✔

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

A personable and lively teacher, Jaswinder Bolina’s superpower is translating complicated ideas into plain English. His conversational, humorous sessions are transformative for students’ work. Noted for being analytical yet highly approachable, Jaswinder’s most recent book English as a Second Language and Other Poems (2023) was awarded the 2025 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award from Claremont Graduate University. He is author of three previous poetry collections, The 44th of July (2019), Phantom Camera (2013), and Carrier Wave (2007), and of the essay collection Of Color (2020).

REFUNDS (less a $10 processing fee) ARE AVAILABLE before the replay is sent out. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.

There are no refunds after the replay is sent.

Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com

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