Review: The One Week Writing Workshop by Karin Adams

A DIY guide to bringing your long-imagined story to life, The One Week Writing Workshop: 7 Days to Spark, Boost or Revive Your Novel by Karin Adams is a straightforward and revelatory tool for aspiring novelists of any age or experience level. Proposing that all the necessary knowledge to overcome writer’s block and move forward in your prose can be acquired in the span of a mere week, this step-by-step reintroduction to story-crafting is an essential and inspiring read.

Founded on a core philosophy of Method, Momentum, and Motivation, Adams’ book is broken down into seven comprehensive days of a workshop, divided roughly into Ideas, Character, Setting, Plot, Drafting, Rest, and Revision. These tenets are based on real-world workshops that the author has conducted for thousands of burgeoning writers at every stage of the novel-writing process, regardless of their skill level or publishing history, offering the confidence of a proven and polished process.

Between essays on the nuances of character webs, journaling, scale and scope, exposition, storyboarding, and other core principles are dozens of useful exercises to get creativity flowing and build momentum within your project period. Through anecdotal examples from her own writing experience, the book provides guidance on artistic habits and real-time activities to keep you motivated, such as the suggestion to deconstruct a favorite novel to see what makes it work, providing practical nudges along the road of creation, as well as the psychological accountability of physically attending a workshop.

Most useful, the book provides editorial excerpts from progressive drafts, demonstrating the power of revision, where much of the work often takes place. As such, some sections are as valuable for editors as writers, or anyone who wants to master their self-discipline, sharpen their observational skills, spark their imagination, or develop a daily practice. Most of the book’s activities are of course customized for writing, but they can easily be tweaked or redirected for other goals. For example, the idea of immersing oneself in research before launching into your own writing project could be applied to any new endeavor, where immersion in a given subject matter is necessary for maximum understanding and openness.

The accessibility of the prose is also refreshing – striking a good balance between being welcoming and supportive, and recognizing the difficulty of completing any creative work, the book manages to be accessible enough for beginners and thorough enough for experienced authors. This evenness of tone makes it easier to trust Adams’ process and lean into the hard work required to actually bring the idea of a book into fruition, whether you are a teenager cracking on your first novel attempt or a veteran who needs to relight a spark.

Realistic in its acknowledgement of the struggle that so many writers face, yet methodically structured to break down those fears and blocks, this book succeeds where so many self-motivators fail, providing actionable and encouraging exercises, rather than vague suggestions. For those who sincerely commit to this intensive seven-day experience, it would be hard to imagine not coming out as a better writer on the other side.