A workbook for writers with journals in every drawer, notes on every device, and one piece they quietly stopped looking at

Based on Magdalena Ponurska's Live Workshop

Welcome to Your Transformation

You have been writing for years. Some of it lives in journals stacked in a cubby. Some of it lives in hundreds of notes on your phone, or in a folder under a title you have carried in your head forever. A few pieces got published and now feel finished. Others stalled halfway and started to feel dull, even to you.

That pile is your archive, and there is gold in it.

When we go back to old work, we usually go looking for something to reuse. This workbook sends you back with different questions. Who was this written for? What were they stuck on? What do they walk away with after thirty minutes with you? Answer those, and the piece you abandoned usually tells you where it wants to go next.

You are going to draw a house, walk one piece of writing through it room by room, and leave with a finish date on your calendar.

How to Use This Workbook

This is a doing workbook. Pick up a pen before you read any further.

You'll need:

• A pen and a blank sheet of paper
• One piece from your archive: a draft, an essay, a video script, a book chapter, the introduction you give at the start of every class, a journal entry you keep circling back to
• Your calendar
• A sticky note
• About an hour

The structure:

1. Draw the House (the map you will walk through)
2. The Piece I Brought (what stalled, and why)