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Are you ready to get your chapter into shape?
In this facilitated 10-week Book Chapter Shortcut, which runs from September 14 to November 20, you'll work alongside a cohort of authors to revise a messy draft into a solid, argument-driven book chapter. Through practical, manageable prompts, you'll learn how to plan structural revisions and implement them. And along the way, you'll develop writing and revision strategies that fit into your life—doable within your schedule, adapted to your writing habits, and responsive to your source material.
The core of the course will be our weekly 90-minute Zoom meetings, which will be held on Wednesdays from 2 to 3:30pm Eastern. We'll also hold an optional coworking session/office hour on Fridays from 2 to 3pm Eastern. And we'll have a discussion board and a library of video clips, plus we'll post recordings of the meetings, so you can easily catch up if you have to miss a session.
This course is designed for authors who have existing writing (notes, a dissertation chapter, conference papers, seminar papers) and need to revise that writing into a monograph chapter. It is NOT designed for authors who merely have an idea for a chapter but have not yet written any material.
We can't guarantee that you'll have a finished draft by the end of the course, since a lot depends on how much time you have to spend on it outside of our weekly meetings. But we'll work in a way that will allow you to tackle the biggest issues first, and save the smaller ones for later—so even after the course is finished, you'll be able to keep working with the tools you've acquired. And because you'll have permanent access to the materials after the course is done, you can go back at any time and catch up or review.
Week 1: Take Stock of Your Evidence
Week 2: Assemble Your Draft
Week 3: Assemble Your Draft
Week 4: Evaluate Your Draft
Week 5: Fill In Your Draft
Week 6: Fill In Your Draft
Week 7: Fill In Your Draft
Week 8: Revise Your Draft
Week 9: Frame Your Draft
Week 10: Tie Up Loose Ends
"After feeling stuck, I learned to trust my initial idea/interest in my topic again by following the very actionable steps proposed by Katelyn and Allison. From the overall framing and research questions to troubleshooting points of tension/weaknesses in my argument and even considering what the project is NOT, Katelyn and Allison's workshop provided the guidance we all needed regardless of whether this was our first or second project or even third."
"This workshop was really helpful in giving a method to the madness (or least what's how working on a big project feels to me sometimes). The concrete exercises, step by step instructions, opportunities for feedback in the Friday writing hour, and the sense of community was all really inspiring. I felt like I was very in control of the process and my progress in ways that have fundamentally changed (for the better!) how I work."
"I have been talking so much to my colleagues about how the structure of this workshop and its content is so helpful—breaking down the work into smaller tasks and actionable steps that feel doable in the time span."
"I learned a system for revising a chapter that helped me observed my capacity or effectiveness through each step."
Your Instructor
We’re Katelyn Knox and Allison Van Deventer. We met at UCLA, where Allison was pursuing her PhD in comparative literature and Katelyn was pursuing her PhD in French and Francophone studies. We soon became friends and writing partners. Today, Katelyn is an Associate Professor of French at Louisiana State University, where she specializes in 20th- and 21st-century French and Francophone literature, music, and culture. Allison runs an academic editing business, specializing in developmental editing for book authors in the humanities. Together, we lead workshops for writers of scholarly books.
