Writer's Workshop: Tips & Tools to Create Your Story

This is a series of three writer's workshops, taking place on Sundays in June: 6/1, 6/8, and 6/15. You can sign up for 1, 2, or all 3 workshops.

The Life Journeys Writers Guild's Writing and Mentoring Workshop, featuring Literary Therapy℠, is an engaging, interactive experience designed to inspire writers of all levels. Offered as standalone or multi-part sessions, the workshops combine writing guidance, publishing insights, and mentorship in a flexible, supportive, and confidential environment. With intimate group sizes, participants explore storytelling techniques, character development, and the business of books. Multimedia tools are used, and writers may share short samples for constructive feedback.

Workshop #1: Tips & Tools to Create Your Story (fiction or nonfiction projects)

Workshop #2: Creating the Voice and Vibe of Your Characters

Workshop #3: The Business of Books

• The pros and cons of traditional vs. indie-publishing
• Literary Agents/Managers
• Pitches and Loglines

About the facilitator: Yvonne J. Medley

• A former writer for The Washington Times, The Washington Post, People, Gospel Today, United Methodist Connection, The Urban Sentinel, and many other publications.
• Recipient of a Governor’s Citation from Maryland as well as numerous citations and acknowledgment from the Congressional MD-District 5, Charles County, MD House and Senate Delegations, and the Charles County Commissioners, as well as CCC’s partnership support in the Life Journeys Writers Guild’s production of a six-week traveling exhibition, highlighting the innovative ways the literary arts informs, inspires and empowers rural communities in Charles County—titled SPARK! This sector of the Smithsonian Institute nationwide program falls under Museums on Main Street (MoMs), which is a collaboration of Maryland Humanities and the Smithsonian Institute.
• Medley’s novels, God in Wingtip Shoes and Jubi Stone: Saved by the Vine, were traditionally published. (Kensington/Penguin and Random House 2012 & 2013).
• Her novella, The Prison Plumb Line, was adapted for the stage and optioned. The Prison Plumb Line, a Lyrical Drama! was performed in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and behind bars. Its Mission Film version is streaming on Tubi and YouTube, garnering 52K views and counting.
  Medley successfully produced Poetry is Power at the Kennedy Center in 2021.
• Founder of the Life Journeys Writers Club, Inc./DBA is Life Journeys Writers Guild (2007), a charitable nonprofit organization, which has been partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Maryland Humanities, The Charles County Arts Alliance, and the Maryland State Arts Council.
• Established and involved in several critically acclaimed writers’ programs and showcases, such as Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt free Library’s Writers Live Series (Central Branch), Maryland Humanities One Maryland One Book, and literary prison programs—conducting writing
  workshops and mentorships via Charles County Court programs.
• Creator of Literary Therapy℠, a New York Writers Lab screenplay finalist, and a Big Apple Film Festival Quarterfinalist for her screenplay (co-written with Karen Bartelt), titled The Number Hole, based on Medley’s formative years in Harlem, riding shotgun in her dad’s taxi.
• Medley, who is also a ghostwriter, editor, and writer’s coach, received recognition from President Obama’s 2012 White House, the MLK Drum Major for Service award.
  
• Her latest film project is titled Journey to Nowhere, a thirty-something wife, mother, and print journalist enters into the Sandwich Generation when she kidnaps her grandmother (94) to take care of her; literary projects: Two Old White Ladies in Africa and American Black Life Revelations, a Collection of Novel-lattes & Essays; and The Color of the Band: A Soldier Triumphs in Love and Overcomes Hate in Occupied Germany and Beyond, a historical memoir, chronicling 95-year-old Walter D. Medley, Jr.’s (no relation to Yvonne) untold story serving in the U.S. All-Negro Army Bands in America’s segregated military (Published July 2023). Featured on NBC and ABC, Goodreads called it “A stellar and deeply impactful memoir.”
• Medley is also a military wife (U.S. Navy) and mother (U.S. Marines).