The Gateless Writing Academy

The Main Elements of the Gateless Academy

• Luminary Calls are mentoring calls with bestselling authors, publishers and agents.
• Seminars include a library of 100+ recorded hours of craft, skills and resources, released every month.
• Applied Craft Sessions with Suzanne every month on Zoom are where you receive directions and encouragement for your work-in-progress. You can send questions and pages beforehand.
• The New Rules Studio, founded by Gateless Trained Teacher and critically-acclaimed author Terri Trespicio starts in January and runs for 6 months, where you meet live on Zoom to generate your work and immerse yourself in feedback with Gateless Trained Teachers.
• Work-in-Progress Salons are once a month with Senior Editor, Kate Baldwin, where you bring pages to share for Gateless feedback.
• The Media Maven Pitch Program is the 9th month of the progam, when you work to create pitches and move your short form work to the point of publication in major media outlets. 

All Zooms are always recorded in case you cannot be there. You will receive them after the event with a reminder of what’s next. 

Live sessions are inspiring and stimulating and usually run 1 hour for most calls and 2 hours for Craft Calls.  

You can come and go as you like.

1. Craft Seminars:

Every month, new seminars go live in this portal (see the list on the left). The first month is about the critic. Thereafter we go in-depth into craft from the raw draft to revision to the sale and everything in between. To understand the trajectory of the seminars, visit the Academy Syllabus HERE.

You can access the current month to the left on this page (with the feather). Once downloaded, you can have them forever. They are also summarized in written transcripts.

These 100+ hours of craft seminars give you absolutely everything you need to move forward in your work, including the architecture and structure, revising and editing, how to create chapters and scenes, moving to the point of publication, building platform and everything in between. This is what I would transmit if I were building your book with you 1:1.

The seminars are extensive, and they give you the agency and the power to elevate your craft to its most powerful point no matter where you are in the process. These seminars are the result of over three decades of expertise in the field and provide resources not found anywhere else. The seminars are often described as career and life changing.

2. Live Sessions with Suzanne and Your Luminaries:

Every month you will enjoy a Luminary Call with an industry expert who has been through the Academy. These experts from the field will mentor you collectively to give you a better understanding of your craft, the sale of your work, how to finish and what to do when the critic arrives.

These Luminaries include bestselling authors, publishing experts, media moguls, literary agents and others whose skills can help you create into the zenith of your literary power.

You can ask questions live or, if you cannot be there, send your questions to the Academy email beforehand. A recording of the call will be sent to you afterwards.

3. Applied Craft Sessions with Suzanne:

Every month, you will be be able to send questions about your work-in-progress to gatelessacademy@gmail.com.  for the intimate all-Academy meeting with Suzanne.

If you have pages related to your question, please send those as a google doc attachment with your question.

Please do not send more than 10 pages.

Make sure your question is very clear, concise and you have thought through why you are asking it and ways you may want to go about it.  

Please send your pages and questions to gatelessacademy@gmail.com at least 24 hours prior to the Craft Call.

Craft Calls are once a month. They are on your Schedule (above), and we will also send you reminders with the Zoom link via email.

Suzanne can also answer your question via Facebook OR she can answer your question on the call, even if you cannot make it.

Remember to send your questions to the Gateless Academy email at least 24 hours ahead of time so that she can help dissect what’s needed and guide you on.

A note: Suzanne has been known to understand where the writer is by “channeling” into what you need most for your project. Her understanding of how to build books and answer your unique questions and concerns as you move into editing and revising comes from many years in the industry, starting at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop with Frank Conroy, and into the Bennington Writer’s Workshop, where she was the fiction editor and got her MFA in Creative Writing and the Literary Arts, as well as her time in New York, working extensively with The Darhansoff & Verrill Literary Agency and Scribner before she branched out to working with myriad publishers, publicity firms, agents and more. 

In the Academy, she will work with you within the Gateless container, which shows you the strength of what you are writing, and the power in who you are as a creative genius as well as guiding you to make craft decisions and choices about the trajectory of your narrative.

Ask her anything, from the places you are stuck in the work, to machinations with your inner critic, how to find an agent and which direction you should be moving in terms of platform. You are welcome to send her work beforehand, so she can reference it while you talk.

4. The Work-in-Progress Salon with Kate Baldwin:

Every month, you will meet with Kate Baldwin for a salon in which you read 500 words from your work-in-progress.  This is where you hear what works, what has power, where you are using craft well, where your voice is being highlighted within the work and more.

You do not have to send work in, but if you would like to read, you can send 500 words to gatelessacademy@gmail.com at least 24 hours before the Work-in-Progress Salon (see Schedule above).

You will get a sweet reminder of the Guidelines from Kate and then go into break-out rooms with a Gateless Trained teacher, where you will get peer reviewed feedback for the work you have done on your own or worked on in Studio.

5. The New Rules Writing Studio, founded by Terri Trespicio.

Starting in January, as an Academy student, you will join the New Rules Studio, where you will be writing live with Gateless Trained Teachers, four times per week.  We will send you your log-in information in early January.  Studio times are Monday at 6pmET, Tuesdays at 9amET,  Wednesdays at 12pmET.and Friday at 12pmET

The Gateless review of another’s work is a unique opportunity to gain creative agency and grow your craft surrounded by a community that is showing you where they see power in your work.

A part of any successful writing program is our ability to discern why a piece of writing works, where it is strong, what has energy and beauty and power.

The Gateless method of feedback is based on research from Johns Hopkins, the National Institutes of Health, Stanford University and Harvard University which has shown that the creative brain creates its best, most potent, and innovative work when judgement, criticism and agenda-laden inquiry is not present.

The Gateless Trained Teachers in the New Rules Studio aim to create this container for writers with work-in-progress so that you can astonish yourself with your own unique talent and craft skills

Many literary masters have attributed their success to allowing the mind to come into a point of stillness, where conditioning and rationale falls away, and they are one with the creative force that drove them to the page, this will be inherent in every prompt from your teachers.

6. Media Maven Pitch Program. 

During the last month of the program, while you learn which agents to query, how to pitch, create a proposal and sell, you will also be participating in a program where you learn how to build your platform, write your newsletter and create work that can land in the New York Times, Business Insider, Huffington Post, Vox, Eater, Thrillist, Buzzfeed, the San Francisco Chronicle, really wherever you want to go. This is your bridge to the world.

7. The Gateless Academy Collective:

Gateless Academy writers are chosen through an application process, including a 10-page sample of your work. We look at the intention of the work, the life experience and openness of the author, and a sense of synergy with the methodology.

Each year the group that comes together finds a very special symphonic energy that forms their collective. Your bios for this year will be released when every writer has submitted a bio.

To hob nob with one another, your Facebook Group is HERE.

This Facebook page is only for questions about the Academy and our alumni of that program.

If you are not on Facebook, don’t worry! You can meet each other through the calls and the New Rules Studio.

At Gateless, we work to find absolute trust in the creative process. While the craft tools and weekly support are there for you to understand how to build, revise, and move yourself into the global conversation with your work, the Gateless community is there to remind you that you ultimately have a family and an industry network as a backbone to your process.