“I wish our class didn’t have to end,” a student said the other evening as we blew out the candle at the final session of a six-week writing workshop. “I need the structure of the lessons and writing exercises to focus my writing, otherwise I’m all over the place and nothing ever really gets finished.”

She’s not the first to express this feeling at the end of a class or workshop or writing retreat. I know exactly what she’s talking about. When I’m not involved in a project or a work-in-progess, my writing rambles all over the place, too. I may continue to do a regular writing practice, making time to write almost every day, but the writing doesn’t cohese into much of anything. Practice is important, that’s for certain, but what to do with all those bits and pieces.

Here’s my solution on how to keep the music going after the dance is over:

Over decades of teaching, I’ve developed and presented scores of workshops and classes and guided retreats, and for a long time wondered how I could share this work beyond the one or two times I lead the workshop in-person. Now, voila! (only it didn’t really happen like that), I’ve produced the first of my all-new Creative Writing Kit series that offers some of these same workshops and classes. Now they don’t have to end.

One of my friends calls my Creative Writing Kits “Judy-in-a-Box,” except they’re not in a box, but colorful, multi-page DIY Workshops  presented in PDF files that you download right from my computer to yours. The same material I present at a live workshop, except maybe some of my corny jokes, is yours with just the press of a key.

The first three kits are available now on my website, and I’ll add more as they are created. Available right now, How to be a Writer Who Writes; Show, Don’t Tell; and Invitations to the Muse. Coming up next: Craft the Perfect Scene and On Being an Honest Writer, which I hope to have complete within the next few weeks.

Maybe because you’re there and I’m here, we won’t have the opportunity to work together in person, but I’m hoping my Creative Writing Kits can be the next best thing.

I’m producing Kits in two general categories: The Writing Life and The Craft of Writing. Please let me know what you’re interested in. I might just have something to offer. And who knows, maybe sometime I’ll be there or you’ll be here and we can work together live-and-in- person. I’d like that, too.

Here’s the link to find out more about the Kits. Let me know if you have any questions and I’d love to have your suggestions for what DIY Workshops you’d like to see.