“I’m most excited about being in a collective space where we can empower one another. We’ll be discussing craft and techniques and doing writing prompts, of course, but what I love most about this course is that it’s meant to also help you overcome the mental hurdles that come with starting and finishing something.” -Natalia Sylvester
This July, join us for our virtual 2025 Summer Writing Retreat featuring four classes on fiction, memoir, poetry, and revision, plus lots of special events throughout the month, including a Saturday Craft Seminar with Henry Lien (July 12), lunchtime craft presentations by notable authors, meet-ups with fellow writers, dedicated writing time, and our Student Reading Night.
Our fiction class, taught by Natalia Sylvester, will focus on “Roadmap from Start to Finish: Fiction Techniques to Begin & Complete Your Draft (& Beyond).” In this class, students will learn new and unexpected techniques to help them write their way through their story’s journey, from its energetic sparks to its daunting unknowns. Students will begin by loading up on their essential tools–the inciting incident, question, or core of a story—then mapping things like character development and plot to lead them through the twists and turns of a page-turning narrative.
Natalia Sylvester is an award-winning author of fiction books for adults, teens, and children. Her young adult novel, BREATHE AND COUNT BACK FROM TEN, was named a Pura Belpré and Schneider Family Award honor book, and her adult novel, EVERYONE KNOWS YOU GO HOME, received the Jesse H. Jones award for Best Book of Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters. Her first picture book, A MALETA FULL OF TREASURES, illustrated by Juana Medina, was released in 2024 from Penguin Random House, and her debut middle grade novel, NO WAY NEVER SISTERS, co-authored with Chantel Acevedo, will be published in 2026 by Simon & Schuster. Born in Lima, Peru, Natalia came to the US at age four and grew up in Florida and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. She received a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Miami, was a 2021 Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and has taught fiction as a faculty member of the Mile-High MFA program at Regis University, VONA, and Tin House.
Here’s what Natalia had to share with us:
Scribe: Tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you write? How did you come to writing?
Natalia Sylvester: I write fiction across all age groups. My first two novels, Chasing the Sun and Everyone Knows You Go Home, are for adults. I have two YA novels, Running and Breathe and Count Back from Ten. Most recently my debut picture book, A Maleta Full of Treasures, illustrated by Juana Medina, came out. And in 2026 I have a middle grade novel forthcoming, co-authored with Chantel Acevedo! It’s called No Way Never Sisters.
I came to writing young—basically as soon as I learned to read, I was also writing. I was a shy kid who found herself in books and discovered how I felt and experienced the world only once I wrote through those feelings. I was a student journalist in high school and throughout college, but I also majored in Creative Writing and always dreamed of being a novelist. The WLT has actually been a huge part of my path! I met my first agent at the 2010 Agents and Editors Conference.
Scribe: In your own work, how do you approach overcoming the challenges that come with writing, be it writer’s block or craft or business-related challenges?
NS: The biggest and most constant challenge is sustaining a writing practice, not because I don’t love it or don’t want to write, but because sometimes the sheer daunting nature of finishing an entire book is overwhelming. So I break it down into smaller accomplishments. I try new things constantly: new writing exercises, new ways of looking at the bigger picture, or of getting to know my characters. And most importantly, I don’t let myself have an all or nothing approach to writing. If one day I get a thousand words down that I love, and the next I get zero, that’s okay.
Scribe: Has there been a moment of epiphany in terms of your work, when you thought, “This is it! Now I know what I’m doing?” How long did that feeling last?
NS: Oh yes! Those are the most lovely moments, for the few seconds they last, aren’t they?! All joking aside, if I ever do feel that, it’s mainly in revision. Revision is where I start to see the book more clearly as a whole, and I can see where all the puzzle pieces fit, and my problem-solving mind starts going non-stop. There’s this one moment…it’s more of an intuition. But when I’ve started a path in a scene and I don’t know exactly where it’ll end, just that I need to follow it, that’s when I feel (however briefly) that I know what I’m doing.
Scribe: What piece of advice do you find yourself giving to writers again and again?
NS: Take small steps again and again. Writing is a slow process, but time passes quickly, which means as difficult as it feels today, months or years from now the harder, smaller moments won’t have lasted as long as the actual writing, the actual story. That, and read constantly. We need to nourish our minds with the kind of writing we aspire to.
Scribe: Regarding the class topic, what excites you about teaching “Roadmap from Start to Finish” for the fiction track?
NS: I’m most excited about being in a collective space where we can empower one another. We’ll be discussing craft and techniques and doing writing prompts, of course, but what I love most about this course is that it’s meant to also help you overcome the mental hurdles that come with starting and finishing something.
Scribe: How would you finish this sentence: If the students in my class take away one thing from the course, I hope it’s…
NS: That they feel inspired and energized, and learn to trust their own instincts and their own process.
Thanks, Natalia!
Click here to learn more about Natalia Sylvester upcoming revision class during the 2025 Summer Writing Retreat.
