Cohort 12 · Starts Monday 5 October
Six weeks, eighteen founders, one editor in the room. You arrive with the piece you keep not writing and leave having published twice — with a cadence you can actually keep afterwards.
or 3 × $420 — no interest · Applications close in 9 days
Cohort 12
seats
13 of 18 taken
5 left · applications close 9 Sep
or 3 × $420 — no interest
Apply for a seatTen-minute form. I read every one.
The schedule
Pre-work
28 Sep
A 20-minute questionnaire and one draft — however bad. Everyone arrives on Monday with a subject, not a blank page.
Async · 30 min
Week 1
5 Oct
Voice as a set of decisions rather than a personality trait: what you claim, what you refuse to claim, and the words you will not use.
Live · 90 min
Week 2
12 Oct
Opening, turn, evidence, cost. We take three published essays apart and rebuild yours to the same skeleton.
Live · 90 min
Week 3
19 Oct
You ship the first piece this week. The room reads it before the internet does, and you learn which of your instincts to keep.
Live + critique
Week 4
26 Oct
How to be specific about a company in public: what is safely yours to tell, what needs a number changed, what needs a lawyer.
Live · 90 min
Week 5
2 Nov
Line edits on your own draft, live, with an editor. This is the session people say they'd pay for on its own.
Live · 2 h
Week 6
9 Nov
The last piece goes out and you leave with a schedule that survives a bad quarter: what you write, when, and what you cut first.
Live · 90 min
Calls are Tuesdays at 18:00 CET and run 90 minutes, except week five, which runs two hours because line edits always overrun. Everything is recorded; the critique threads between calls are async, so a bad week costs you a session, not the cohort.
Live, not recorded. Capped at eighteen. Editor in the room. You publish three times. Starts 5 October
The room
Small enough that everyone reads everyone, big enough that a quiet week doesn't empty the room.
Notes on the sentence, the paragraph and the claim — the same notes a features desk would give you.
Not an exercise folder. Two pieces go out under your name while the room is still there to catch them.
Thirteen of eighteen seats are gone, and the editor track has two places left. When it fills, the next room opens in January.
seats
13 of 18 taken
5 left · editor track: 2 left
The last eleven rooms
I had written four drafts of the same essay in two years. It went out in week three, got 40,000 reads, and two of our best hires came from it. The room is the reason it shipped.
The live line-edit session is worth the fee by itself. Watching someone cut my paragraph in half in real time taught me more than a shelf of books on writing.
Eighteen people is small enough that everyone reads everyone. By week five I knew exactly which two people to send a draft to at 11pm.
I came in wanting a personal brand and left with something more useful: a way to think in public without sounding like a press release.
The 'what is safely yours to tell' session should be mandatory for anyone writing about their own company. It saved me from publishing something genuinely stupid.
Six weeks, three published pieces, and a newsletter that now goes to 6,000 people. I was writing nothing before this.
Who runs it
Editor · Former features editor, The Standard
I spent eleven years editing other people's arguments for a living — first at a newspaper, then for founders who kept being asked to explain themselves in public and hated every minute of it.
What I learned is that almost nobody has a writing problem. They have a deciding problem: what they actually claim, and what they are willing to be wrong about in front of people they work with.
The Writing Room is six weeks of making those decisions with other people in the room, and then publishing anyway. Eleven cohorts, 190 writers, and a hit rate on 'I finally shipped it' I'm quietly proud of.
Apply
A place in the room: six live sessions, the critique threads, and the recordings.
or 3 × $420 — no interest
Apply for a seatEverything in Seat, plus three one-to-one line edits on your own drafts.
Four places per cohort. Two left.
Apply — editor trackPrices in USD, per seat. Company card welcome — you'll get an invoice with your tax ID and a one-page summary for whoever approves it.
Come to weeks one and two. If the room isn't doing anything for you, email me before week three and I'll refund the whole thing — no form, no negotiation, and you keep the recordings.
— Anna
Applications
Applications for Cohort 12 close on 9 September so there is time to read them all before the pre-work goes out.
Applications close in
Questions
The live sessions are the product, so yes — plan to be there for five of the six. Everything is recorded and the critique threads are async, so one clash is survivable; four is not, and I'd rather you took the next cohort than paid for a video library.
Because the room only works if everyone in it has something real to write about and will read other people's work. The form takes ten minutes and I read every one. It is not a filter on how well you already write.
About a third of each cohort are engineers, designers and operators who write on behalf of a company. The common thread is that publishing has consequences for you — that is what makes the critique useful.
Three to four hours a week: a 90-minute call, one piece of writing, and reading two other people's drafts. Week three and week five are heavier because you publish.
Yes, and most do. You'll get a proper invoice with a tax ID, and a one-page summary you can forward to whoever approves it.
Come to the first two sessions. If it isn't working, email me before week three and you get everything back — no forms, no negotiation.