“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
— Madeleine L’Engle
About The Wordshop
The Wordshop is a small, home-based writing school for tweens and teens. We offer classes for everyone, from the kids who struggle in ELA to the kids who are putting the finishing touches on their second space opera. Our goal is twofold:
1. Encourage and support kids who love to write.
There aren’t a lot of opportunities for creative writing in traditional school curriculum, and there aren’t a lot of points of support for kids who want to become better storytellers and writers. The very act of writing, of putting your most vulnerable self on the page and then asking people to read it, is terrifying, even for adults.
The Wordshop is the cozy cabin in that storm of frustration and self-doubt. We teach technique, study the work of other awesome writers, and provide constructive, realistic feedback based on the student’s writing level. With every new draft comes a stronger writerly voice and a deeper level of self-confidence.
2. Demystify the arbitrary rules of school-based writing.
When was the last time you had to write a five-paragraph essay about…anything? Even the best students experience a disconnect when it comes to understanding what, exactly, their teachers/application committees want to see and why they want to see it. This causes a lot of internal panic, which leads to strife at home. (Mrs. Kristin’s parents can confirm.)
The good news is that Mrs. Kristin is one of the few adults who actually does write five-paragraph essays for a living. She also has more than a decade of experience instructing teachers how to teach different types of writing. At The Wordshop, students don’t just learn how to write academic papers, they also learn why those papers have to be written a certain way.
About Kristin
Kristin Marciniak (Mrs. Kristin to the 17-and-under crowd) is a professional writer, published author, and self-identifying indoor kid.
Her first book, My Mommy is Special, was published in a limited run (one copy) when she was in first grade. Similar titles (My Best Friend, I Love My Dog) followed. Her big breakthrough came in third grade, when she self-published a story about a girl who followed a rainbow to its end. That’s when Kristin knew she wanted to be a writer.
Kristin didn’t know any writers. Was writing even a real job? Probably not. So she told people she wanted to be a general surgeon while she devoured books behind restaurant menus and started stories that are still waiting for their endings.
By high school, Kristin’s career goals had moved away from appendectomies and into journalism, specifically to a job at Rolling Stone, a Manhattan apartment, and Gavin Rossdale’s phone number on speed-dial. She was not going to get married, she was not going to have kids, and she was probably going to take up smoking.
Kristin has a Bachelor’s of Journalism degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia, where she lived in a magical building full of writers, visual artists, musicians, and her future husband. She started writing fiction again in college, first at her dorm’s Writers’ Group, then in creative writing classes, where she was told her subject matter wasn’t literary enough.
Kristin’s six-year advertising career ended with the 2009 economic downturn. She left with the start of a novel and the itch to do something that actually mattered. A mass email begging for job leads led her to educational publishing, where she has been writing reading comprehension passages, study guides, teachers’ materials, school library books, and assessments ever since.
Today, Kristin is married, has a crazy-awesome kid, and has yet to stick anything actively smoldering into her mouth. She finally finished the first draft of that novel in the summer of 2022 and drives around the Kansas City metro daydreaming about its sequel.