Nothing Happens, Everything Happens

A six-week online workshop in sensory and mimetic prose beginning November 8

They say you can’t teach voice. Sandolore Sykes says otherwise.

This course explores mimetic prose—writing in which form and perception mirror each other, where language doesn’t describe experience but creates it.

We’ll study how your prose coughs, how the nails of your characters tap, and how fiction can emerge from a character rather than happening to them. Through a kind of method-acting investigation, we’ll locate each character’s precise vocabulary—the sensory logic that shapes how they experience their world.

Through a series of sensory and structural experiments, participants will dig into the archaeology of their characters: tracing how sensation becomes syntax, and how inner perception evolves into voice. We’ll explore épuisement—the deliberate exhaustion of the senses—as a technique for writing prose that feels inevitable, muscular, and alive.

Participants will:

Work asynchronously through Wet Ink— an active space for discussion, critique, and exchange.

Receive extensive individual editorial feedback from Sandolore Sykes on every submission.

Access six weekly detailed instructional sessions, each introducing a new sensory or stylistic experiment.

Be paired with partners for peer feedback and dialogue.

Complete a series of innovative, sense-based exercises designed to generate several short pieces (1,000–2,000 words) and one microfiction.

Conclude the course with a 45-minute one-on-one consultation with Sandolore to discuss the complete body of work produced.

Television Sky & Sum Flux present

Another Debut Writing Workshop: Sandolore Sykes brings us—

A six-week writing workshop immersion in sensory and mimetic prose, from November 8 to December 20.
Optional two-week extension: January 17–31.

Seats are limited

SIGN UP BELOW

6 weeks

$250

LIMITED SEATS

Payment due in full before first day of workshop. Payment details will be included in your acceptance email.

Sandolore Sykes

Sandolore Sykes has been teaching for over fifteen years across writing, visual art, and improvisational theater. She studied literature, creative writing, and art at the Rhode Island School of Design, Brown University, and the University of Arizona, and received a Watson Fellowship for writing and visual artwork.

She is the creator, publisher, and editor of SUM FLUX, an independent literary magazine devoted to experimental prose, and writes The Inversion Field—unsettling, psychological fiction exploring identity, transformation, and the porous boundaries between self and other. She curates literary fiction for FicStack, seeking work driven by voice and interior intensity.

Plaudits

​“I love working with Sandolore. She is always clear and specific about what she wants but is just as ready to improvise or  stay open to a writer's ideas. She is the best kind of editor/teacher/writer because she allows room for the unexpected.”

-Deirdre Lewis (Snaps)

“Sandolore is a curious  ̶p̶e̶r̶s̶o̶n̶ critter. Wildly creative, she is a combination creature. Part writer, part visual artist, part conceptualizer, part synesthesiast, she is profoundly rewarding and fun to work with. Her energy is sizzling.  If your brain isn’t teeming with idea particles after working with her for five minutes, then you may have been unalived at some point. Wake up and drink a cup of Miss Sykes in the morning. You won’t be sorry.”

-Jon T Jon Toews

“Sandolore Sykes writes from the static between heaven and a nervous breakdown. Every line hums with voltage, loneliness recast as prayer, grief turned neon. She doesn’t describe madness. She translates it. Her work pulls you through the dark and makes you see what’s still alive inside the wreck.”

-ARC Andrew Robert Colom

“Sandolore is a staple of the Substack fiction community. She is a creative force who spearheads publications like SUM FLUX that amplify new voices and craft discussion. Oh, and her writing? Her writing is the sticky type, the otherworldly, earworm prose that, once read, will live in your mind for eons.”

-Will Boucher

“I contributed a fiction story to Sandolore’s publication SUM FLUX in which she sent her feedback and edits. These were some of the most helpful edits I’ve received as a writer. Some comments I still consider when writing new stories. If I needed a professional, thoughtful, and thorough review of my work in the future, I would absolutely reach out to her. Sandolore carries a pure attention to detail and an understanding of story in order to lend it what it needs in order to be successful.”

-C.S. Mee, Author of Some Scared Sister

“Sandolore edits with the sharp eye of a writer. She asks leading questions, sees your blind spots, and suggests edits that makes sense because she UNDERSTANDS the work. I have never had my story described in such a sexy way until Sandolore. No bullshit, direct clean editing, and a sharp pen to boot.

-NJ Fiction 

“Sandolore is a tireless inventive force for creative good and community spirit on Substack. Her curation of Sum Flux means it's always a "MUST READ" event for me, and it was such an honor to be asked to contribute to the Plumbing edition. What a superb prompt! Throughout it all, Sandolore took a gleeful interest in the evolution of the story I wrote helping me steer it and wring out my creative juices on numerous edits and pacing discussions. Such encouragement, such investment. And the story remains one of my best loved pieces to this day.”

-Nick Winney

"Sandolore is an absolute word wizard behind the scenes, honest and intent on bringing out the very best in your work.”

-James Worth

A NOTE FROM EMIL

I’ve been wanting to work more with Sandolore since Sum Flux peeled my face off with its first issue. It came out of left field, upped the game for fiction on Substack. Since then I’ve been lucky enough to make good friends with Sandolore, and since she’d not held a workshop, and I know she thinks two clicks to the left, I wanted to convince her to run a workshop with Television Sky.

We brought you the Return of Craig Clevenger after over a decade.

We brought you Charlene Elsby’s first wildly fun and successful solo writing workshop.

Now, I personally would like to endorse taking part in the oncoming Sandelirium.

I promise you’ll get your worth, and come out of it two clicks to the left. Maybe a little dizzy, but, with more tools as a writer.

Choose your own adventure