CrossLit Pilot Program
Introducing the CrossLit Pilot Program
Build the habit
Deepen the craft
Sustain the momentum
WHAT: CrossLit – A six-week pilot program designed to deepen your writing practice.
WHEN: Six weeks from Monday 2 November – Friday 11 December 2026.
SESSIONS: Choose session times to suit your schedule. Sessions offered in the morning and evening, with weekday lunchtime writing sprints, and Friday community exchange. All session times are advertised in AEDT.
FORMAT: Online via Teams, hosted by Hunter Writers’ Centre.
FEES: Special pilot program price of $165 (includes GST).
REGISTRATIONS: Registrations for the pilot program are capped at 60 people. Registrations open Wednesday 14 October 2026.
What is CrossLit?
CrossLit is a writing practice.
Modelled on a gym program, CrossLit gives you a weekly schedule of live facilitated sessions. Sessions run morning and evening, with lunchtime sprints, so writing can fit into your life, according to your schedule.
CrossLit grew out of a challenge we kept hearing from writers: once you’ve moved beyond the fundamentals, how do you keep developing? How do you find the time and structure to keep writing, stretch your craft, experiment and take risks, and stay connected to other writers without signing up for yet another course or manuscript workshop?
We’ve built CrossLit around the idea of a writing gym. Writers subscribe for a six-week block and use an app, much like those used by gyms and yoga studios, to choose from a weekly timetable of live online sessions. They book what suits them, attend as often as they like, and write in real time alongside a facilitator and other writers.
The timetable works on different parts of the writing practice. Each day focuses on a different modality. There’s Build, for loosening up and producing raw material; Core, for taking one element of craft and extending what you can do with it; Endurance, for building concentration and staying with difficult work; Cross-Train, for borrowing methods from other genres and artforms; The Edit Room, for revision; A Beautiful Practice, for sustaining the wider creative life; and Community Exchange, where writers share practical tools and ways of working.
Turn motivation into momentum, and momentum into a practice, that deepens your connection to your unique voice.
Who is CrossLit for?
CrossLit is for you if …
You love the work:
- You’re having a passionate love affair with the craft of writing.
- You crave intellectual and creative exploration.
… But life keeps getting in the way:
- Argh! You just cannot find the time to write!
- Folding tea towels gets between you and your best words.
- You work best with accountability and consistency.
You are ready to grow:
- You’re a little bored by your own writing.
- You want to extend your range and try new approaches.
- You struggle to connect to your unique voice.
And you don’t want to do it alone:
- It’s a little bit lonely in your writing garret.
- You want to belong to a community of practice.
You’re new(ish) to this writing business:
- You’ve taken a couple of courses.
- You have the fundamentals under your belt.
- You’ve got a story/ies that won’t let you alone.
What is included in the pilot program?
- Full access to all CrossLit sessions for the six-week pilot program. Attend as many as you like.
- Focused session on a different modality each day. Sessions are generally repeated in the morning and evening, so you can choose a session that suits your schedule.
- Professional facilitation from working writers and industry experts.
- A lunchtime writing sprint to keep the focus and momentum.
- Generative and reflective writing sessions underpinned by a pedagogical framework.
- Weekly community exchange where you can share a tool or technique that has changed how you work (or learn a new one from your peers).
- A masterclass session also included.
Weekly Timetable *
Sessions Descriptions
Build
Loosen your writing muscles and build raw material without worrying about polish or perfection. Each session begins with a playful, unexpected provocation designed to stir creative energy, encourage associative thinking, and open a new line of thought. Write fast, follow odd turns, make strange connections. Keep generating until something has charge – a line, image, rhythm, voice or idea worth taking further.
For writers who want to shake up their process, get past their inner critic, and work with more instinct and freedom.
Core
Take one element of craft – voice, point of view, syntax, tension, rhythm, time, structure – and stretch what you would usually do with it. Get inside the heat of a metaphor. Shift tense. Strip a passage back to image and action. Push a quiet moment towards tension. Core enlarges the range of choices you can make on the page.
For writers comfortable with the fundamentals who want to sharpen technique and widen their range.
The edit room
Bring existing material and learn how to revise with intention: diagnose what is not working, decide what the piece needs, then test different options. Cut, compress, reorder, expand, or remove what you thought was essential, and compare what each choice does to the work.
For writers with a draft on the page who want to sharpen editorial judgement, and revise with more confidence.
Sprint
Log on, set a goal, and write. The midday Sprint gives you a clear block of time in the middle of the day. Timed rounds, no feedback, just other writers working alongside you. Use it to push a draft forwards and get the words down.
For writers who want a regular habit, a bit of accountability, and a way to carve out time in a busy day.
Cross-train
Borrow methods from other genres and artforms. Move between poetry and prose, fiction and essay, text and image, or try montage from film, repetition from music, and collage from visual art. Each session takes a compositional idea from somewhere else and pushes it through language. Break habitual patterns, make hybrid forms and find structures, rhythms and ways of making meaning that live outside your usual form.
For writers who want to take creative risks and discover new ways of shaping language and meaning.
A beautiful practice
Writing does not begin and end at the desk. These sessions explore the practices that keep a creative life alive: noticing, reading, listening, wandering, collecting, playing and making room for wonder, curiosity and rest. Each one offers a different way to replenish your attention, gather material and connect with your creative flow.
For writers who want to sustain a rich creative life, and bring more pleasure, and possibility to their practice.
Endurance
Bring a work in progress and stay with it. Long, uninterrupted writing blocks build concentration and stamina, so you can keep going past the point you would usually stop. The facilitator helps you set a focus, holds the structure of the session, and offers brief cues to help you return when attention drifts or resistance appears.
What to bring: A work in progress with enough unfinished business to keep you writing.
For writers who want to build focus, work through resistance, and finish what they start.
Community exchange
A member of the community shares one technique, tool or way of working that has changed their writing. See how they use it, try it yourself, and keep what works for your own practice. Less show-and-tell, more show-and-try.