For when you just need a consistent writing practice with other people.

Because writing gets lonely, your mind becomes an echo-chamber, and it doesn’t have to be that way.

• Weekly sessions
• Minimum 5, maximum 10 people per session
• In-person, in my bodywork studio on 1st Ave, near Granville Island

 Autumn 2023
Date and Time TBA

In this series we’ll have (example schedule):

• 12 weekly sessions
• September 07 – November 30 (no session September 21st)
• 7:30-9:30pm Pacific Time
• Payment plans available

$878 CAD (includes tax)

True and stunning beauty comes out of this process. The simplicity makes space for the richness.

After each session people often say things like:

• I showed up grumpy and despairing, but now I feel so light and happy.
• I felt so stuck in my writing and now I’ve got 3 new pieces started.
• I’ve been having a hard time writing on my own and staying motivated. Now this weekly session keeps me going.
• I didn’t think listening to other people’s writing would feel more amazing than reading my own writing, but it does.
• I love this so much!!!

This is a straightforward live writing circle.

Here’s how Keep Writing Vancouver works:

Over most of the year I run Keep Writing in a 3 month stretch of weekly sessions.

5-7 people per circle.

Each session is 2 hours and it’s structured so we write, a lot, and we listen, deeply.

Each session looks like this:

Arriving: with music playing. You’re invite to move/dance/loosen up your body and feel the vibes.

Settling together: turning off our phones/devices and putting them out of sight. Establishing our creatively joyful, focused, uninterrupted space.

First 12 minutes: a check-in to hear how each person is doing.

Next 80ish minutes: we write like wild people to 3 timed prompts (approximately 15 min each).

Prompt 1 is always a somatic (body) prompt to spark creative flow from the inside out.

The next two prompts are sourced from some sort of weird, wonderful and creativity sparking material (it could be a poem, or a paragraph form a book, or a song, or a body-based visualization).

After each timed prompt, we take turns reading our writing out loud with no explanations, preamble or critique, just the divine alchemy of getting a chance to voice our writing and to listen deeply to each other’s material.

Then another 12 minutes: to close the process with reflection and/or intention setting.

Our last 15 minutes: we get to hang out and use our time  for optional chatting/discussion/decompression. It’s a great feeling.

Did I say it’s creative magic?

You might be wondering if there’s a theme, and what kind of source material I use for the writing prompts…

All sorts, chosen with the intention to spark expansive, generative writing. The more unstructured and seemingly ‘random’ the writing prompts, the more marvelous the writing.

You can expect to enjoy showing up, ready to be surprised and delighted, and settle into the wonderful state of not knowing what kind of writing will come out of you. Just going with the flow.

Here’s a sampling of some of the source material I want to share with you:

• Somatic (body) movements that spark curiosity, delight and the embodied memories and ideas (outside the realm of the cognitive ‘knowing’ mind).
• The Calvin and Hobbes cartoon series.
• James Herriot’s tales of rural veterinarian life during and after WWII in Yorkshire (northern England).
• Folk and fairytales.
• Honey, Mud, Maggots and Other Medical Marvels: the science behind folk remedies and old wives’ tales.
• The Frog and Toad story series.
• The Dirt on Clean: an unsanitized history.
• A variety of delightful and gorgeous illustrated children’s books.
• The Hand: how its use shapes the brain, language and human culture.
• Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink.
• Leaving Mother Lake: a girlhood at the edge of the world.
• Sad, Mad and Bad: women and the mind-doctors from 1800.
• A Natural History of the Senses.
• My daughter’s extensive collection of knock-knock jokes.
• Plucked: a history of hair removal.
• The Phaidon Photo Book.
• One Letter Words: A Dictionary.
• Ritual and Belief: readings in the anthropology of religion.
• Music

And so much more.

You get the point?

I aim to have fun, delight you and spark all sorts of wild writing.

So why don’t you join in!