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.

• All genders welcome
• Weekly sessions
• Maximum 7 people per session
• Online via Zoom videocall

7 sessions
TBA

Facilitator: Ellazora Hardy (with mentoring from Janelle)

In this series we’ll have:

• 7 weekly sessions
• 10:30am – 12:30pm Pacific Time
• Click here for a timezone converter

$102 USD

Canadians – if you’d like to pay in Canadian $$ via e-transfer, you’re welcome to make one pay-in-full payment of $130 CAD to jaha (at) janellehardy.com

Note: this is an apprenticeship session. The rate is 50% of the usual rate to reflect the training status of the facilitator, Ellazora Hardy. Ellazora will be mentored by Janelle, who will be present during most of these sessions.

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 writing circle. It’s structured so we write, a lot, and we listen, deeply.

• The circles are small – a minimum of 4, a maximum of 7 people
• All genders welcome

 2 hour session structure:

First 10 minutes: a check-in to hear how each person is doing, and to get to know each other better.

Next 80-ish minutes: We do 3 writing prompts. Each one is followed by a round of reading our prompts.

There will usually be a body-based prompt, some sort of screenshared visual prompt and some sort of written/literary prompt, read aloud by the facilitator.

After each writing prompt followed by a timed writing session, we take turns reading our writing out loud with no explanations, preamble or critique. This is a divine alchemy. You get a chance to voice your writing and to listen deeply to each other’s material. No feedback. No critiques. No responses. Just listening.

Then another 10 minutes: to close the process with reflection and/or intention setting.

Our last 10 minutes: unstructured decompression time. We get to hang out and use this time for optional chatting/discussion. It’s a great way to end the process.

(As if we were in-person, bumbling into each other at my doorway, gathering our things up and getting ready to leave, chatting and storytelling. Like that.)

Did I say it’s creative magic? It really is.

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

One of the things I love about teaching The Art of Personal Mythmaking live is the deliberate and designed container of the 5-month process. That I can take people through a transformational process which is also designed to generate the rough draft of their memoir.

However, in order to create an amazing, contained, supportive process, I actually have to set aside a lot of the weird, wonderful and marvelous material that I’m longing to share.

The good news is, in these Keep Writing sessions I can be totally unstructured and random in the writing prompts I share.

And you can 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 books and source material that might be shared with you:

• The Calvin and Hobbes cartoon series.
• James Herriot’s tales of rural verterinarian life in 1920s Scotland.
• Folk and fairy tales.
• 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.

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!