A Year of Writing Naturally: Part 3

€230,00

1 place available

The third and final part of A Year of Writing Naturally will be loosely structured around the stages of our evolution as human beings and our contact with the elements. From fish to amphibians, crawling our way to being reptiles, birds, and mammals. We'll experiment with ways to turn our encounters with some of those creatures into fiction, creative non-fiction, and poems.

With a focus on writing practice, we'll explore what it means to write naturally, to write like the living things we are, open to our surroundings and impacted by them, channeling all we've encountered and imagined as a resource for writing. We can sometimes forget how intimate our connection to nature is, how familiar we are with so much of it. Fish and lizards, pigeons and squirrels. Sand and rocks, the woods and lakes, flowers, food, the weather, and always our own being as part of the natural world, making marks, leaving traces, being mindful.

"The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus." Annie Dillard

Whether you'd like to take on a new project, or want to add scenes to a work in progress, or experiment with something new in your creative practice, the workshops are devised to encourage exploration, and the company of other writers will keep you focused.

We'll also look closer at our own writing practice, and consider the adjustments we might make so that our ways of working feel more natural – lighter, magnanimous, cohesive – more aligned with who we are as individuals.

In Part 1 we created the zine Land()scapes and in Part 2 we made a second zine, Float (click on the ttitles to read extracts). All participants in Part 3 will be invited to contribute to a third publication.

Part 3 (September – November):

Week 1 Your Inner Fish
Week 2 Underwater: From silence to singing
Week 3 The Earth's Hard Skin: Bark, gravel, tar and concrete
Week 4 Bonfire and Wildfire: The give and take of The Elements
Week 5 The Power of Water: Floods, droughts and hurricanes
Week 6 Be the Breeze: Writing as a delicate gesture
Week 7 Stars and Galaxies: Multiplicity and repetition
Week 8 To the Moon and Back: Turning fears into fairy tales
Week 9 Hibernation and Its Metaphors

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world." John Muir

The workshops are open to all writers everywhere, all levels, all genres, all you'll need is a willingness to write, explore, and be open to the surprises in your work. Although the workshops are held in English, you're welcome to write and share work in any language.

Limited to 15 participants 1 place available

Dates and Times:

Sundays, 6–8pm Central European Time
Sept: 21, 28, Oct: 5, 19, 26 (no session 12 Oct), Nov: 2, 16, 23, 30 (no session 9 Nov). Total: 9 sessions

Please click here for the corresponding start time where you are.

Cost: €230 (early bird B4 16 July: €195)

“The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings.” Rachel Carson

About the tutor: Shaun Levin is the author of Seven Sweet Things, Alone with a Man in a Room, and Snapshots of The Boy, amongst other books. His short stories have been anthologised alongside writers such as Nadine Gordimer, Ali Smith, and Edmund White. His artists' books are held in the special collections of the University of Delaware Library, Harvard Library, and the Universities of California at Irvine and at Santa Barbara, amongst others. He is the creator of Writing Maps and has been teaching creative writing for over twenty years.