Last week Emma and I had the pleasure of hosting our second generative writing workshop. We spent a couple of hours in communion with other writers, allowing ourselves a pocket of time within a virtual space to give ourselves over to creation, to curiosity, to letting go and trusting ourselves, minds firing, open, hands sweeping against the page. At the end of the session, I was asked about the functionality of the exercise I had chosen to present, a braid made up of three parts: landscape, letter, dream. The question was about knowing how to tie the pieces together; my answer: intuition.
I've been thinking a lot since then about the intuitive element of writing. Intuition, like writing, requires trust in the process; it requires trust in that which we already carry within ourselves; it requires giving in to what we already know: when to search for a different word, when to end a sentence, when to turn the page, when to spill, when to melt, when to embrace, when to leave. I am in a place in my writing process in which I am trusting myself to gather. I write fragments of sentences on guest checks at the restaurant where I work, I begin rereading Plath and making lists of books to read, I pick up a rock that catches my eye--all of these patterns make up the rhythm of my writing, the connective tissue that carries me out from within myself and into a project, onto a page. Sometimes I carry a rhythm with me long before I write the sentences that it belongs to, before I give the phrases any kind of meaning. Sometimes I carry a rhythm for so long that everything else I write is an echo of where I began: with the desire to write and trusting that I could. Then comes the practice, the study, the discipline.
If you missed our workshops, or if you attended one of them and enjoyed it and want to return, we will be hosting more, but we do not know when. Until its anticipated publication this summer, we will be hard at work on ISSUE 03 behind the scenes. We look forward so much to this part of the process, or at least I do--there is intuition inherent in the process of piecing together the pieces of a new issue, a process I love, the rereading each pieces and listening to the conversations coming alive among them, then the arranging, the rearranging, the coming up with something beautiful, something whole.
***
Our contributor conversation this month will be with G.D. Brown, author of the story "Naked," featured in Issue 02. His thoughts on demystifying our processes, the shared point of writing, and his catalogue of inspiration stickers will be available on February 15th.
Love and Light,
Heather
(she/her)
Founder and Editor, The Champagne Room
Comments