Elemental Writing: Bearing Fruit
A weekly writing date, in community – July 10 – August 28, 2021
Registration now open!
The seeds have been planted.
The sprouts have sprouted.
Flowers have even bloomed.
Now comes the work and play of bearing fruit.
Both in the sense of producing it, and how we bear it, that is, actually hold what we’re growing so that it can ripen toward harvest.
Writing translation: You’ve had that flash of inspiration. You tucked it into the underground and waited, delighted when something green and bright emerged. You’ve grown it – a paragraph here, a chapter there – and now you’re ready to get to some fruition. A first full draft, perhaps. Of what exactly you might not know yet, but a draft nonetheless. Which requires steadiness to produce. Sunlight, water, nutrients, earth. A.k.a. regular writing, creative replenishment, support, and a community gathering space. A.k.a. this offering – Elemental Writing: Bearing Fruit.
Much like plants, this is how we bear fruit as writers—getting the words out AND holding them as they ripen. Sometimes, often, the scope/depth/density of a writing project can be hard to bear, in both senses, and isolation makes it harder. Tomatoes, raspberries, and apples can’t do it alone; we can’t either. We too require connection and nourishment.
Starting on July 10, for 8 weeks, we’ll gather via zoom, on Mondays, for 90 minutes. I’ll offer a way in with an Elemental Writing ritual and prompt, something that anchors us in our embodied relationship with the animate landscape. In solidarity with other writer bodies, we’ll get to writing, usually about 30 minutes. I’ll call us back together, open the floor for a few writers each week who want to share their work out loud for witnessing and some generative feedback (no critique, more like getting full sun or a good watering). We’ll close with a simple ritual.
The first week, you’ll have a chance to set and share a simple intention, so we can hold it collectively. After that, we’ll just keep showing up, word by word, through the growing season. Join the ecosystem.
Elemental Writing: Bearing Fruit
Mondays, 10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. PST
July 10 – August 28, 2023
A weekly writing date, in community, for two months, Via zoom
$175 for the whole 8 weeks (flexible pricing available; just ask)
Drop-ins welcome at $25 per session (let me know you’re interested & I’ll add you to the reminder list)
Elemental Writing: Fire
Registration closed. Stay tuned for a new fall 2023 offering!
Fire will be our guide.
Seer.
Twin flame.
Ignition.
This course will be a six-week simmer, sauna, and thaw for the writer body longing to kindle a deeper kinship with fire, to release burning out in favor of burning from within, and to tend the writer’s hearth with intention and care.
I say “Registration now open!” with zest and with a healthy dose of reverence. Working/playing with fire is not to be taken lightly.
I mean, yes, I’m excited. My often icy fingers and toes long for warmth. My dormant stories are more than ready for a thaw. My weary body craves a creative rhythm that will keep a steady heart-fire lit rather than leaving me burnt out. But I also know how a hot flash can take me out with speed and fury. And I’ve seen, smelled, and struggled to breathe with how wildfires have leveled landscapes, destroyed homes and habitats, and ravaged the air in the Pacific Northwest where I live. I’ve tasted the wonder of cod covered in foil and cooked in campfire coals, and I’ve felt the searing pain of a scalding hot water burn on my back. I’m in love with the way a story suddenly sparks to life in me, and I know how quickly it can disappear if I don’t carve out space and time to tend the flame.
So I approach with reverence, with wonder, with all of my senses engaged. I ask Fire to be my co-facilitator. The fire without, the fire within. If you say yes to this course, you’ll also be kindling kinship with the fire in and around you.
In Elemental Writing: Fire, we’ll be exploring friction in fiction (& non), writing as devotion, soothing the swollen manuscript, the anatomy of a creative chimney, and more. Guest teachers include: sacred flames and candles, volcanos, wildfires and bodily inflammation, hot springs and hearths. It’s going to be wild, wonderful, warming.
Ooh, also, new this iteration of Elemental Writing: all participants have the option to submit 2,500 words of fire writing for generative editorial feedback.
If you’re ready to sign up now, flash on over to the registration form. Or read on to learn more!
Elemental writing means:
- infusing our words with vitality through connection and relationship with all the elements—water, earth, fire, wind, and more. Through connection and relationship with everything in the animate world.
- remembering the life in the words and in the act of writing.
- writing not as a brain product or even a heart product, but rather writing as a wholly embodied act of a wholly embodied being.
I signed up for Elemental Writing because I was looking for nurturing accountability (my creative impulses to write are there – if left to my own devices, I don’t always act on them). I didn’t want a lot of rules – I wanted space and safety – and a touch of magic along with it. I wanted to share my work in a community of writers where we all honored the vulnerability of writing and sharing and being in a container together. What I got was all of that PLUS SO MUCH MORE. I felt seen, heard, held, accountable, inspired – my whole body engaged with the program and it was exactly what I needed to get myself reacquainted with my voice again. This program is for you if you’re looking for a whole mind, body, spirit experience with your words, your voice, your life – it is pure magic in a bottle that gets better each week as you feel yourself expanding into the space, onto the page and into the world that surrounds you.
Stacey, Baltimore, Maryland
This adventure is for you if:
- you want your writing to come alive with sensory awareness.
- as a writer, you understand or want to understand yourself as one voice amidst a chorus of many animate beings—plants, mountains, oceans, eagles, stone, starlings, desks, foxes.
- you long for a deeper connection with yourself as part of the animate earth.
- you thirst for something simple, essential, deep, and true.
- you’re hungry for a new vital way to work through or into your writing project.
- you need a course that acknowledges, engages and supports your embodied life as a writer, that puts your work and play as a writer back into your body rather than severing your imagination and your mind from the muscle and breath and blood and bone of you.
- you know or want to know your stories as living beings.
Each week you’ll:
- gather with a small group of other writer-seekers for two and a half hours via Zoom, during which we’ll do our damnedest to stay aware that we’re not just hands on a keyboard or head facing a screen.
- relax and soften into a sacred container, held for you and with you, in which you can work on your book or writing project in progress, allow something new to emerge, or both.
- be enlivened by simple ritual, art-making, and a close encounter with a new fire form.
- generate writing in our live class, as well as be given prompts and tools to use for your writing and revising time outside of class.
- immerse yourself in a particular aspect of fire, exploring the ways that aspect connects with the art, craft, play, and work of writing. We won’t necessarily be writing about fire, but rather with fire, or as fire, connecting with fire as a guide.
- receive a PDF with highlights of that week’s fire form, including prompts, practices, and tools to use during the course and beyond (6 total).
Join the adventure right here.
With all that’s going on in the world these days, Elemental Writing felt like just the kind of nourishing writing experience I needed to take part in. Jen’s style is welcoming and open and nonjudgmental, providing a safe environment so I could explore the connections between two things I love: writing and water as life force. It felt like a welcoming space to return to each week and I wish it could have continued on indefinitely. I wouldn’t hesitate to take another like it in future and I indeed hope to do so.
Kerry Kijewski, Ontario, Canada
Here’s a brief illumination of your six weeks with fire:
Week 1: Kindling. Fire & me: a romance. Ingredients for fire-starting. Story sparks & embers. Friction in fiction (&non).
Week 2: Sacred flames. Candles. Votives & vows. Writing as devotion & expression of desire. The writer’s temple. The sacred heart of a story.
Week 3: Flash. Volcano. Fever dreams & hot flashes. Writing conflict & passion. Flash fiction.
Week 4: Inflammation. Wildfires within & without. Pace. Writing with dis-ease. Soothing the swollen manuscript & the burnt-out writer.
Week 5: (Now we’re) Cooking. When & how to turn up the heat. Hot springs. Romance writing. Healthy story circulation.
Week 6: Hearthkeeping. Fireplaces & a place for fires. Anatomy of a creative chimney. Tending the writer’s hearth: a closing ritual.
All of this sound like the warm-up you and your writing need? Here’s the registration form.
Water turned out to be so much more than I expected it to be–not only did it include time and prompts for generative writing, but also elements of writing craft like voice and narrative arc introduced through water metaphors. Jen is a sensitive facilitator, and she attracted a group of writers who inspired and supported me. I am eager to sign up for the next in the series.
Andrée, Portland, Oregon
At the end of six weeks, you’ll have
- a collection of tools to take with you to use in all phases of writing: dreaming, generating, revising, shaping.
- deepened your relationship with writing, your story, yourself, with fire, with the world.
- written, every week, in community, fueled by community.
- generative editorial feedback on one 2,500 word piece of fire writing (optional).
- a chance to share your writing at an end-of-year public reading and celebration in November 2023.
Registration details
Ten spots available. Registration closes March 18, 2023.
Live class dates: March 21 & 28, April 4, 11, 18, 25 (all Tuesdays)
Live class time: 11:00 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. PST
Investment: $710 USD (payment plans available)
$503 – $710 sliding scale available
Follow the link to the registration form for more info on sliding scale and payment plans.
Recordings: There won’t be. I know recordings of everything are all the rage right now, and with these courses, I’m devoted to cultivating community and live, shared, embodied, experiential learning. To giving and receiving the gift of focused presence. It’s a magical thing. If you need to miss a week or even two, no problem. Things come up. You’ll still receive a PDF with all the prompts, practices, & resources from that week, and I’ll be available if you have questions.
Registration in 2 steps:
- Fill out the registration form
- An invoice will be sent to you via Paypal
Any questions? Please reach out to me at jenvioli@gmail.com.
This course is not just an intellectual exercise in writing. It is an immersion in the depth of connection with the world within and without! Jen beautifully weaves ceremony, writing exercises, and wisdom about the writing way, in this course, prompting inspiration, insight, and opportunity for novices and experts alike to hone their craft – whether it is for publication or self-reflection. Each class of the Elemental Writing course on Water was fully engaging, stocked with thoughtful and thought-provoking experiences, and opened me, heart and soul, to a new way of being in relationship with writing and with water, in me and on the Earth.Mary Reaman, Dayton, Ohio
