Elemental Writing: Cocoon
Tuesdays, November 8- December 27, 2022. Registration now open!
Elemental Writing: Cocoon
Tuesdays, 10 to 11:00 a.m. PST
November 8 – December 27, 2022
A weekly writing date, in community, for two months
Via zoom
$175 USD for the whole 8 weeks. Register here.
Calling all writers in need of a shared sacred container to get words on the page (i.e. if you’re me, to finally finish that first draft of the memoir-in-progress).
If it feels tough to keep weekly writing dates with yourself, and if you find it easier to show up and stick with it in the company of other writers, with prompts and a little ritual provided, this offering is for you.
Starting on November 8, for 8 weeks, we’ll gather via zoom, on Tuesdays, 10 to 11 a.m. PST. I’ll offer a way in with a simple 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 50 minutes. We’ll come back together a few minutes before the hour and 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 in the cocoon goo together, word by word.
Gathering dates: November 8, 15, 22, 29, December 6, 13, 20, 27, 2022
$175 USD for the whole 8 weeks. Enter the cocoon.
$25 USD to drop in for a session (contact me to be added to a list for this).
Elemental Writing: Air
Registration closed. New six-week course coming spring 2023!
Air will be our guide.
Mentor.
Messenger
Flock-mate.
This course will be a six-week flight, exhalation, and inspiration for the writer body longing for a deep, expansive breath of right now, for a way to breathe between the lines.
If you’re ready to sign up now, fly 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 air current.
- 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 air, exploring the ways that aspect connects with the art, craft, play, and work of writing. We won’t necessarily be writing about air, but rather with air, or as air, connecting with the spacious air as a guide.
- receive a PDF with highlights of that week’s air current, including prompts, practices, and tools to use during the course and beyond (6 total); you’ll also have access to a Google drive folder with all of these sediments of resources and other supporting materials.
- leave with unexpected treasures, much like gifts delivered via wind.
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 soar through your six weeks with air:
Week 1: Breath. Air & me: a love story. Expansion & contraction, development & revision. Timing. Holy spirit, making wishes, setting intentions.
Week 2: Wind. Whispers and gusts, pace and catalyst. Eye of the tornado/heart of the story. Air currents & motivation.
Week 3: Smoke. Pollution, cleansing, purification. Smoking out the ghosts, revealing character. Changing consciousness, inhabiting character. Making offerings. Writing as ritual.
Week 4: Mist & Fog. Brigadoon. Conjuring visions, courting the ethereal. Fantasy & the dreamscape. Gifts of the unknown present & writing into clarity.
Week 5: Clouds & Wings. Storms. Cold and warm fronts, mood and catharsis. Sky deities and feathered friends. Brainstorming & sensory detail. Writer as psychopomp.
Week 6: Heavenly bodies. Stars and planets. Constellations and plot points. Silhouette & structure. Closing ritual: taking up space.
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 air, with the world.
- written, every week, in community, fueled by community.
- a chance to share your writing at a public reading and air celebration on Sunday, November 6.
Registration details
Ten spots available. Registration closes September 12, 2022.
Live class dates: September 19 & 26, October 3, 17, 24, & 31 (all Mondays, note no class on Oct. 10)
Live class time: 1:00 – 3:30 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.
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
