Elemental Writing

Elemental Writing: Earth

Registration now open (closes June 22)! The adventure begins June 27.

Earth will be our guide.

Ally.

Teacher.

Companion.

This course—maybe better pilgrimage—will be a six-week trek, ramble, and rest for a wandering writer body, longing for re-connection with the heartbeat of the earth.

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 are 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 earth path.
• 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 earth, exploring the ways that aspect connects with the art, craft, play, and work of writing. We won’t necessarily be writing about earth, but rather with earth, or as earth, connecting with the shape-shifting earth as a guide.
• receive a PDF with highlights of that week’s water way, 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 a walk on an earthen path.

With all that’s going on in the world these days, when Jen announced her first ever Elemental Writing class, it felt like just the kind of nourishing writing experience I needed to take part in. She approaches writing from a holistic place and when I heard she would be using “water” as the theme, I knew I had to be a part of it. Her 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 an excavated sliver of your six weeks with earth:

Week 1: Landscape. Earth & me: a history, grounding, settling, setting.

Week 2: Dirt. Cultivating fertile ground, make of me a seed, generative writing.

Week 3: Bounty. Reverential harvest/gathering material, writer snacks, writing for pleasure: food & sex.

Week 4: Underground. Riotous roots, burial, compost, we who live underneath, memoir, tense, tension.

Week 5: Dry land. Sand, gifts of creative deserts, intentional scorching/story renovation.

Week 6: Shape. Mountains & canyons, hills and valleys, point of view, closing ritual: in the writer’s cave.

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 earth, with the world.
• written, every week, in community, fueled by community.
• a chance to share your writing at a public reading and earth celebration on Sunday, August 14.

Registration details

Ten spots available. Registration closes June 22, 2022.

Live class dates: June 27, July 11, 18, 25, August 1 & 8 (all Mondays)

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:

1. Fill out the registration form
2. 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