I just can’t nail this down.
Dandelion seedlings floating in a blue sky. Photo by Huzeyfe Turan via Unsplash.
Here’s something I may never get used to — my writing process keeps reinventing itself.
One season, I’m filling pages in my journal until my hand cramps. The next, I forget what my handwriting even looks like.
One month, I’m finding my flow in the mornings. The next, it’s migrated to midnight. The next, it’s gone completely.
For years I’ve loved a careful, fulsome first draft. Now I just make messy nests of bullet points, arrows, and exclamation marks.
It’s like I’m building a house, and the tools keep changing in my hands. And then my hands turn into wings. And then into sandwiches.
Is it any wonder?
Everything that’s alive is changing.
Our bones get more brittle every day.
Tiny tadpoles at the bottom of the pond push out long swimmer legs.
One friendship loosens while another one springs sudden roots.
The world keeps asking us new questions.
All around us, dandelions push themselves out of hard soil, bloom, and turn into wind.
I want to make sense of all this, to know the world, and my work, and my ways of working. But while part of me tries to hold it in place, the rest of me remains as unknowable as the wind.
Do you remember those early days of Covid when we clung to online events like bright life rafts?
Before Zoom fatigue settled fully into our frontal lobes. Before we got quite so foggy and far away from each other. There was a moment when everyone’s favourite band was offering a free concert, and the internet lit up like a Christmas tree of hope and human connection.
That’s when we first started having Brandon Wint come do author talks. If you were there for any of those evenings, you’ll probably remember how sacred they felt. Brandon has a way of talking about his process as a writer that’s at the same time humble and luminous, relatable and elevating.
I loved those evenings.
After a while, we all moved to another stage of pandemic-ing, and Zoom events lost some of their shine. Our numbers dwindled and we stepped back.
We’re bringing it back this summer.
It just feels like time. Brandon and I were talking about grief and loss, and it all came together — an author evening where he’ll explore what it means to be a writer in the context of mortality, change, and grief. What it means to write while time keeps passing, passing, passing.
He’ll read and reflect, then Asifa will interview him. We’ll likely also take audience questions and maybe do a little writing together. Needless to say, we’d love to see you.
This event is sliding scale, and a fundraiser.
We’re paying Brandon ourselves so that all ticket sales can go to funding creativity grants for Indigenous youth, through our beautiful partner organization, Indigenous Youth Roots.
Choose a price that works for you, or let us know if none of them do and we’ll find one that does, no questions asked.
Aaaand, we’d love to write with you this summer.
We’ve got small group workshops, one big experiment, and of course our ongoing programs — Morning Coffee Sessions and BIPOC Writing Space.
Here are the things that are coming right up…
Summer Writing Workshops with space available.
We cap these little beauties at 7-8 people, depending on the class so that everyone gets lots of attention and space to flourish. Here’s what we’ve got coming up! These are all on Zoom.
Also, join us for 7 weeks of delight and experimentation.
Every summer, we run a 7-week large-format (lots of participants) program where we each take 90 minutes to explore something we’re excited about.
We’re kicking off this year’s program on July 6th with a gorgeous evening of writing about animals and non-human life with Sophia.
Join us for our author evening!
Brandon will share a prepared talk about grief, mortality, and being a writer, and then he’ll take questions from the audience, and our host, beloved Firefly coach Asifa Sheikh.
Finally — a poem for your heart.
It’s Pride Month! I love how gorgeously gay this poem is. How could I choose anything else?
Change doesn’t always mean loss.
I’m glad author evenings are back. And I know I’ll go back to the journal, the mornings, the tidy first drafts. Or, I won’t.
Maybe all these things are working through cycles too big for any of us to see, coming in and out of our little human viewfinders.
Maybe the work isn’t in figuring it out, but being available for the awe of it, watching words soar around us like dandelion seeds, on their way to their next adventure.
In it with you,
