Writing Our Way Back to Each Other — a PWYC writing session next week
A colourful Ferris wheel against the backdrop of a clear sky.
Here’s something I never say out loud:
While I love being connected to others, and I crave community in all its forms… I also avoid it, resist it, and will almost always choose a quiet evening alone over anything else.
What is that?
It isn’t new. From what I can tell, social scientists have been worrying about social disconnection for at least 700 years. This tells me that we carry a very old and real desire to be in community with each other… a desire that’s often stronger than the connections we make.
These days, it’s hard not to feel like we’re all extra far apart.
It’s so easy to slip into a digital world where news comes from strangers and where we can un-see people who annoy us with a quick click. It’s so easy to get things delivered instead of standing in lines, or, when we are in those lines, to zone out on our phones instead of making eye contact or small talk.
And for many people, it’s necessary. Covid-19 isn’t over. We’re still figuring this out.
But I also know that being in the richness of many connections — digital and real life — helps us grow and become ourselves. It helps us build resiliency. It helps us heal. It’s also right at the heart of a healthy democracy.
We need each other. But we also resist it.
Sooo, Mari and I are running a one-off writing session for anyone who wants to step into these questions. Questions like:
Why is community hard for us to reach for these days?
What do we want from it?
What’s the next small step we want to take?
We’ll walk the group through prompts to unearth some of what’s under the surface, and share a little (if you want, no pressure!), and be together.
It will be on Zoom, pay-what-you-can, and a fundraiser — half the proceeds will go towards rebuilding Black Box, a creative and community hub in Igloolik, Nunavut that burned down on February 12th of this year.
We’d love to see you there.
And — if you’d like to take the next step, check out our spring workshops.
Kim’s springtime writing workshops:
Hearts on Paper is our swoon-worthy romance workshop. Monday evenings.
Begin Here is a meeting place for writers who want to start but need a little nudge; in-person in Toronto. Wednesday evenings.
City Sanctuary is a glorious weekend of writing in the heart of Toronto, co-led with Asifa.
Britt’s springtime writing workshops:
Life Stories is a memoir writing workshop for anyone with stories in their heart. Thursday mornings.
Brief Bursts: The Fiction Edition is our flash fiction workshop dedicated to very short, very unexpected stories. Tuesday mornings.
Asifa’s springtime writing workshops:
Keep Your Pen Moving is a high-energy workshop that will get your hand dancing across the page. Wednesday evenings.
Life Stories is a memoir writing workshop for anyone with stories in their heart; in-person in Toronto. Thursday mornings.
Deeper Waters is a 12-session deep dive into your writing project. Tuesday evenings.
City Sanctuary is a glorious weekend of writing in the heart of Toronto, co-led with Kim.
Mari’s springtime writing workshops:
Focus and Flow is our writing workshop for busy brains. Saturday afternoons.
Lift Off is our beloved poetry workshop for people who don’t think they’re poets. Tuesday mornings.
Begin Here is a meeting place for writers who want to start but need a little nudge. Monday mornings.
My brand new spring workshop:
Write a Blog Without Losing Your Humanity is a workshop about writing blogs and newsletters in ways that are useful, authentic, and make us feel good. Thursday evenings.
And a poem.
Naomi Shihab Nye really knows about human connection. This one, Message from Everywhere, gets me every time.
bell hooks tells us:
We write because language is the way we keep a hold on life. With words we experience our deepest understandings of what it means to be intimate. We communicate to connect, to know community.
It’s so easy to be far away from each other. But it’s also easy(ish) to turn the other direction. Writing is one way to make that turn. We’ll meet you there.
In it with you,
