"Writing Down the Bones": Mini Writing Marathon

Dear writer, what do you do when the desire to create is present, but the structure for how to actually move forward is not?

In chapter 7 of her acclaimed book, Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg speaks to this very thing:

Sometimes we sit down to write and can’t think of anything to write about. The blank page can be intimidating, and it does get boring to write over and over again for ten minutes of practice, “I can’t think of what to say. I can’t think of what to say.”

Many of us—especially neurodivergent writers—are chock full of impulse and desire. But we frequently need the help of external prompting to get us moving forward.

In this 2.5 hour workshop, we’ll use Goldberg’s list of writing topics as prompts to initiate our own batch of work. Rather than focusing on developing a single piece, we’ll use this time to stretch our writing muscles in fun, interesting ways; practice initiating several new ideas; and generate a dozen starts for potential pieces of writing we might choose to develop later on.

This workshop will help you:

• Deepen your relationship to prompts & prompting

• Stretch your creative writing muscles in a low-stakes, highly nourishing space

• Create 12 different starts to potential texts you might develop further

Plan to write for short bursts of time, ranging from 10 to 20 minutes, with two short breaks.

Two and a half hours is a long time to write! As such, I’ll be hosting this workshop through a strengths-based lens, providing opening invitations and encouragement throughout as we challenge ourselves creatively while keeping our real needs & limitations in mind. The workshop itself will run slightly longer than 2.5 hours to account for our brief intro & settling in.

This workshop is being held as part of The Resiliency Circle, a monthly gathering space I host for paid readers of my Substack newsletter, For the Birds. Learn more about becoming a paid subscriber here.