This is a laboratory into the art of writing by not-writing*.
It’s for any writer / artist / enthusiast wanting to begin a project, who wants a fresh way of looking at it, or someone halfway through one, wanting a new route through it. It’s for those who want to resist the inclination to write and produce tons of words, to expand expressing their ideas and experience in non-linguistical ways. Not-writing, especially for those of us who are habitually inclined to write regularly, allows ideas, images, themes and narratives to cook in a different chronology, take shape in an alternative form, split and slip down unexpected streams.
As the Imaginarium Summer, this Imaginarium first aired in the Summer of 2021. It’s now available as a pdf for any time of the year, and invites you to put writing to one side, out of the spotlight, or even on hold for a few weeks, and see what happens when you allow yourself alternative creative interactions.
You’ll explore what happens if you embark on a project, or a section of a project, without writing. What fills the gap that was occupied with words? How do you voice your interactions with the world, your hopes, fears and stories? And what then happens when you return to language as your creative expression?
Format (approximate to the pdf)
- Provocations and inspirations, emailed as a pdf every Monday throughout August, invite you to explore your project idea or preoccupations without writing. Each pdf comes with mp3 note-making-not-writing accompaniment to provide an almost writing space for those who don’t want to go completely nonlinguistic.
- An ongoing private blog forum to share your responses with other participants, reflect on your imaginative growth. This is a place for chat, insight and community.
- A one to one tutorial with me in the autumn offers a gathering together of your ideas or an impetus for continuing a new momentum.
- The time commitment for each week is entirely up to you. You could spend half an hour in response to the provocations, or you could dive in for a day a week, or anything in between.
Cost
The pdf, with chat, provocations and links to audios, is downloadable. Please send your donation using paypal and I’ll send you a link to the pdf. As with the Imaginarium Solo pdf, all monies will go to The Morecambe Bay Poverty Truth Commission Hardship Fund
*The art of writing without writing acknowledges its debt to Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon and follows the ethics of nonseparation.
**Summer does not exclude writers experiencing winter. All welcome, whatever the hemisphere or season, for the English summer light to illuminate your wordless writing.
How we do anything is how we do everything
This programme, like all Imaginariums, rises from my own practice. It is guided by the desire to maintain a sense of self as writer during those times when you aren’t writing much or happily or with conviction.
I believe in the diversity of the creative moment, that the impetus and connection I experience through writing isn’t limited to the setting down of words. The creative flow, elemental to my writing, runs through many other activities, and inactivities. The fluidity and potency of tired or wavering creative energy can be revitalised, rediscovered or redirected when instead of writing I’m not-writing with intention.
To let go of words, temporarily, allows other seams of creativity to emerge from any given moment, and invites the body to lead the mind in nourishing encounters with our imagination. This Imaginarium intends to stitch words into one layer among many in your creative process.
I read ‘how we do anything…’ in Tom Waites’ book Innocent When You Dream years ago. I was initially horrified at the thought that my cavalier DIY style was how I write. That my botch-it paint job was analogous to editing a poem. Now I’m not sure it’s that straightforward. I think it’s about intention, and how I approach painting can teach me how I can approach adding shade or new colour in a chapter. Pulling ingredients together to make a cake can offer a new methodology for thinking about a seemingly unrelated bunch of images.
This Imaginarium will be food for your writerly practice. Food as nourishment and food as fuel. It offers the space for you to consider your creative practice through one endeavour to another. Your creative impetus will roam freely across form and time in a way words might not grant. It might even show you ways of sustaining your creativity when short of time for writing, or headspace for words.
For more info on the Spirit of the Imaginarium, see the main Imaginarium page or a post I wrote for Climate Cultures
What people said about the last online Writer’s Imaginarium
a think-tank for writers … a safe, encouraging environment … hugely inspiring … brain-expanding … gave me so many new approaches to writing … an other world. Quiet. Sacred. Beautiful. Intelligent. Deeply inspiring …