Announcing the Welcome Table Chorus!
Plus enrollment open for Weekly Groups, September Retreat and more about caffeine withdrawal, which you can skip.
We come on the ship they call The Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hours
And sing an American tune. -Paul Simon
Dear writers and readers,
(Skip to the next section if you don’t care about my caffeine update)
I have a massive headache because, as I wrote last time, my bossy body forced me to quit caffeine in all forms. (No decaf, even, since it has trace amounts and is a GATEWAY DRUG!) I can’t tell if I’m actually stupider than I used to be, or if caffeine made me feel smarter than I actually was.
Anyways, because my body is now happy (except for the headaches) I’m not that sad about my drop in self-perceived intelligence. In fact, I’m feeling pretty peaceful and content. Plus, Katryna and I are finally starting our chorus this fall!
Choruses are a lot of work, and can be hard on the director’s voice, especially when directing middle school students whose hormones are raging and need to be yelled at to be quiet and listen to the director. But the truth is, I’ve never been happier than when I lead my youth choruses between 2015-2020. I would have continued but for the pandemic. When that closed down my choruses, I devoted myself to my novel.
(Devoting myself to my novel meant drinking a ton of caffeine so that I could finish it, which I did; then wrote a second novel and a third. Now I have three finished novels all about a family folk-rock band, and I’m trying to figure out what to do with them. Maybe I will serialize them like Charles Dickens. My friend Tess Lloyd just sent me this link to a collection of all the monthly installments of David Copperfield. Apparently, the complete collection is worth $9500. If I serialize my novels, I promise I won’t charge you that much.)
The Welcome Table Chorus
As we take in the news each day, it is easy to feel helpless. What are we supposed to do? As singers, we have long understood that each member of the choir has a job to do, a note to sing. Sometimes you stagger your breathing so the sound of the choir can continue without interruption. But it takes many voices to achieve that! As we wonder what our role is in fighting the power, we’ve decided that at least ONE thing we can do is to bring people together to sing––to remind each other that we are not alone in this. So let's sing together. Let's sing songs of hope, of power, of suffering, of love, of change, of community.
Our mission will be to teach and sing songs from the folk tradition plus our favorite songs from 20th and 21st C pop/rock/indie/godknowswhatyoucallit. We will be singing music in 2 to 4 parts (soprano, alto, and tenor/ bass) mostly accompanied on guitar. No auditions at this time.
Rehearsals will take place on Tuesdays evenings- 7:00-8:30 PM September 30-December 9 (10 weekly rehearsals). We will be ending our session with a performance which may or may not be public.
This chorus will be aimed at adults who like to sing. Youth under 14 must be supervised by a parent or have permission from the instructors. No need to read music. We will be learning some songs by ear, others will have written parts, but you will get lots of help if you can't read music. Everyone will have a songbook with lyrics. To sign up, go here.
Weekly Writing Groups
I’m pleased to announce open enrollment in my Fall Season of weekly workshops. We will begin our 10-week trimester the week of September 23 and run groups until the first week of December.
Generative groups begin with a prompt, and then we write for an hour. The second hour, we take turns sharing what we’ve just written. Responses are focused on the merits of the new work we’ve just heard. No negative or prescriptive critique will be given. All generative workshops are either on Zoom or in Little Blue with a hybrid option.
Weeding & Pruning is manuscript based, and we meet on Zoom. These groups require a commitment to submit a set number of pages, as well as critiquing your classmates’ pieces in writing. For more information, email me: nerissand@gmail.com.
All times below are Eastern Time.
Tuesdays Prepare to Publish (by application only) 12:30-2:30pm $400 (one spot left)
Wednesdays 12:30-2:30pm (all genres) $375
Wednesday Evening 7-9pm (all genres) $375 (one spot left)
Thursdays 12:30-2:30pm (focus on Fiction, open to all) $375
Friday 12:30-2:30pm Weeding & Pruning by application only, taught by Elaine Apthorp $400 (virtual)
September Back-to-School Weeklong Retreat
Immerse Yourself in a Week of Creative Writing
September 16-21, a six-day event which can be attended piecemeal—if you want to come just for the weekend, or just a day or two during the week, that works! Join us in person or remotely for a transformative week dedicated to your writing. Whether you're diving into a memoir, starting a children's book, revising your novel, or simply craving the camaraderie of fellow writers, this retreat is your perfect escape. Hey! It’s not only the kids who get to go back to school. Buy some office supplies and come on over! More about the retreat here.
Morning Seeding & Tending
Morning Seeding & Tending, is a jolly yet non-naggy accountability group of dedicated writers who show up, set intentions in the chat, listen to a prompt (or not) and then get the writing quotient for the day done. “Done” being, at times, better than “brilliant and immortal.”
The Zoom room is open Monday-Friday 10am-11 am East Coast USA Time. We begin with a short greeting and prompt (quotation/poem fragment which will be emailed daily to all subscribers), then set intentions in the chat. We write with our microphones muted. If you arrive late, no problem. When the timer goes off at 11, we’ll say a quick goodbye. You can choose to leave Zoom early. Or you can keep writing long after the group officially ends. What will you do with your daily hour of writing? You can mull over your plot and characters. Outline. Write a query letter, or submit for a fellowship. You can zip out 1000 words. Or write a series of Social Media posts, or blog. Or make a video. Or write a song. Or a recipe! It’s up to you. This is your time, and we are honoring it.
If you are already a paid subscriber, or if you presently become one, you’ll receive an email from WritingItUpInTheGarden@gmail.com inviting you to join the group. If you choose to join, respond with a “yes” and you’ll be added to the daily list, given the zoom address and daily prompts, and all that writing you were hoping to do would magically get done. The prompt theme for the month of August has been song lyrics that stand up to the best poetry. I hope you will join us!
