Big News From Nerissa, October 2022
Writing It Up in the Garden, Little Blue Studio, Northampton MA and All Over the World!
“I start every class I teach by reading a poem; it’s like a secular prayer. It gets us right down to what’s important––feelings, ideas, language.”
-Barbara Abercrombie
Greetings, lovely people!
While my family recovers from COVID, I continue to stay away from them lest they spew cooties on me. Since they outnumber me, it’s a kind of reverse quarantine. I’ve been hunkering down in Little Blue all week, writing and planning and anticipating the arrival of my new classes of students and fellow writers who will be arriving in person or on Zoom this coming week. I have one spot left in the Wednesday evening group; all other groups are full. But! I’m introducing a brand new opportunity for you to commit to your writing, which I describe below, and I’m getting very excited about the November Kali Retreat—just two more spots available! Read on, write on, and see you soon!
Love, Nerissa
Introducing Morning Seeding & Tending
Here’s your chance to free-write, continue a project, get your word count in, be a part of a literary community on your own terms. Or write a series of Social Media posts, or blog. Or make a video. Or write a song. 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 just work on one perfect sentence; le mot juste. It’s up to you. This is your time for writing, and we are honoring it.
This is your time.
The details:
-Group will start on October 3 and run through December 23, 2022.
-The Zoom room will be open Monday-Friday 10am-11:05 am.
We begin with a five minute greeting and check in, teeny prompt (quotation/poem fragment), then set intentions in the chat. Nerissa will set the timer at 10:05 sharp. If you arrive late, no problem. When the timer goes off at 11, we’ll say a quick goodbye, or you can keep writing. You can choose to leave Zoom early. Or you can keep writing long after the group officially ends.
This program will be offered for the fall: Oct/Nov/Dec. The cost is $20 a month, on sale now for $50 for the three fall months (October, November, December).
All for the price of a weekly latte. You can sign up here.
By way of explanation: For the past year or so, I’ve been a participant in a group of my fellow VCFA grads who meet up on Zoom every weekday at 10am, chat for 5 minutes or so, then put their intentions into the Chat feature and write for an hour. The leader shares a timer on the Zoom screen and everyone mutes and turns off their cameras. For the privilege of being part of this group, I paid the leader $20 a month via Patreon. Each day, there’s a different mix of people. Few come every day; some come once a week, some three times, some show up every other week. It’s a virtual library-meets-coffeehouse-meets-accountability group. And it possesses that magic juju that occurs when like-minded people come together to pursue a common goal. (To wit: I always feel more grounded when meditating with others than I do when meditating solo. I play guitar and sing much better when I’m in a group of singers or players. Etc.)
Now, the time (10 am-11:15 am) worked for me. It just happens, because of my schedule and where I’m at with my family, that the earlier morning hours are rush hour and the evenings are prime time. Midday, especially when it’s still technically morning, happens to be my sweet spot. I’m in a dilemma now, because our leader has had to change the schedule, and she’s now running her group at a time that doesn’t work for me.
I’m really missing this group. I’m on a deadline at the moment to finish a draft of a novel by December 1, and without my accountability group, I’m just not as consistent in getting my daily word count done.
So it occurred to me–-ding ding ding!––that maybe I could offer such a group. After all, I know a lot of writers who might also be looking for an accountability group like this. And so, I am. I’ll be there whether or not anyone joins me, but it will be way more fun if you show up too.
Kali Retreat November 4-6
Join me for a three-day intensive writing weekend from Friday November 4 to Sunday November 6.
During this hybrid retreat, I’ll offer regular prompts, tailored to genre and writing goals. There will be short bursts of timed writing, long swaths of time to dig in and work on whatever you need to write, discussions, inspiration and encouragement.
This is just what the NaNoWriMo writer and/or the 30 Poems in November poet needs. Cost for retreat $310.
We will start Friday at 5:30 to gather for introductions and a first writing session. There will be time for sharing, and we will end at 9pm.We’ll regroup on Saturday morning at 9am, write all morning, with a break for lunch and discussion.
We’ll continue writing until 4pm, when we share some of what we’ve been working on. Sunday will be like Saturday, though we might end a bit earlier on Sunday to do a little more sharing. Retreat will end Sunday at 4pm. Two spots left only! Register here.
Workshop News
One more spot left in Wednesday Night Group, which meets 7-9pm. We’re starting next week, so Day One is Wednesday Sept. 28. This is an elite group of kickass writers, so you will be sadly missing out should you pass up this chance.
New Publications!
Richard Fox, poet extraordinaire and member of the Wednesday Afternoon group, has published his seventh book of poems on Big Table Publishing, and as usual, it’s a joyful, hopeful and painfully real collection. Go order Once I Was Born To Live now! I also just ordered my copy of Susanne Dunlap’s The Portraitist, a novel I was delighted to watch grow from a draft into a polished work of elegance, with rich characters and descriptions of 18th-Century Paris.
What I’m reading/recommendation
On my bookshelf:
-Girls They Write Songs About, by Carlene Bauer
-The Mother Tongue, by Lancelot Hogben
-Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, by Jane Smiley
On my Kindle:
-Several Short Sentences About Writing, by Verlyn Klinkenborg (thanks to Sarah Sullivan for this recommendation!)
QUESTION for YOU:
Do you consume the same art that you create?
I noticed over the summer that even though I have never written anything speculative in my life, all I wanted to read was books like Cloud Atlas, Cloud Cuckoo Land and Emily St. John Martel’s Sea of Tranquility. I love these books so much, and I am so in awe of the imaginative powers of these writers. But is there something wrong with me, something unfulfilled in me, that’s pointing me in this direction? I doubt it. I also love classical music and chant, but I could not sooner compose that stuff then make an oil painting. But maybe I should at least try to write something spec.
What about you? If you write romance or historical fiction, is that what you most love to read? If you write lyric poetry or essays, do you also read them, or do you prefer humor, or narrative poems? Write me back and tell me!
Oh, and finally, here is my…
Latest Blog Post
In which I discuss my Big Feelings about losing all those shows in September thanks to COVID.