Wild Writing

image courtesy of Teesha Moore
www.teeshamoore.com

New Classes for the New Year!

Dinner & A Journal

Thrust yourself into the week with a sensuous seasonal dinner, and an evening of exploring new material. The class uses wild writing to reveal the themes we want to investigate. The hour begins with a bold and resonant prompt line (or passage or poem,) and then we write as a group without letting our pens leave the page. The focus is not on finished pieces. It is about pushing ourselves past making impressive stories. We nosh, and then we move into the fertile imagination that lingers within us, exposing images and ideas that may become the beginnings of our screenplays, plays, essays, memoirs, studies, stories.

In this class, we read our work aloud, however we don’t critique. Instead, we offer insight to the writer about the words or phrases that are alive in the work. This class is not therapy, still it is a joyful and supportive way to launch a new writing project, or bring new eyes to one that has halted or become stale. My essays and screenplays and character studies begin with wild writing because it helps me wade into the depths without being frightened about what it is I am embarking upon. Your willingness to risk, dream, vision, pirouette past the province of the prosaic, and move into novel territory is more important than whether you write often or well. Indeed, this is the place to learn how to write more consistently, and what work is stirring.

I welcome non-writers, poets, screenwriters, playwrights, fiction writers and non-fiction folks.

Monday nights from 6-8 p.m. Classes cost $180 for 5 weeks. January 14, 21, 28, February 4 & 11. Six - ten students.

Enroll at sonyalea@gmail.com.


Big Mind Writing

From Buddha to the Beats, in Rumi's poetics and Munro's stories are the moments of mindfulness that awaken us. Celebrate the coming of the Dalai Lama to our city by embracing the compassion of candor!

In this class we will focus on breathing, meditation and action as a jumping off place for insightful, direct truth. In-class writing and some reading completed prior to class will illuminate the practice.

Class One: Love
The Dalai Lama on the practice of exchange of self for other. Dante. Keats. Neruda. Munro.
Assignment: Write a love poem, whether past, present or anticipated future, grounded in simple physical experience of body and phenomena.

Class Two: Sex
The Great Passion: Discussion of Buddhist Tantra. The Blues. Anne Sexton. Donald Hall on his poet-wife Jane Kenyon.
Assignment: Write a sex poem, blues stanza or passionate story, either from your experience or fantasy. It may be a story no one ever sees. Share this writing only if you want.

Class Three: Candor and the Non Dual Method of Inquiry. Dave Eggers. Anne Waldman. Mary Gordon.
The merit of confession. What do you really want or desire? What are you confused about?
Assignment: Techniques to unfurl the truth. We write our worst secret that no one has to see. Make friends with it, forgive yourself and hope to do better if necessary. Share this writing only if you want.

Class Four: Ecology
Interdependence. All sentient beings have been your big toe. Margaret Atwood. Wendell Berry. Barry Lopez. Elaine Scarry "Rules of Engagement".
Assignment: Write the most panoramic way you can. Include many details of your immediate experience. What is living in front of your eyes? In your body? What's there you can't see?

Class Five: Spiritus
Sacred view. Blake's visions. The nature of Emptiness. Pema Chodron. The Poet-Seers.
Assignment: Consider your most sacred moment. Write a passage without any traditional spiritual language.

Class Six: Death
The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Have you died to yourself or others in some way? Anne Cushman: "What Is Death, Mommy?" Amy Bloom.
Assignment: Write as if you are on your deathbed. Who and what do you want to tell?


All kinds of writers & all kinds of seekers welcomed.

Monday mornings, as early as the group can make it. Classes cost $180 for 6 weeks. February 4, 11, 18, 25, March 3 & 10. Six - ten students.

Enroll at sonyalea@gmail.com.