Writing Co-Lab

Are you sick of being told to attach "bum-glue" to your chair? Do you find that trying to tune out or contain your body's natural instinct to move actually makes writing harder and less fun? Maybe you have writer's block, or just want to find some new spark to your writing practice? This fun, playful 3-session class turns conventional writing wisdom upside down, and invites you to drop into your body for nourishment and inspiration, all through the lens of dance. By reading about and watching dance—in a variety of forms–we will find new ways to bring movement directly into our writing practice. After all, what is writing but the record of our fingers pounding a keyboard or gliding across a page with pen in hand?

WHO IS IT FOR: Open to writers of all levels and genres. This class is for all movers, which is to say all of us! No dance experience necessary AT ALL. Inclusive and supportive!

WHAT IT IS ABOUT: This class is about creativity, getting into our bodies, and experimentation and play. It’s about making space to move and new sources of creativity. It’s also about inviting our words to play on the page, finding our own natural language rhythms.

TOPICS COVERED:

Warm-ups/Getting Grounded 

writing sprints/prompts, VERY light movement…describing how the body feels/movement and writing from different parts of the body…what do different movements spark in terms of language? how voices on the page “dance”

Words in Motion 

what is our grounding technique? letting our spirit fly/rhythm on the page/embodied language

Dancing on the Page 

bringing it all together: improv; what is your body telling you as your write; how is your language evoking movement? 

WHAT WE’LL DO: Each week we'll read a very small piece of writing and watch a short clip of dance, discuss how/if they connect, jump into writing sprints, and have a bit of time for sharing (no pressure! only if you want). 

About the Instructor

Sari Wilson is the author of the acclaimed novel Girl Through Glass, which was long-listed for the Center for Fiction debut novel prize, an Amazon Book of the Month and Editors’ Pick for Best Fiction and Literature, a The Millions Best seller, and featured on NPR and in The New York Times. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Catapult, Slice, AGNI, and other publications. She is the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship, and residencies from The Corporation of Yaddo, Ragdale Foundation, and Byrdcliffe. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, the cartoonist Josh Neufeld. She and Josh co-edited Flashed, a linked collection of prose and comics, published by Butler University Press.