Well That Was Fun!

Grokkist Writing Salon One Was Awesome! 🎉

Hello, Fellow word spinners 👋
That first Writing Salon was a warm and wonderful thing. I loved all of the Elephants 🐘 🐘🐘and discussing the values together. I was really happy to see how everyone just relaxed into the silence when writing ✍️ then glowed with appreciation for each other when reading out their creations 🥰

We started with an opening thought 🤔: What’s one thing about writing or storytelling that lights you up, or that you’d love to explore more? This was just to get everyone thinking, talking, listening and sharing. Answers included: Creating the characters, the time and space alone, downloading, and opening your creative mind space 🌀

The next part of the session was spent talking through the options of how you want to run and develop the Salon as a group. Including themes for breakout rooms, rotation of facilitators, outlets for your writing and publishing via Grokkist Press. Suggestions included books, zines, poetry, songs, novella collections, performance readings, and other ideas.

We discussed the shared values of the Salon. We were weighing Learning against Language, Communication against Expression, Process over Product, Curiosity over Critique, Creativity over Conformity, and Exploration against Execution. Then it was suggested that one could also inform the other, eg Exploration informs Execution. This will be an ongoing discussion point as it’s about how we relate to language, and how we experience the development process together.

I won’t say who was contributing what, as you had to be there to have that knowledge, and if you did attend, you already know. But I will say everyone was engaging in the session, which I really appreciated.

I initiated a five-minute writing exercise, responding to the prompt:

The year is 2045. How do people now share grief, joy, life and more?

We were able to choose any form, like: poem, prose, haiku, song, zine sketch, manifesto, dialogue, sketch, fragment…???

The results were glorious and gorgeous! There were also a lot of parallels, which would have been a social anthropologist’s dream.

The next exercise was thinking of elephants together, which was so much fun. It was an exercise to provoke thought about our character’s models of the world, and how we can play with dialogue by giving them opposing representational systems and experiences to relate to. After all WEIRD is just WIRED differently. Our character’s personalities develop through dialogue and relationships. What are our characters trying to say — and what do they actually reveal?
Dialogue between characters can:
Confuse or demystify, Misinterpret or clarify, Quote, misquote, paraphrase, or contradict, build rapport or break it.

What comes next between my characters often emerges from the rapport or misunderstanding, empathy, critique, resonance or silence in the dialogue between them. Which doesn’t seem to be coming from me as the author at all.

We then tried writing a short scene where our characters misunderstood each other. It is a pretty difficult stretch for the beginners in the group, but beneficial for everyone’s practice I hope.

When we were ready, we split into breakout rooms, choosing two themes from the earlier suggestions. We chose:

🌿 Stillness & Flow (quiet writing room, stay immersed).
✨ Remix the Form (discussing/experimenting with formats, mediums & styles).

I had a mind meld with three wonderful Grokkists in the Remix the Form Room. Discussing songwriting, illustration, the creative benefits of restrictions, and so much more.

NEXT TIME:

We will hopefully be welcoming more new members, responding to another prompt, exploring the process of world-building together and spending more time in the breakout rooms.

In the meantime, please share your thoughts and feedback. Plus ideas for the Salon, recommended reading and resources, collaboration opportunities for each other, and anything you have written that you want to share.

Personally, it helps me to get all that stuff that’s in my head onto paper. Then share it with others who can help me know what it all could mean. If there’s something about writing that helps you, please let us know what that is.

As a final thought to encourage you, to join in, comment, and post here in the Writing Salon space, here’s a quote from Ursula K. Le Guin:

"It’s up to authors to spark the imagination of their readers and to help them envision alternatives to how we live."

Alan