Living Material is a six-part online creative writing workshop that helps you build an easeful practice of writing from the material of life.

[Full details here] Through in-workshop readings, prompts, and guided exercises, you’ll build a writing practice rooted in your real life. Over the weeks you’ll turn everyday observations, memories, and autobiographical fragments into resonant and meaningful writing.

I’ll share tried-and-tested methods – like The Big Chaotic Doc method – to write the stories you’ve been circling: that have been waiting inside your notes, drafts and experiences all along.

“I got so much out of the recent workshops I attended. I was really struck by how connected i felt and how easily i became immersed in the prompts. You are so great at what you do, and im so thankful for the boost of inspiration and motivation.” Sophie, previous Living Material attendee.

Meeting fortnightly on Saturdays from Sat 30 May Oct - Sat 8 Aug at 10-11.30am (GMT) across four 90-minute workshops, we’ll read extracts from writers who use the raw material of lived experience to create original, intimate, and creatively lively work.

I’ll guide you through writing quotidian moments – and all the moments of beauty, stupidity, humour and reflection they contain. We will work with writing rituals, and creative structures to write from life with openness, depth and curiosity.

We’ll look at brief extracts from writers & artists, including Sheila Heti, Lou Reed, Danielle Dutton, Joe Brainard, Amy Ching-Yan Lam, Alexander Chee, Helen Garner, Abi Palmer, Georges Perec, Sophia Giovannitti, Olga Ravn & others.

You’ll learn how to find stories from life in places that may surprise you, and discover new processes to work with them.

“I normally work across lots of notebooks and the notes app; it’s so easy to feel so overwhelmed by it all. But ever since you’ve been talking about the big document ™️ I’m like… maybe this IS the answer. Thank you for all you’ve done this year, you’ve been a big inspiration and enabler to me for creativity.” – Ruby.

Workshop curriculum:

Sat 30 May | Week 1: Detail in the Everyday
Together we will read and write ideas of ‘the everyday’, with the attitudes of writers like Joe Brainard, Georges Perec & others. Work with creative & playful exercises that orientate your curiosity towards the vivid details, rhythms, and themes already hiding in plain sight.

Sat 13 June | Week 2: Collecting From Life
How to collect from life, so that it becomes second nature. This week asks: which everyday observations are ripe, and what is allowed to be collected? How do we do it when life is already so full? We also explore stealing, and if it’s ever okay as writers to steal.

Sat 27 June | Week 3: Noticing Ourselves
Discover how to find your self, voice and stories from the rich material of your life (even if it doesn’t yet feel ‘rich’!) Choose whether and how to write into personal lore, memory and attitudes.

Sat 11 July | Week 4: Writing as Compost
Gather what’s been sitting quietly but is full of possibility: like phone notes, fragments, memories and drafts — and work with compost as a metaphor to turn it into new fertile written material.

Sat 25 July | Week 5: Delicious Restriction
Discover & appreciate how creative limits can actually let you focus, refine, and complete your writing — so that it takes form. Stockpile creative, sustainable & lively tools you can use over and over.

Sat 8 Aug | Week 6: Finding Your Narrative Themes
Learn to identify the narrative ideas you’re circling in your work, and how to shape them into something cohesive. We’ll work with exercises for noticing, and experimenting with what’s been emerging over the previous weeks – and exactly what you need to keep going.

Workshops are limited to max 15 attendees.

Doors close on Thursday 28 May.

Spots are non-refundable. Attendees receive a playback by email.