The Dawn Chorus Zoom Writing Group Returns
Imposter syndrome and the power of setting aside an hour in the day to reconnect with your creative core.
Other News in Brief
Nine weeks to launch day! Pre-order my landscape/nature memoir, The Ghost Lake, here.
I feel so lucky to have had the book endorsed by so many wonderful writers, including this one by Jade Angeles Fitton, author of The Hermit
My next online course, What to Look for in Summer begins July 5th. It’s FREE to paid subscribers of Notes from the Margin, and you don’t have to do anything to register if you are already a subscriber, but if you are not then you might like to know that I have a 10% discount on annual subscription until the end of June.
A subscription gives free access to all my courses, paywalled essays and closed facebook group.
If you don’t want to subscribe to Notes from the Margin, you can book a place on the course via my website for just £25: Wendy’s Website
By the time you read this newsletter I’ll be in a recording booth recording the audio book version of my memoir, The Ghost Lake. I am so nervous about it that my teeth are tingling. I keep imagining scenarios in which I mispronounce a word, or somehow read my own book wrong, or someone rolls their eyes at me because I’ve had the audacity to not only be up my own arse enough to write a book but now, look at her, bloody reading it as an audio book, like a making herself out to be a proper writer. Who does she think she is? This is clearly imposter syndrome. I think to myself. And tomorrow, or right now (because I am Wendy from the far distant past of Wednesday afternoon) I have gotten into my car, driven to the studio and am settling myself down, trying not to rush, and trying not to wipe away my accent. I am sitting there allowing myself to read the book that I wrote in my own accent, in my own style, with no apologies. I hope.
It is so easy to dismiss your own voice as not valid, or your background or your accent or your style as too different or not good enough, isn’t it. Particularly true of women I think. Or at least, this has been my experience of working with women, often working class women, often older women. My style of workshops and facilitated groups welcome more women than men. It’s not deliberate, I love having men in my groups, but I made the decision to go with my gut more when facilitating and teaching and start leaning in to what I feel is core to my own work. I work around really quite difficult levels of anxiety (of which imposter syndrome is a big part) and I realised recently that some of the work I do is not helping that. Part of me feels that i should simply push through this. But in the past, if I knew I had a class to teach on a Friday, I would be almost catatonic with anxiety, unable to think because I could see it grinding towards me. The irony is, I love teaching. I love working with people. after I’d taught a class I’d be on a high. But how much of that was relief?
What writing The Ghost Lake has taught me is that my approach to my own writing is instinctive, even my editing style is instinctive. It’s something I have developed over years and years of writing and editing, and interacting with poets and authors and reading, reading, always reading. But it is still quite instinctive. There is nothing wrong with that. That’s the bit I’ve been missing, the validation of my own voice and my own style as valid, valuable even, because it is something I do instinctively, not despite that.
I cannot decide whether I am coming across as big headed, or stupid. I don’t mean to be either. In a round about way I am coming to a point. My point is that I am leaning into teaching the things that enable motivation and inspiration for creative writing, from my own point of view, the instinctive point of view, instead of binding myself into trying to teach in a style I think I should. I’ll have some new courses etc coming up in the future. And I will be continuing to run the Dawn and Dusk Chorus sessions. I only ever get nervous about running the Dawn and Dusk Chorus zoom writing groups on the first day, when I’m worried that the links won’t go out. After that, and I say this after each session, I feel enriched by the experience. And this is what I want my life to be like. I want my work to enrich me. I know it can’t always be like that, but I do feel like it isn’t too much to ask to not be made ill with anxiety because of how I work. Life is so short, it is so precious. We owe it to ourselves to be authentic to what makes us happy, to what keeps us well, to how we can move though the world being enriched and enchanted by what we find there, interested and nourish by life. Goodness knows there is enough pain in the world to deal with, we should be kinder to ourselves. I want to run more spaces that allow people to give themselves permission to write, to fall into nature and the sensory experience of nature, and to find their own path however winding that might be. I hope that is possible.
The Dawn Chorus
The Dawn Chorus is a facilitated writing group. The idea is that you find a slice of time between waking and work in which to prioritise your own creativity. This takes many forms - writing, submitting work, journalling, diary keeping. The idea is that you prioritise yourself, your creative mind and if that looks like spending an hour reading, or an hour sitting with a notebook with no pressure, allowing your mind to wander, then that’s what that looks like. There is a reading - an extract of creative non fiction, or a poem. There is an optional prompt, and then we sit and work gather in the zoom room. At this time of year the sun is long up when we begin, but there is still the magical feeling of stepping into it, of being aware of the day beginning and of the creative space that that just post sleep hour brings.
The Dusk Chorus is the same in structure, but at the end of the day. This is the time in which to recenter yourself as a creative, to set aside one hour in which you can be that core creative person, to play, to work on whatever you want. It’s a kind of gentle accountability. And a reminder to yourself that your work is valid.
You can come to as many or as few as you like, your £15 payment (plus booking fee) covers all five days.
The next dates are 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th July 2024. The Dawn Chorus is 7-8am UK time, the dusk chorus is 6-7pm UK time. All groups are zoom groups.
Here are the links for booking the groups:
I’m really looking forward to both What to Look for in Summer and The Dawn and Dusk Chorus groups in July. I hope you’ll join me for some creative inspiration. I’ll let you know how the first recording session went next week.
until next time
x
