Greetings finest writer people,
Heatwave schmeatwave. Hormuz schmormuz. AI schmayeye. This year has already been several decades long and we’re all withering human skin suits barely clinging on to the cliff edge, nails quick-bitten, knuckles stress-white, snot streaming from our noses while we cry out in unison BUT AT LEAST THE WORST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD GOT REALLY RICH!
And how, you might ask, is this related to writing? It is exactly related to writing, Writer-buddy.
Look. Every catastrophe, every clusterfuck, every turn leading us farther away from something even remotely sensible, every attempt to dismantle our humanity and sever the connections that hold us to each other, to the earth, demands nothing less than a furious rebuttal of aggressive humanness. Our resistance is to be more human than we’ve ever humaned before. To show up again and again, to actually occupy those skin suits with our whole entire selves, and to human so hard it shines out of us like a goddamn motherfucking supernova.
And there is nothing more human than making shit. Slap your handprint in the El Castillo Cave, scratch your name into the wall of the Domus Aurea, carve a gorgeous Venus booty into ivory*.
Throw yourself into the Great Creative Continuum, heart, line and sinker. In the words of weird-ass speculative mastermind Matt Bell, refuse to be done.
This is our mantra for the rest of tootytootysix. Resisting the time- and soul-sap of the attention economy. Immersing ourselves in the works that make our whole being sing. Writing the stories that demand to be written.
AND NOW IT’S TIME FOR A ROUSING COMMERCIAL INTERLUDE.
We are not playing around any more. It’s time. We are dedicating the second half of this year to GETTING THIS SHIT DONE.
We are showing up, week in week out. We are dedicated, we are joyful, we are writing our arses off.
Join us on Thursday 30 July for Recommit To Your Writing Year, where we’ll give you and your writing practice a Richter-level shake down and a Jane Fonda-level shape up, so that you can get the most out of your writing time.
And then! We meet online every Monday to write. We’ll keep you accountable every single day on the forum. We’ll check-in once a month for a goal setting and troubleshooting session. If you can’t make the real life retreats, there’s an all day online writing retreat every. single. month. There are masterclasses and workshops live and on-demand so you can top up your brain with everything you need to know about your craft.
We’ll take August slow and easy because, ya know, heat n holidays.
In September, we fill our rebel-writing-boots with the Writing as Resistance Festival.
And then in October, November, December, we continue to write our ever-pulsing hearts out.
Listen. If people can decide AI is inevitable just because they want it to be, you can decide your writing is inevitable just because you want it to be. That’s how it works. We’re here to give you the scaffolding, the skills, the pep, and the motherfracking gold stars.
👉 Grab yourself an Annual Glorious Writing Beast pass to book your place on July 30th and we’ll take it from there.
(You can go monthly, obvs, but c’mon – commit to the bit.)
Let’s do it.
Sarah & Team WHQ
*not literally OBVIOUSLY
