Writing The Unthinkable

In this workshop, you will learn a way to let your subconscious mind tell you stories. We’ll give the pen over to the place where creativity, memory, dreams, and healing live.
Let your thinking mind sleep-in on January 21st, grab a coffee, and join me for this quiet, fascinating, sometimes emotional workshop created by Lynda Barry and pandemically adapted by me to reach us where we live.
Camera off, and you won’t need to speak or share your writing: just let me gently guide you through learning the method and trying it out in writing during this 90-minute, webinar-style, live workshop.
You:
This workshop is for people who: would like a meaningful experience; are bored, scared, lonely, or stressed out; are willing to handwrite a little bit; have always been curious about writing but didn’t know where to start; are 18 or older; have had great lives; have had terrible lives; drive trucks, climb corporate ladders, or were once children; like to write; hate to write; are sick of reruns; are willing to meet their child selves on paper; are introverts or extroverts; are senior citizens or love dogs. You name it, you count.
Me:
I am Amy Probst, a writer, rememberer, and instructional designer in Ypsilanti, Michigan, whose life was changed by learning this way of writing from Lynda Barry. Sharing it with you is something I am passionately honored about doing.
Environment:
For this Zoom webinar-style workshop, you will need a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. Please extend the care for yourself and your comfort that I would insist upon if we were meeting in-person. Wear comfy clothes or jammies, have coffee or snacks, and turn off your phone. I want you to experience the magic this method can produce, and that will require full, but private, immersion.
Materials:
We will be handwriting and doodling. You will need a stack of lined notebook paper, or a notebook full of blank pages. And a pen you are pretty fond of.
The Doodling . Doodling while listening–to ourselves or others–is scientifically proven to open the mind to creativity and retention. In our workshop, we will make spirals. Feel free to start now. Starting with a single dot in the middle of a page, start a line that spirals out from that dot, trying to keep the line as close to itself as you can. Go as slowly as possible. This is not a race, it is a type of meditation that keeps your thinking brain occupied so that your creative mind has a chance to take the stage.
The Handwriting . Many people are uncomfortable with their handwriting. They don’t think it looks very good. Some teacher, thinking he was doing a good job, didn’t realize that handwriting is drawing, and as unique to each person as their fingerprint. For this workshop, try to make friends with your handwriting. Just follow the line as it moves along, forming letters and words. Marvel in how cool that really is. As long as you can read it, the rest is art. Funky is just fine.