8th February 2023

WRITESPACE STUDIO 8th February 2023

Please introduce yourself by telling us where you live (country, city/state/region) and what kind of writing you do.

Lynne: I'm Lynne, a linguist in Brighton, England, who writes about language for both academic and non-academic audiences.

Vicky: Vicky, from a freezing cold, but Sunny Essex (UK). Working on a book Victorian lodgers

Stephanie: I'm Stephanie, on unceded Gadigal country (Sydney), I'm writing an art history PhD thesis on 14th century Italian images of the Grim Reaper.

Ramón: Ramón, sociologist from Melbourne. I am summarising a couple of chapters that I read today.

Kate: I’m Kate, I teach in critical rehabilitation studies at AUT, live in Auckland, interested in Critical Disability stuff and Deleuze, writing a reflection on some recent reading

Anita: Anita in Cape Town, academic writing on helping students to thrive. I'm writing on a funding report today.

Eva: Eva, education, based in Germany

Bring our voices into the room: Something you are excited about that has nothing to do with writing or work.

Some highlights: a saloon-style birthday party, book cover designs, a 42km cycle competition, new running routes and routines, upcoming flights, and a music festival!

Creative warm up:  Celebrating Hussain’s sponsorship application to receive refugee status in New Zealand!! 😊 How can we generate some fundraising for Hussain? 5 minutes to brainstorm some crazy ideas.

Vicky: my husband's cricket club is involved in supporting two Afghan refugees (father and son), so I will have to find out what the club does in terms of fundraising. Also, seeking out big donors from advertisements in the LRB, Private Eye etc. I have seen it done before.

Anita: Speaker's fees to talk at schools or university classes in politics, ethics, international studies. Hussain could lead mindfulness practices online, maybe using the browser Brave that has a feature where users can leave a tip. House-sitting…

Kate: Co-creation amongst writespace community/ network of some piece of work (e-book? ‘art’) that can be sold to generate funds - advertised to broader whitespace community and ask them to promote to colleagues

Helen: Ideas that Victoria and I tossed around today: an auction (in real life? online?) with donated items that people might bid on; local organisations in NZ such as Rotary; a Patreon site, where people sponsor Hussain for a few dollars a month in return for weekly, fortnightly, or monthly reports on his life and progress; some kind of online special event that people really want to attend (but what??), with all proceeds going into the Hussain Fund

Kate: Give a little page = link shared among networks... Some kind of in-person fundraising event (?) to generate ‘publicity’ and share on social media. Corporate sponsorship for specific items that Hussain would need every day... Might be grant applications available for specific ‘research projects’ that Hussain might be research assistant or similar as employment… I am seeing an old colleague on Friday who is a former refugee from Somalia and now works in the health/ disability sector as a cultural caseworker - I will have a chat with him and see if he has any ideas/ suggestions…

Stephanie:- Maybe a silly idea but perhaps Hussain could write a short poem (even a limerick) for each donation  - Are there cultural organisations in NZ who would help with this.  - A sponsorship page / GoFundMe linked on every writespace page - news coverage can be really helpful - I think it would be helpful to set it up in some way where it could be a fixed repeating donation every month rather than a one-off, certainly for my finances that makes it more accessible and I could donate more in that way

Lynne: At the start of the war in Ukraine, a linguist friend wrote a personal note to friends and linguists to ask for help in getting a young man out of Russia before he was conscripted. We had a specific story and a personal connection to her, and that was enough. If we were all given the template of such an email and could adapt it and send it to friends, I think we could find a lot of people willing to help. It worked a lot better than bake sales etc. I think we can do a lot for free with our social media accounts, It would be good to give a specific sense of the fundraising goal, so people understand the proportions.

Eva: to secure a book contract; to apply for studying a higher education degree and a scholarship; work as a social assistant or equivalent with migrant/ refugee communities, maybe offering some writing workshops to them?

Ramón: A website could be set by paying a domain, to donate for this purpose and we could all spread the message through our social media sites. This website could have: Hussain's story or biography; his artist/literary/researcher work (like a showcase)/ and where Hussain's has been living during these 9 years (where is it located, some pictures about it... etc.) so we can have an idea of how hard this is/ also what NZ sponsorship represents to him, and the life opportunity that this means for him.

Pre-pomodoro: What do you plan to work on?

Eva: Writing one paragraph drawing the literature together for a journal article

Lynne: I am going to sort through some data my assistant put into a spreadsheet for me and figure out what needs to happen next. I can’t stay for the second half, sorry!

Vicky: working on my daily quota today, writing my next chapter by hand for the first draft

Stephanie: I want to write an introductory par for the first section of this chapter

Post-pomodoro: Please tell us one thing that you accomplished

Vicky: got a case study written

Hussain: Hi Helen and everyone, It was nice seeing you again. Thanks everyone for your wonderful ideas on fundraising and your warm support. I have to leave. I have a class in a few minutes. I teach short story writing to other refugees here.

Eva: I tweaked one paragraph.

Kate: A few pages of reflection/ thinking

Stephanie: I am out of practice, I immediately got distracted and started chasing down sources. I did clarify an idea about an important iconographical element of my study.

Anita: Agonised and eventually settled down to work on the report and found it wasn't that bad

Lynne: I’ve got to go too, but I was glad for the 25 minutes figuring out how much I need to do on this project with an early March deadline, bye!

Kate: Thanks for this session. So fabulous (and moving) to hear about Hussain’s sponsorship application. I feel confident the WriteSpace community will support his journey!

Ramón: I wrote a 350 words summary of both chapters. I don't know if very good… but definitely more accomplished than most days!

WINDOW session:  One thing you will take away from this discussion:

Vicky: community 🙂

Stephanie: Joy and using morning pages to transition from personal writing to academic writing

Anita: For Ramon: Writing is less scary and easier to sit with when it is framed as a game.

Stephanie: I actually find staying in the hotel to be a little performative and that helps me. Like, I'm so fancy I am writing my art history thesis in a hotel bar with a glass of wine

Anita: Daily writing as it works for you

Stephanie: I've written "Fancy Finishing Game" in glitter ink on a post-it for my desk 🙂 a motto for my final PhD year <3

Some general advice for writing that we talked about:

Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way https://juliacameronlive.com/books-by-julia/write-for-life/

Martha Beck's book The Joy Diet has Play as one of the ingredients. Maybe try to find ways to make thesis writing playful.

Goodson says each paragraph needs (transition) + one key idea + development of key idea

Murray (How to write a doctoral thesis) gives similar advice. My sentences tend to become too systematic when I apply it continuously. Then I try to play around with the structure of paragraphs.
Write a certain amount and then rewards yourself with a chapter of a fiction reading.

Lots of larger museums and galleries have libraries that can be very nice to write in!

1 word poem:

Fancy: finishing game people argument hotel bar