In February 2024, I welcomed a group of enthusiastic writers to my free Open Beach House at Island Time.

This WriteSPACE Special Event offered a wonderful opportunity for me to show everyone around my Island Time retreat venue and take them on a virtual walk across beautiful Waiheke Island.

From there, we dove straight into a truncated 60-minute Live Writing Studio session so that participants could experience this core feature of the WriteSPACE Studio.

Here is WriteSPACE Event Manager Amy Lewis’ personal account of the live event:

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This special event was far from a typical Live Writing Studio. Not only did it celebrate the 3rd birthday of the WriteSPACE, but it also prompted a collective journey into the realm of joyful writing through a metaphorical tour of Helen’s Island Time retreat venue: Waiheke Island. Waiheke is a special place, nestled in the Hauraki Gulf of Aotearoa New Zealand. You could call it a kind of casual paradise, full of unassuming charm, peaceful bays, vineyards and bushwalks, with independent shops and friendly locals. And it has a dear place in my heart, as it was where I was born and raised.

Our journey in the writing studio began with warm introductions and swiftly segued into a creative exercise. This event aligned very well with the Pleasure Catalyst, and for our creative writing warm-up, we turned to the themes of journeys and writing with pleasure.

You can try this exercise too, either by watching our interactive Island Time video or following the prompts below.

1) Imagine you have arrived on Waiheke Island. You have your hiking boots laced tight and can’t wait to discover the island. Your first stop is Rocky Bay. Located in a more remote part of the island, the bays here are pebbled and rough. But they are a great place to launch a sailboat or kayak.
Where are you starting from on your journey across the island? What does your Rocky Bay of writing look like and feel like right now? (3 minutes to write)

2) Next you embark upon a walk through the Nikau palm bush in Whakenewha Regional Park. The light filters through the canopy, the waterfall trickles in the distance, the tui birds chirp overhead.
Walk silently along the Nikau Track. What are some of the sensory details you notice when you clear your mind and focus on your surroundings? (3 minutes to write)

3) The bush path begins to rise steeply, it brings up your heart rate!
What challenges do you face in your current writing practice that you would like to overcome? (3 minutes to write)

4) You come upon a cool, clear cascade of water flowing from a spring at the heart of the island. What song does it sing to you? What music flows from your heart onto the page? (3 minutes to write)

5) Travelling from your bushwalk, you arrive at a vineyard at the top of the island. What sustenance do you need to fuel you on the rest of your journey? Who will accompany you on your way? (3 minutes to write)

6) Refueled and refreshed, you head down the track on the other side of the island.
What do you hope to find there? (3 minutes to write)

7) You’ve arrived at beautiful Onetangi Beach. Immerse yourself in the blue-green waters of the Hauraki Gulf. What does that cleansing, clarifying ocean swim symbolize for you? (3 minutes to write)

8) Your final destination: a little place called Epiphany Point. Reflect on where your journey across the island has taken you and how it has transformed you. What have you discovered or shed along the way? (3 minutes to write)

In the second half of the studio session, Helen guided the WINDOWS session (Writers IN Discussion with Other WriterS). The WINDOWS sessions are usually 2-3 people in breakout rooms, sharing ideas and editing each other’s work sentence by sentence. (If this sounds like a bit of you, I hope to see you there at the next session!) Those writers who wanted some independent writing time joined me for a 25-minute timed Pomodoro sprint.

In our normal fashion, we concluded this wonderful event with a collaborative poem, with each participant choosing one word to sum up something we had discussed or thought about during the session. Here are the poems from our two sessions:

Puzzle

palm tree dictators
motivated guinea pig
bird re-treat
cliff bonfire
olives canopy
boat notebook

Island

black rock glimmering
journey glade
stairs downhill
pohutukawa

A big thank you to Helen for this informative and inspiring special event and a warm welcome to all the new writers who joined us. I hope to see you all again at the next Live Writing Studio or Special Event!

If you would like to know more about the WriteSPACE or WS Studio, we would love to hear from you!

A recording of thisWriteSPACE Special Event is now available in the WriteSPACE Library.

Not a member? Register to receive an email with the video link.

Better yet, join the WriteSPACE with a free 30 day trial, and access our full Library of videos and other writing resources.

Subscribe here to Helen’s Word on Substack to access the full Substack archive and receive weekly subscriber-only newsletters. WriteSPACE members enjoy a complimentary subscription to Helen’s Word as part of their membership plan (USD $15/month or $135/year).

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In July 2023, I welcomed a group of enthusiastic writers to my free Open Writing Studio.

This WriteSPACE Special Event offered a wonderful opportunity for me to show them around my new WriteSPACE membership area, where members of my premium WriteSPACE Studio membership tier can access a variety of resources to support them in their writing practice.

From there, we dove straight into a 90-minute Live Writing Studio session so that participants could experience this core feature of the WriteSPACE Studio.

Here is WriteSPACE Event Manager Amy Lewis’ personal account of the live event:

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Not only was this special event an in-depth tour of the new website and member’s Studio pages (Hurray! I love the new layout), it was also a generative, interactive Live Writing Studio (LWS) session.

I come to the LWS to find a sense of community with other writers, to be challenged by Helen in some creative wordplay experiments, and to gain perceptive feedback from others on my writing. In fact, even if it’s not about my own writing, I still learn from the feedback of others. I’m always coming away from these events with a new vision for my work or myself as a writer. Being part of a writing community motivates me and keeps me accountable to my writing.

For other WriteSPACE Studio members, these sessions are about:

• Connecting with others across different countries and disciplines — From Spain to Australia! From education to engineering!

• Sharing in a “spiritual, uplifting group that keeps you going … and keeps you responsible.”

• Making yourself a bit vulnerable by showing your writing in a constructive, encouraging space.

• Putting fingers-to-keyboard to finally write that book proposal you have been mulling over.

• Seeing yourself as “a writer practising a craft rather than just a PhD student pushing out a thesis!”

We began the writing studio with some quick introductions before diving into a creative warm-up together (inspired by NZ poet Glenn Colquhoun’s An Explanation of Poetry for my Father). Why not try it yourself?

1. Choose a word (for example, STUDIO)

2. Write each letter on a different line in your notebook.

3. For each letter, write one line of poetry that describes what that letter looks like.

Here’s a compilation of some of the beautiful lines produced by our LWS writers:

S is the shape of a swirl when it’s not done…yet

T is a power pose beforehand, and maybe after!

U is a canopy shielding from the rain or an unprompted grin

D is a bridge of words and connections

I is that very first mark on the page

O is for open mouths and minds

After our warm-up, we were ready for a timed writing sprint, with each one of us working independently in a shared digital workspace.

Then, in the second half of the studio session, Helen guided the WINDOWS session (Writers IN Discussion with Other WriterS). The WINDOWS sessions are usually 2-3 people in breakout rooms, sharing ideas and editing each other’s work sentence by sentence. (If this sounds like a bit of you, I hope to see you there at the next session!) This time, we all stayed together in the main room, where a few brave writers shared a drafted paragraph and received Helen’s expert coaching feedback, as well as insights and advice from other participants.

We ended this wonderful event with a collaborative poem, with each participant choosing one word to sum up something we had discussed or thought about during the session.

Here are our two rather enigmatic poems:

• Miss Rizos: spine diving, light spark, normalize, beggars, closed pictures, celebrating curls

• Crossroads: springboard courage, accordion trampoline, lurking, exhale, champagne heat, soulful barking

A big thank you to Helen for this informative and inspiring special event and a warm welcome to all the new writers who joined us. I hope to see you all again in the 6-week Live Writing Studio “Creativity Sequence” starting in early September. Until soon!

If you would like to know more about the WriteSPACE or WS Studio, we would love to hear from you!

A recording of this two-part WriteSPACE Special Event is now available in the WriteSPACE Library.

Not a member? Register to receive an email with the video link.

Better yet, join the WriteSPACE with a free 30 day trial, and access our full Library of videos and other writing resources.

Subscribe here to Helen’s Word on Substack to access the full Substack archive and receive weekly subscriber-only newsletters (USD $5/month or $50/year).

WriteSPACE members enjoy a complimentary subscription to Helen’s Word as part of their membership plan (USD $15/month or $150/year).

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