The Writing Ranch: Creativity in Crisis 🎨
Join us at the virtual Writing Ranch this summer!
Dear Writers,
The world seems to be going to hell in a handbag. The stock market is teetering, vulnerable people are being deported, we’re alienating our allies, inflation is rising, universities are being defunded, and it feels as if one national emergency after another is being hurled at us. Plus, the finale of the third season of “White Lotus” ended with the death of a beloved character (as it always does). What should we do? As writers, let’s harness our creativity and gather together.
Years ago, when my father was alive, he liked to engage in arguments at the dinner table. Casual conversations turned into verbal warfare. Mealtimes were stressful. My father could be a not-so-benign dictator. From him, I learned to fight back, though what I really learned to do was write back. (Links to essays about how I navigated my father ran in The New York Times, Brevity, The Ethel and The Girlfriend here, here and here.) From my father I learned that stress needs a place to go; it needs to be channeled. Writing our way through stress is an effective way of managing it but stress also requires new ways to summon creativity. Finding the rhythm of creativity is like preparing to enter a trance; we need scaffolding and a support system in place to tap into it.
To make this happen, in mid-June, Sweet Lab is running an 8-week creativity boot camp, aka The Writing Ranch.
We’ll meet weekly via Zoom and use Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way as our go-to inspiration and writing bible. We’ll also dip into Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It For Life, Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Volume 3, and Joyce Carole Oates’ Master Class: The Art of the Short Story.
Class starts the week of June 16 and runs eight weeks through the week of August 18. We’ll meet 5-7 p.m ET on Monday or Tuesday nights.
We live in times of unprecedented stress and confusion. Many of us are marching, protesting, making phone calls, writing postcards, and biting our fingernails down to the nubs. But what we have the most control over is our writing life. Let’s write our way through it.
In other news!
A group of Sweet Lab students gathered last weekend and had dinner together at Tamarind Tribeca. We’ve been Zooming for years and it was wonderful to see everyone in real life and eat delicious food. That’s what we need more of right now—great company, spirited conversation, and generous portions of saag paneer, rosemary naan, and gulab jamun for dessert. During dinner, we discussed our favorite writing Substacks.
Jami Attenberg, Craft Talk
Deborah Copaken, Ladyparts
Alice Elliot Dark, Alice on Sunday
Roxanne Gay, The Audacity
Rebecca Makkai, SubMakk
Maggie Smith, For Dear Life; she has a new book out, Dear Writer: Pep Talks and Practical Advice for the Creative Life
Brandon Taylor, Sweater Weather
Next week, we’ll have a Q&A with Cindy Handler, whose book, A German Jew's Triumph: Fritz Oppenheimer and the Denazification of Germany, is out Wednesday, April 16.
Joan Didion, What We Knew Without Knowing: Notes to John Gregory Dunne (nonfiction, The New Yorker)
Rachel Lyon, The Fragrant, Conscious World (fiction, Bennington Review)
Alioune Diagne, Jokkoo, Beautiful, pastel paintings of protests, basketball, wrestling and domesticity by young Senegal painter (Templon Gallery, 293 Tenth Avenue, through May 1.)
Robert Natkin, A Better Place. Exquisite color field paintings by late painter. (Sundaramtagore Gallery, 542 West 26th Street, through April 26.)
Laura Owens: Colorful paintings, wild wallpaper, magic desk, handmade books, and a funny video with talking crows. This is a fun exhibit, full of surprises (Matthew Marks Gallery, 522 West 22nd Street, through April 19.)
Franz Kafka: Fascinating exhibit includes photos, diary entries, postcards, artwork and gripping video of a dance-theatre adaptation of The Metamorphosis, choreographed by Arthur Pita and starring Edward Watson as Gregor Samsa (Morgan Library, 225 Madison Avenue, through April 13.)
Belle de Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy: Wonderful exhibit of the life and work of Belle Greene, librarian to J. Pierpont Morgan and later his son. Greene came from an illustrious Black family (her grandfather was the first Black graduate of Harvard College) but passed as white in NYC. Greene’s life is also the subject of Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray’s novel, The Personal Librarian. (Morgan Library, 225 Madison Avenue, through May 4.)
Black Bag: Fun thriller starring Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett as married spies who orchestrate dinner parties with their wildly attractive colleagues: Marisa Abela, Tom Burke, Naomie Harris and Regé-Jean Page. Everyone seems to be having a good time, even when there are knife-wounds and gunshots. Reviews here and here.
