Open Beach House
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.
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