Write with delight!

Rediscover the joys of writing with this 6-week online course for academic, professional, and creative writers who want to reframe their negative emotions about writing and find new paths to pleasure. Join writing expert Helen Sword and other writers from around the world as we explore writing-related pleasure in its many guises. Sign up for Helen’s free newsletter to hear about future Writing Catalyst Series courses as they become available.

Next Pleasure Catalyst: Dates TBA, 2025.

What is the Pleasure Catalyst?

Across six weeks of writing exercises, workshops, and prompts, Helen will introduce you to six key dimensions of pleasurable writing — patterns, tools, processes, identity, challenge, balance — and guide you through a sequence of pleasure prompts designed to transform your writing practice from a painful chore to a enjoyable challenge.

Weeks 1-6: Weekly Workshops

Every Saturday morning for the six weeks of the course, you’ll receive an email with a link to the Pleasure Catalyst theme and materials for the upcoming week. We recommend that you budget 1-2 hours per week (or more if you wish!) to complete your tasks for each module.

Week 1: Leylines & Lifelines (patterns)
Week 2: Ground & Sky (tools)
Week 3: Wind, River, Stone (processes)
Week 4: Star Navigation (identity)
Week 5: Chiaroscur0 (challenge)
Week 6: Island Time (balance)

On Wednesday mornings, you’ll receive an email prompting you to reflect on the week's activities and recalibrate your goals for the weeks ahead.

Every week: Join Helen, and other writers from around the globe, for one of her Live Writing Studio sessions themed to coordinate with each module.

Meet your facilitator

Greetings! I’m Helen Sword — a scholar, poet, teacher, and the author of four research-based books on writing and writers, including, most recently, Writing with Pleasure.

I’ve spent the past two decades studying when, how, and why academic and professional writers find joy and satisfaction in their writing practice — and when, how, and why they don’t.

My mission is to help you build a writing practice grounded in pleasure rather than pain, in joy rather than self-judgment, based on research-informed principles that really work. Let’s get started!

Is the Pleasure Catalyst right for me?

Whether you love to write, hate to write, or experience a mix of positive and negative emotions about writing (as most people do), the Pleasure Catalyst will show you how to amplify your joy and cast light on the shadows. Join Helen and an international community of writers as we explore evidence-based strategies that will help you:

write with pleasure

Design and dwell in your personal WriteSPACE: a pleasure-focused writing practice that is socially balanced, physically engaged, aesthetically nourishing, creatively challenging, and emotionally uplifting.

publish with pleasure

Face down your critics and send your words into the world with confidence by deepening your sense of personal and professional identity and developing playful, pleasurable drafting, crafting, and revision skills.

live with pleasure

The principles of social, physical, aesthetic, creative, and emotional pleasure that you learn in this course will inform and transform your writing life.

Why you’ll love this course

Joy in community

The Pleasure Catalyst enabled me to come to consciously think of how to write with joy and a sense of play. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to work through this programme and connect with such a fabulous and impressive set of people around the world.

Kate Waterworth, PhD Candidate, Auckland University of Technology (New Zealand).

deep and impactful

The Pleasure Catalyst was a luscious, sensual and very rich course that took my writing to a different level through deep reflection and exchange with peers. The course offers ample opportunity for deep and impactful engagement with your own writing.

Birgit Heckemann, R&D coordinator, Institute of Health and Care Sciences, University of Gothenburg (Sweden).

a gift for life

In this six-week course I experienced writing with pleasure – which I expected to when guided by Helen Sword. What was less expected and more impactful was the self-reflection the course gently stirred. I left with many tools to boost my future writing and precious memories of this growth experience with writers from around the world.

Anita Campbell, Senior Lecturer, University of Cape Town (Cape Town. S.A.)

The Pleasure Catalyst curriculum

1. Leylines & Lifelines

Excavate your leylines and trace your lifelines: the invisible lines of emotional energy that influence and inform your writing life.

2. Ground & Sky

Explore the pleasures of the ground (analog writing tools), the sky (digital writing tools), and the blurred horizon line where they meet and mingle.

3. Wind, River, Stone

Embrace the elemental energy of wind (brainstorming), river (drafting), and stone (crafting) as you transform inchoate ideas into polished publications.

4. Star Navigation

Find your standing place (identity), map the constellations that guide you (culture), and sail into the uncertainties of writing with confidence and joy.

5. Chiaroscuro

Discover how the principle of chiaroscuro — the interplay of light and shadow in your writing practice — can help you master the challenges.

6. Island Time

Shift into island time and take a walk through the nourishing wetlands of your writing practice in search of rest, replenishment, and work-life balance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Don't see your question answered here? Contact us for more information.

The Pleasure Catalyst has been designed primarily with academic and professional writers in mind: for example students, faculty, research fellows, lawyers, business writers, and government employees — in other words, anyone whose livelihood includes regular non-creative writing. However, the course materials can be adapted to suit any kind of writing. All writers are welcome!
We recommend that you set aside at least 1-2 hours per week for the workshops, experiments, activities, and discussions in Weeks 1-6. Ambitious writers may wish to devote more like 3-4 hours per week. Needless to say, the more time you put into the course, the more you will get out of it!
Helen will facilitate weekly group discussions as part of her Live Writing Studio, with two sessions available each week. Please check the Catalyst Calendar and choose the sessions that best fit your time zone and location.
We’d love to see you at the live sessions, but they’re entirely optional. If you can’t make it, you’ll still have access to all the resources you’ll need to benefit from the course.
WriteSPACE members get a 10% discount. To qualify for the discount, please note that you must commit to maintaining your paid membership throughout the duration of the Catalyst course.
A limited number of scholarships are available for unwaged WriteSPACE members (conditions apply). If you would like to be considered for a scholarship, please contact us.
Helen will facilitate weekly group discussions as part of her Virtual Writing Studio, and she will monitor the Comments portal throughout the course and provide global feedback to all participants each week. For a more personalized coaching experience, we recommend that you consider enrolling in the Stylish Writing Intensive or one of Helen’s in-person writing retreats.