Facilitated by
Jim McEwen
Registration: $40.00
SATURDAY - May 11, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. at the Mississippi Mills Public Library
As the second in our 2024 series of Art of Writing Workshops, ARW presents When Only the Moon Rages — The Madness, the Joy, and How to Keep on Writing, led by Dunrobin’s own Jim McEwen.
This 2 hour workshop is open to all writers - total beginners and those with more experience. We will focus on real strategies and real talk about how to overcome the difficulties that come with putting words on a page. Through a creative writing exercise, participants will refocus their curiosity, creativity, and reconnect with the absolute freedom of words by “looking at things in an unhabitual way.” Jim will also guide participants in an honest and open discussion of the beautiful folly that is being a writer.
What is this workshop about?
In all honesty, does writing make us miserable sometimes? Can we get lost in the anxiety, the self-doubt, the loneliness, the possible meaninglessness? Are we looking to our stories for salvation but not feeling very saved? Perhaps, now and then, we all need to fall back in love with the words. Together then, by sharing passages that reignite the delight, and through a writing activity to call back our curiosity (and not take ourselves TOO seriously), we will remember how to keep on through the lost times. With the joy of a child, and the abandon of the “raging moon”, we will try to reaffirm what we love, what we hold true and dear, about this madness so help us all.
What will we do in the workshop?
Jim will read short excerpts from his writing and lead an honest and open discussion about the madness and the joy of writing: times of hopelessness and times when the hope came back and how it came back! Participants can share their experiences, good and bad, then everyone will engage in a writing activity.
Who is this workshop for?
All are welcome. Anyone writing or interested in creating any type of writing. Anyone struggling some days to recall what exactly it was that they fell in love with about words and sentences in the first place. Please come one and all!
About the Instructor/Writer:
Jim McEwen is a writer from Dunrobin, Ontario. His first novel, Fearnoch (2022, Breakwater Books Ltd), was a finalist for the Ottawa Book Awards and the Foreword Indie Book Awards, and his other published fiction has also received numerous awards and recognition.
For more on Jim, check out his interview in The Humm (October 2022), and read the Literary Review of Canada piece by Cecily Ross about his debut novel, Fearnoch (April 2023).
This workshop is presented in partnership with the Mississippi Mills Public Library, and partially funded by the Municipality of Mississippi Mills.
