Recovering Language when Words Fail Us
A creative writing workshop with Peter Winfield
Pre-registration via Tickets Please
Early bird rate (until April 19) $30.00 per registration
Regular rate $40.00 per registration
Almonte Readers & Writers is pleased to present the May series of Art of Writing workshops and courses exploring aspects of creative and technical skills development in literary arts, offered as part of the 2025 Lanark Lit Festival of Writing.
Overview
In recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, ARW is presenting a writing workshop that explores our inner lives and mental well-being. We will dig below the surface of common emotional language to allow the reader to accompany us in our personal stories, a skill useful to all writers.
Have you ever experienced a period in your life when nothing seemed to go your way? Maybe you lost someone close to you, struggled with a mental health condition, or cared for somebody who did? Or perhaps you faced other challenges in your personal or professional life. Whatever it may be, we often resort to common labels to describe our experiences, labels like anger, rage, frustration, despair, grief or any number of other common words. After a while, these words can lose their deeper meaning and can sometimes hold us back. By exploring the physical and emotional experience under these labels we discover new depth and meaning that allows us to rewrite our story with new insight and rich language.
But storytelling isn’t just about sharing one’s own experiences – it’s also a way to connect with the universality of the human experience. Through stories, we can come to understand that we all face similar challenges, have similar emotions, and share similar hopes and fears. This shared connection can foster a sense of empathy, understanding, and humanity that is essential for healing and personal growth.
What will we do in this workshop?
We will discuss how past writers have captured emotion in their stories in ways that draw the reader in, rather than pushed the reader away. We will then use prompts to help us write about our own challenging experiences in a more expansive way. After these writing prompts, there will be a chance to share what we have written in a supportive and accepting group.
Who is this workshop for?
This 2-hour workshop is open to all writers – experienced and new. We will explore strategies to write about our inner lives and experiences by looking at how established authors, like William Styron and F. Scott Fitzgerald, have accomplished this task. There will be a writing exercise where participants will engage their curiosity and creativity in order to connect with their deeper selves beyond the words and labels we use every day.
About the instructor:
Peter Winfield is a veteran who retired early due to mental health injuries. He is a former army officer who served in the infantry, armour and then worked in counter terrorism signals intelligence with the Communications Security Establishment. He has multiple overseas deployments. After his last deployment he was diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety, and double depression.
Then one day he took his soul for walk. He went to therapy and tried medication. He learned to practice mindfulness, breath work and energy work. He went back to school. He studied creative writing, art history, mindfulness, meditation, and compassion. He learned to walk the labyrinth. He returned to his lifelong passion for making art through painting and photography. At some point his soul started to smile again and the labyrinth showed him a new way to find meaning. He recently began to step out of the shadows of the life he created to speak publicly about mental health, to teach journaling and labyrinth walking for healing journeys, to write and to show his art. He has been fortunate enough to sell some of his art which is the lifelong passion that saved his life.
Currently, he is completing his MFA in Creative Writing at King’s University in Nova Scotia.
The 2025 Lanark Lit Festival of Writing is presented by Almonte Readers & Writers thanks to the generous funding support of Lanark County, the Municipality of Mississippi Mills, the Perth & District Community Foundation, and the Elizabeth Kelly Library Foundation, with community partnership from the Mississippi Mills Public Library, the Perth & District Public Library, Mill Street Books, and the Almonte Writers Guild
