Hi there, and welcome to the project I’m calling (for now) raw material. This will be a letter for writers who like to leave a wide and messy margin for discovery. Posts and more will start in early 2023.
Some of you have been part of my workshops at Voice & Vessel. This project builds on that work but will depart from it in important ways. My creative practice has shifted a lot, and it’s time to try out new containers.
I’ve shared about the idea of raw material many times over the past seven years or so, through Voice & Vessel. I believe there’s a vast space before and around what we often think of as a first draft or a working draft. I meet that space as raw material, and I’m curious about what happens when we have a steady relationship with our own raw material… instead of treating it like a quick stop on the way to something better and more polished.
Sometimes we underestimate or try to shortcut this space, and I feel like something is lost—in the process or in the writing itself—when we do.
This letter will be an experiment in loosening up and letting ourselves stay longer with our raw material. It’s a project of learning in the open, to ask what’s happening and what’s possible in our rough beginnings. The letters will be a mix of:
field notes, what ifs, possibilities
readings, research, prompts
practices to try, writing exercises, experiments
documentaries, art, books to cross-pollinate with disciplines beyond writing
invitations, nudges, challenges, dares, check-ins
I promise to share these things in the spirit of raw material (honest, curious, generously imperfect) and with a preference for questions and practices you can actually do something with (instead of platitudes about what it means to be a writer).
I hope this letter/project will be a way we can wave to each other from the thick of our creative practice, in all its weird and generative and uncertain forms.
Off we go—
emily
Emily, I would like to purchase your book and I went to your website Voice and Vessel but did not find a link to purchase. Is it available on Amazon or Barnes and Noble?