Do you write? Do you love literature and stockpile books? Do you long to make your creative work a more habitual part of your life? Join Nerissa and the Muse and discover your own world of creativity and joy. Writing it Up in the Garden is a method for learning how to write through fellowship, patience and perseverance. Nerissa, a writer herself for the past 20 years (see bio below), teaches her workshop attendees how to make a space for their writing. In her classroom, which she refers to as "the garden" (because so much is constantly growing and being harvested), participants actually write, right there, in the moment. "You don't go to a yoga class to sit around and listen to a discussion about yoga," she says. "You actually do yoga. Writing is my yoga."
Fresh material is treated with gentleness and respect, wonder and encouraging humor.
"We encourage the new shoots," she says. "We create an atmosphere of safety and TLC. That's what fresh work needs. I like to demonstrate to people that they have amazing wells within them, waiting to be tapped. I like to think of myself as a big cheerleader and encourager."
She is more than that. With a well tuned ear, honed for years by collaborative work with her band The Nields, Nerissa has an unusual way of detecting the sparkle of a fresh piece of writing, finding the strength in her fellow writers and pointing the way to each artist’s best work.
It is amazing what comes out of a person when she or he is sitting in a roomful of like minded, earnest, scared, confused but determined fellow writers. One participant wrote an entire play, some of which has been staged at a local venue. Recording artists have written fully formed songs in a half hour in the Songwriting Room. Poetry has been pouring out of this humble house on Prospect Street. Novels are being written, secrets are being told.
Workshops take place in Northampton, at an old Victorian house nestled in a delightful garden (hence the title). Nerissa regards these meetings as a means to fellowship, creativity, laughter, joy and perseverance. Explore the amazing world of the word and the tune and the muse. All levels of writers are welcome, and all styles: poets, short story writers, songwriters, journalists, memoirists, novelists, columnists, doodlers, you name it.
Teleclasses are a little different. Here is an opportunity to work in a more critical way with your material. In Weeding and Pruning, Nerissa works with no more than eight writers at a time. Meeting weekly on a conference call, we discuss four manuscripts which have been submitted ahead of time. Participants bring their observations about what's working and what's not working in the piece at hand, keeping up with each other during the week on line, if they choose. Nerissa brings the full weight of her literary education from Yale and her years in as a highly successful award winning songwriter to bear in helping students produce the finest work of which they are capable.