Beyond Form Creative Writing

*on deadlines & extensions* Where & how did you learn what a deadline was? How do deadlines make you feel? Do you enjoy the constraint? Or does the pressure make you spiral? How about extensions? What feelings do you associate with asking for, & being given, ‘more time’? How does it feel to go over the line? If you have a complex relationship with deadlines or straight lines, with structures & what they can & can’t hold, I see you. Let’s make some mess together. 🌿Over the lines: a writing workshop for the uncontainable. 25th February, 7-9pm (GMT) Zoom All welcome! Book in bio or DM with questions 🌿

*new workshop* Over the lines: a writing workshop for the uncontainable 25th February, 7-9pm (Zoom) Recording for all participants Have you ever been told and/or felt that your writing goes “too far”? That you make, or want to make, too many connections, too many associations? Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the associations you make when you are writing or thinking about writing, such that these feelings prevent you from starting, continuing, or finishing a piece? Do you want deadlines but don’t want deadlines? Do you want extensions but don’t want extensions? Do you want neither deadlines nor extensions but a secret third thing? This workshop is for anyone who struggles to contain their ideas and themselves and does or does not want to. It’s for the associating ones (free, and otherwise), the hypermobiles, the ones on the edges or near, the fraying, friable, pliable, stretching, yearning, bending, reaching, soft, wide ones. It’s for anyone who has ever felt: - Overwhelmed by the intensity and range of (their) ideas; - Overwhelmed by the thought and practices of writing; - Unable to progress past the beginnings of ideas, mired in the land of false starts; - Like there’s too much structure, or not enough structure, or not the right structure, or all of the above. We will explore: - Different ways to contain; different ways to extend our writing; - Feeling our edges; finding our touchpoints - Building capacity for feelings of overwhelm | paralysis | diffusion when it comes to our ideas and writing; - Working with, not against, our own connection-making. The exercises in the session will combine somatic and writing practices – however, this session is not only for writers! Come along if any of the above resonates with you. And DM me with any questions. Link to book in bio. 🎉

Beyond Form is snuggling down deep under a warm blanket for some winter dreaming until spring tickles our toes & minds again. Thank you so much to all our 2025 facilitators for sharing their beautiful work in this community & to you for joining us in it all. We’ll be back with more queer, experimental invitations & offerings on the other side … Much love until then, Sam & Ruth x 🇵🇸

Writing Our Roots with @aliceeaves13 9th December, 6-9pm (GMT, Zoom) Humans have complex, deep connections with spaces they call home. Yet we rarely take the time to think about home on a cultural & ecological level. ‘Writing Our Roots’ invites novice & experienced writers alike to contemplate the meaning of home & place-making with the focus on, but not limited to, linguistic histories, heritage, ecology & topography. Think of a place you would like to write about. It can be anything from a region to a landmark to a favourite tree. What makes you feel a connection to this place? How could you explain it to other people so they can understand what you feel? We’ll be thinking with these questions & more in Writing Our Roots. All welcome! A recording will be made available of you can’t make it in person. Link to book in our bio 🍃

Welcome to Studio Swan: an exercise in collaborative speculation with Natascha Nanji @nanjisan 11th December 6-9pm (GMT, Zoom) Welcome to Studio Swan is a post-travel, interpersonal, sci-fi adventure – a speculative exercise exploring the conditions and context that would be appropriate for humans to temporarily become (with) plant or animal. And why would this be a desirable or necessary undertaking? A form of meditation? An alternative to travel? Or expanding out into knowing what it is to be more than human? Read more about the story setting at the link in our bio! In this immersive writing workshop, we will weave ethnographic writing methods, role play, storytelling, and speculative thinking to co-create characters living and working at Studio Swan, channeling Karrabing Film Collectives’ methods. This workshop is for anyone with an active interest in contemporary ecology writing + thinking (including Anna Tsing, Karen Barad, Adrienne Maree Brown, Donna Haraway, Natassja Martin, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro), along with experimental world building in the context of the ever pressing question, how to live together? “Perhaps the central purpose is to discover what we never knew we knew by hearing what we say in moments of improvisation. We suddenly see what we have been saying—what we have been sensing.” (Elizabeth Povinelli) Step inside the story and meet your character at Studio Swan via the link in our bio. 🔗 REGISTER via link in bio. 🌈 Fees are sliding scale.

Bloody Bodies with @khushi.in.london A collage-poetry workshop for everyone who menstruates. 6th December 2-5pm (GMT, Zoom) What stories have we been told about menstruation? What stories have we told ourselves? What kind of individual or character is imagined or put at the centre of menstruation narratives? Using stories, poetry and collage, in Bloody Bodies, we will explore South Asian menstrual mythologies & our own experiences as people who menstruate. Bloody Bodies is for everyone who menstruates! No collaging or poetry experience required! Link to book in our bio. 🩸

“[H]ow would it feel to build characters that are bound to a landscape through the very foundations of their identities?” — But Who Is That Character From: Class Preview Wanted to record a video version of my bLog (yes I call my blog The bLog Lady) where I preview my upcoming class with @beyondformcreativewriting Creating World-Connected Characters. It takes place on November 19th from 6-8pm GMT and a recording will be available afterwards. Register at the link in my bio; sliding scale fee available. #writing #queer #lgbtq #characterdesign #fantasy #speculativefiction #fiction #ecology #gender #setting #worldbuilding #writingcommunity #nature #landscape #lesson #prompt

I’m coming out of social media hibernation to self-promote my new writing workshop, a worthy cause! If you like writing - or hate it - come join me for a writing workshop in December! Three hours may sound like a lot but you’ll be in such a flurry of creativity it promise to fly by. If you’re still not sold, here is my amazing promo text: Humans have complex, deep connections with spaces they call home, yet we rarely take the time to think about home on a cultural and ecological level. ‘Writing Our Roots’ invites novice and experienced writers alike to contemplate the meaning of home and place-making with a focus on, but not limited to, linguistic histories, heritage, ecology and topography. Through a series of individual exercises and group discussions, this workshop encourages participants to use the written word as a tool for connectivity, protest, and exploration, hopefully delivering new perspectives on how to interact with the spaces we call home. Sounds good right? See you there! /events/beyondformcreativewriting/1672244

Creating World-Connected Characters with Lily M. Frenette 📅 19th November 🕧 6-8pm (GMT, Zoom) 🎥 recording available 💞 sliding scale registration In the essay “Beyond the Human,” So & Pinar Sinopoulos-Lloyd write that “relationships between entities inform and create who we are, and we orient ourselves in the cosmos and in our local places by relating to others.” Fantasy worlds are filled with wonders of nature beyond anything in our reality: sentient rivers, animals who grant magical favors, trees that can travel. It can be a struggle to write characters who feel truly connected and who we can connect with in these alien settings. Join Lily Frenette for an exciting evening using theories of queer and ecological identities to craft characters whose connection to the natural world helps ground them in fantastical places. This workshop is sparked the powerful essay 'Beyond the Human' by So and Pinar Sinopoulos-Lloyd @queernature which explores relationality between human and nature. Participants will dig into it together for inspiration. The article is open access (April 25, 2022) @atmos and linked on the workshop registration page! Find Lily @journalingirl & @albawritingclub Register at the link in our bio!

Are you interested in writing characters who feel intrinsically tied to the landscape? Do you want to explore how ideas from queer ecology can be used to help shape your characters? I’ve got a class for you! Creating World-Connected Characters led by @journalingirl with @beyondformcreativewriting will prime you with new characters and a setting you will be eager to explore on the page. Class takes place on November 19th from 6-8 pm GMT with a recording available for those who can’t make it live. Register now through the link in my bio! This class, like all through Beyond Form, is offered at a sliding scale, which is amazing. See you there! #writing #writers #writingcommunity #lgbtq #queer #queerwriters #fantasy #queerecology #ecology #generative #classes #edinburgh

This is happening on Saturday, this week! In collaboration with @beyondformcreativewriting . I bring in my background in human behaviour, arts-based facilitation and storytelling, and my own expeirence with creative exhaustion and burnout, to offer this restful, playful space for those battling their own ‘dragons’. Come as you are - hopeful or excited, grieving or tired. Let’s encounter our barriers, inner and outer, in a gentle way,and allow ourselves to be held and witnessed. Let’s explore alternatives to fight and flight, and instead of fearing the dragons as antagonists of our lives, let’s see them in new light, as healers, protectors and connectors. #workshop #creativity #wellbeing #writersofinstagram #burnout #fatigue #artists #storytelling #creative

🌈 NEW WORKSHOP 🌈 Multilingual Imaginations with Mymona Bibi 3rd November 6-9pm GMT (online, Zoom) sliding scale offering Multilingual Imaginations explores cross-lingual connections and how various linguistic backgrounds can shape and reshape our imaginative landscapes. This includes how language affects our philosophies and ways of being and knowing. The workshop centres marginalised multilingual voices to bring awareness to language hierarchies as limitations to writing and art. Multilingualism is all around us. It shapes the world, it is how we care for each other and, crucially for us as artists, it affects how we create. In this workshop, we will play with what we believe are the limitations of language. If you don’t understand a word, a song, a sound or even a gesture, it might not be a loss but rather an opportunity. If we tune into that which we think we don’t understand, we might push the boundaries of our writing, our work, and indeed our world/s. This workshop is perfect for people looking to get experimental with their next writing project, but it’s open to anyone interested in languages more broadly. There will be plenty of prompts that can be used in different forms of creativity and plenty of languages to engage with as well. We will use a variety of media including, images, videos, music and different forms of writing as inspiration. The workshop will be run in English, but you are welcome to write/create in any language you want. Feel free to come as you are or bring something you are working on. 🔗 Book your place now via the link in our bio, or visit https://buytickets.at/beyondformcreativewriting/1672235