Write like the Wind, a workshop at PRINTERHOF Zine & Publishing Festival
One moment, there’s an empty page. A little bit later, there’s something on it. Something you created. How did that happen?
In this workshop presented at the fifth PRINTERHOF Zine & Bookmaking Fair, we’re going to focus on the very beginning of the creative process, that moment when something emerges from nothing. Nyla Nox** will take you from sitting down to putting your hands on your preferred instrument of writing to allowing the writer inside you to emerge. And then to stay in the flow during your writing session.
**Nyla Nox is the author of several novels under various names, including Out of the Shadows and into the Darkness by Senta Holland, published by HarperCollins UK and the trilogy Graveyards of the Banks for which she was interviewed in the Guardian under her second pen name Nyla Nox. She has published many articles, short stories and poems (Chemo Songs published 2025 by Stadtsprachen Berlin) and links to her previous workshops of this format in Bangkok, London and Lisbon can be seen here.
About the Workshop
My method is loosely based on ‘Writing Down the Bones’ by Natalie Goldberg and the theories of flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I’m mixing it up with the methods of ‘fast writing without thought intrusion’ developed in the early 21 st century. The workshop will introduce concepts like ‘get rid of the start and stop method’, ‘let your fingers write’, ‘never look back’, ‘don’t wait for inspiration, it won’t wait for you’. And when I say ‘introduce’ I mean we’re going to write from the moment you sit down to the moment the session ends (almost). A series of impulses (not prompts in the traditional sense) will send you deeper into your journey of discovery and keep you from giving up (for whatever reason you normally give up). Writing very fast in this specific way means that you are able to get out of the path of your imagination. You experience the freedom of the creative flow. Come with unfinished stories, with a project you want to develop, or come with a blank mind as well as a blank page. See where this method can take you. (Many participants say they’ve written more in an hour than they usually write in a week.)
You don’t have to painfully crawl line by line or keep stuck on the first paragraph. You are here to express your individual imagination. (If you don’t like this method, you can always go back to your old method in your next writing session.) But for this short hour, join me and write like the wind!
Graphic by juli cordray of textur mag