BELLOWS FALLS — “Fearless Writing's Greatest Hits,” a 3-hour mini-workshop with Crescent Dragonwagon, will be presented at the Rockingham Free Public Library on Thursday, Sept. 10, at 6 p.m.
Organizers say attendees will find their voice, cozy up to their fears, and learn how to use them. The workshop is designed to help participants get energized, even in uncertain times, and write. The workshop has helped hundreds of people move from “I've always wanted to write, but...” to action, according to a news release.
It's what Dragonwagon, an award-winning Westminster West-based author who has published extensively in five different genres, calls Fearless Writing. She has taught this class around the world and will bring a taste of it to the RFPL to benefit the Friends of the Library.
This short version of the renowned breakthrough writing workshop is offered for a suggested sliding-scale donation of $20-$125. (A typical Fearless Weekend goes for $995 per person).
“It takes a weekend to do the whole enchilada,” says Dragonwagon, who also teaches a month-long online version, Virtual Fearless. “But over the years of working with student-colleagues, I've seen what are the greatest hits for many. I'll try, in these three hours, to do what sugarers do with maple sap: boil it down, concentrate it.”
Bring a laptop and/or spiral notebook, along with a couple of your favorite pens. Participants will move back and forth between interactive discussion and writing practices. Dragonwagon says the workshop, which uses the anxiety generated by chaotic conditions as a powerful creative force, is practical, effective, creative, serious and playful. It turns apparent obstacles into the material for writing, from which to build a thriving and resilient life.
Because one of Dragonwagon's genres is culinary (she won a James Beard Award for her culinary memoir, Passionate Vegetarian), the Friends will also provide soups and muffins, drawn from her recipes, at the midway point.
“Libraries give readers, and writers, so much,” says Dragonwagon. “To be able to have access to almost all the accumulated knowledge and entertainment in the world, for free, right where you live, is an astonishing thing. I am delighted to offer this on behalf of the Rockingham Library. And because writing also gives the person doing it so much -people always say to me, 'It's not just fearless writing, it's fearless living' - I am delighted to be able to offer at least a sampling of the workshop right here at home.”