A free growth-week for Writers’ Greenhouse Community members: a one-week gentle challenge to help you connect more with your writing.

Sign ups have now closed. Join the newsletter if you'd like to to join future events.

This is ideal if:

• You’re losing the flow of your project / story between writing sessions.
• You’re feeling avoidant about writing / a specific project.
• You’re returning to writing after a gap.
• You’re starting writing and unsure what to do.

PLUS everyone who completes the week will be entered into a prize draw, for an hour’s free mentoring.

If you're already a member of the Writers’ Greenhouse Community, I emailed you the details, and you need to click the opt-in link in that. (Check your email for "Writing tip & freebie".) Meanwhile, add it to your diary!

Not in the Writers’ Greenhouse Community?

If you want to join in, you can join the membership for a month for £15 (one-off payment) or £12 (ongoing subscription, which you can cancel any time).

As well as The Gardener’s Shadow week, you’ll get:

• A live Writing Boost session: guided reflection and a Q&A
• 5 weekly Writing Skills
• 30 days’ access to the Community Group, Trellising Practice, and Sending Writing Out info

When is it and how does it work?

• 4–11 March (5–10 mins a day). The week will start and end with live Zoom sessions. NB: You can still do the week and enter the prize draw even if you can't make the Zoom sessions.
• Wed 4 March 6–6:30pm UK time: A live Zoom session, to set you up.
• During the growth-week: In your Writers' Greenhouse Community portal, you'll have a list of ideas for things to do, to inspire you. (You're not restricted to that list.) You'll also have a doc to record what you do each day, which you'll send to me at the end of the week.
• Wed 11 March 6–6:30pm UK time: We'll wrap up with a live Zoom session, to reflect, make future plans, and do the prize draw.

About The Gardener’s Shadow

One of the best writing tips I ever got came from Gardener’s Question Time, of all places. “The best compost for any plant,” they said, “is the gardener’s shadow.” Just visit your plants: give them your shadow. You don’t need to do much, often nothing, but check in on them. I tried it – and it works a treat!

Then I tried the same with writing: visiting my writing, giving it my shadow for a few minutes even when I wasn’t writing. It helps so much.

• Small practical obstacles get cleared away. You might realise you need to order post-it strips, or to send writing to the printer, so you do that before your next writing session.
• Your story stays alive in your head between writing sessions. Instead of struggling to pick up where you were, you're solving plot problems in the shower in between.
• Fearful avoidance vanishes. It’s so scary to return to a big project after a long illness or a setback. But little visits help you reconnect with it, bit by bit, so it comes alive again and you get excited again.

This growth-week is to help you try out the practise and get ideas for how to visit your writing in a few minutes, so you can add it to your writing process and return to it whenever you need to.

Sign ups have now closed. Join the newsletter if you'd like to to join future events.