- Event Date: 09/09/2025
Dear Me: a four-week creative writing study
Event Details
- 19:00
- Online via Zoom
- From £120
Event Description
Ever drafted a letter in your head you never meant to send? To yourself, your younger self, someone long gone, or not yet met? Writers have long mined this private, potent form: Baldwin, Kincaid, Plath, and plenty more.
This workshop invites you to write from the inside out. We’ll start with short readings—monologues, poems, letters from the likes of the authors mentioned below—and use them to spark our own creative responses. Funny, fierce, reflective, or raw, there’s no right tone, only your own.
Week 1: Voice & Echo – Where our thoughts circle and split (Woolf, Rankine)
Week 2: Letters Never Sent – Honest, unsent missives to self and others (Baldwin, Plath)
Week 3: Soliloquy & Confession – Unfiltered speech and theatrical turns (Shakespeare, Browning)
Week 4: The Inner Chorus – Who else is in there, and what do they want? (Didion, Vuong, Davis)
Come write. No critique. Just good company, good writing time, and possibly some surprising revelations.
Please Note:
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In this two-hour workshop you will explore a simple but effective 5-step transformational journaling process underpinned by research at the intersection of neuroscience and expressive writing aimed at fostering cognitive flexibility and a greater degree of self-awareness.
The workshop will include a series of short writing exercises of between approximately 5-15 minutes and small group discussions designed to help you develop creative tools for navigating challenging situations. You’ll also receive a recording following the event along with the presentation slides and a list of resources. (N.B. Only the taught part of the workshop will be recorded).
This workshop is for both beginners and those with a journalling practice alike who are interested in exploring how journaling can be a form of self-directed neuroplasticity in support of transformational growth as well as therapeutic practitioners interested in expanding their range.
For this workshop you’ll need a quiet space to write and materials to write with. As the workshop will focus on outcome rather than process, no previous writing experience is necessary and there will be no pressure to read anything out (although you can if you wish). You’ll be invited to take responsibility for your experience by going at your own pace and working with the material at a level that feels right for you.
Here’s what some recent participants have said about their workshop experience:
‘I really enjoyed Rachel’s workshop. Rachel has so much enthusiasm. I really enjoyed the exercises that we did and what I gained from it.’
‘I really enjoyed the workshop and had an interesting process. Then I had a deep sleep and a very vivid dream in which I felt able to touch in with some unresolved grief. Quite unexpected and very welcome and I wanted to share that with you and say thank you.’
‘I enjoyed the workshop and felt it was very helpful in navigating a challenging situation.’
‘I went to a really powerful introductory workshop on Transformative Journalling led by the generous Dr Rachel Newsome. As part of the workshop, Rachel invited us to enter a dialogue with our ‘inner wise elder’ and I found this exercise so powerful – connecting with this notion of my ancestral wisdom really enabled me to offer validation to myself on something I’d been really struggling with and had previously looked for external validation on.’
About Dr Rachel Newsome
I’m a Dr of depth writing & creative guide with a Jungian arts-based PhD in creative writing based in a former mill town nestled in the West Yorkshire moors.In past lives I’ve been a journalist, an editor of arts & culture magazine Dazed & Confused and a lecturer in the creative arts, respectively. I now run a programme of depth-writing workshops, courses and retreats grounded in Jungian psychology and cognitive neuroscience aimed at inspiring the creative self in everyone. I’m a Seed Talks expert speaker, serve on the Editorial Board at the London Arts Based Research Centre and am co-Editor of forthcoming Routledge publication, The Creative Psyche: Between Self & Spirit.
A cosy, candle-lit evening of transformational writing, downstairs At The Chapel. I’ve been curating gentle but powerful writing techniques and exercises since completing doctoral studies in Creative Writing, and then practitioner training in the psychotherapy, Focusing.
Neuroscience is catching up with what writers and thinkers have always known: that writing is good for us. It calms the anxious mind, finds meaning when a personal or global narrative might seem senseless, and restores the balance of inner and outer.
Places are limited and these workshops can fill up quickly. Please email me to book and I will provide payment details.
Join us for an evening of Indian classical music paired with reflective writing prompts on the theme of joyful living. Bring a mat, blanket, pen and paper.