So many people tell me they want to write. They wish they had more time. To be creative, to be alone, to do their own things, to simply exist in some bracket of time without any other obligations. In our forums, we talk about this and many other things.
Dialogues, salons, roundtables, and now forums
I make the space for dialogues related to whatever the people who come to the conversations feel ready to share about, and the above is the most common theme. The way all of this got started was I had the same need, to be away and apart, and to write.
I started The Cojournal Project in 2014. What came next was the Forums. These are 10-week blocks of weekly e-mailed writing prompts that we discuss in the protected-page posts, at this site. Forums are for people to explore the experience of writing with me and others, and get new perspectives. I am your accountability partner.
Spacemaking for connexion
Querying. Questioning. And inviting curious others to do so, with me, in miniature ‘rooms’ that we create, together. These are virtually now.
I started this after finishing my own writing projects. The memoir series Kismuth. I wrote Kanishka in 2015, and Breakfast in Cambodia the year after. When all this was done I said, ‘Okay, now what?’ I realized something major was missing from my life very far from where I used to be. I missed being around an ambient community of people who knew me, and whom I got to know, too.
So, I started ‘The Cojournal.’ I invited small numbers of people to participate in email exchanges that had conversation as their focus. I facilitated these and I hosted them weekly for two years. Some people found breakthroughs, I think, through the insights gleaned from our dialogues, which were always peer-to-peer and not influenced by any agenda, whatsoever. The idea was to show up as we were and we how we might grow, evolve, and discover things about ourselves and one anther through the writing process.
TEN WEEKS. I started these in 10-week cycles, for those who discover this page, this site, my stories, and my writings, and who want to try it, in a low-key way. Kismuth conversations happen in the password-protected pages of this blog. Also email. And we do the occasional zoom voice call when people feel like sharing in that format, too. Mixing up the points of view is my work, as a curator of conversation spaces near, far, and virtual.
COST. It’s USD $10/week
These are the ways it’s possible to pay:
- PayPal [ pay-as-you go]
- Donate $100 for 10 weeks, at the crowdfunding page: chuffed.org/project/spacethezine
- US or Cambodia bank transfer (ask for info)
- Cash
