CREATIVE WRITING CONSULTING / TUTORING / mentoring
COVID-19 UPDATE: One-on-one sessions available only, no group in-person meetings. Outside, under cover, meeting space available, masks required. Zoom sessions also available.
Individualized one on one creative writing consulting sessions, editing, tutoring, writer mentoring, and small group workshops available.
Designed to fit your personal writing needs and schedule.
It's important to find what particular dynamic works best for you. Do you do well with individualized attention or do you maybe prefer the community of a small group workshop? Or maybe you would like a bit of both? Do you have a nearly finished project that needs another eye? Maybe you're like all of us writers and need some writing exercises or prompts to help re-start that creative momentum. Perhaps you're seeking an individualized creative writing course similar to what you might find in a university setting. Are you wanting to get published? Try something new? Approach something difficult? Whatever your needs, there is a place for you and I would be happy to have you.
Sliding price scale.
Inquire through email.
heather.napualani@gmail.com
Workshops currently on hold - Please check back for future offerings
Past Workshops:
WHEN THE ONLY WAY OUT IS THROUGH
(Writing through Difficulty: A Workshop)
Instructor: Heather Napualani Hodges
"Whatever shut in with you can sing."
-Gertrude Stein
"Because the pressure to see was more powerful than either love or gratitude. And everything was sacrificed to it."
-Louise Gluck
Description of Workshop
The intention of this small and carefully curated creative writing workshop is to provide a safe and respectful place for people to bring the real things in their life to the table. All of us are in process of progressing through various traumas. Trauma is everywhere within and outside of us, but we live in a world where we are encouraged to look away, where we get punished when we try to point to the wound.
This workshop is a space designed to give voice to those parts of ourselves and our world(s) that might otherwise go unheard, unseen, unacknowledged. It's a space for us to explore the facets that connect us, the threads that feel common.
Fear, love, shame, belief, guilt, strength, body, cruelty, family, bravery, sexuality, identity, punishment, prejudice, injustice, sickness, suffering, death, suicide, rape, abuse, abandonment, PTSD, memory, gaslighting, mental illness, instinct, survival mechanisms, neglect, forgiveness, privilege, hypocrisy, metaphor, Nature, admission, implication, tragedy, faith, myth, grief, loss, tendency.
This is our space to tend to the things that need tending. To map out our own particular constellation.
Toni Morrison said "the function of freedom is to free someone else," and there are so many ways for us to practice this. Listening is one. Writing is too. It's important to remember that our bodies learn primarily through repetition of gesture. Allowing space for each other's vulnerabilities is something that is difficult to do when we feel like we don't have permission to express our own. So, in a way, this is also a workshop about permission, about practicing that gesture in ourselves, and applauding it in others.
Ideally this will be a wildly generative space, a space where we can feel comfortable taking chances, risks. I want this to be a space where we feel invited to be however we need to be. If you need to withdraw for a moment to a quiet room to look at fish, we're all for it (there are two to choose from!). If you need to cry and shake, we can be there to do it with you (we are born with this beautiful mirroring instinct). If you need a reminder that you're worthy, it's ok to ask because you're in a roomful of people that probably need that too.
It doesn't matter what your background with writing may be, we are all people who are fortunate enough to have hands and hearts and mouths. We can practice strengthening those muscles together.
What to Expect
The structure of this workshop is meant to let us be human together. This means we will gather together under non-threatening lighting at my house in southwest Portland (close in, easily accessible and by several major bus lines, straight shot from downtown). There are kind animals there for you to touch that can make it easier. I'll make us all dinner. I might ask you to bring a vegetable or chocolate. We will sit together and talk. We will bring things to share with each other. We will read and study the gestures of various writers and artists who seek to define and understand the difficulty in their own lives. We will engage in various somatic and creative writing exercises to help us practice those gestures within ourselves. We will study our own writing and personal narratives to try to identify our own specific gestures and tendencies. We will get in the dirt together, put our hands into it. We will help each other pull up onions, help each other peel the skins that need peeling.
There will be assigned readings, writing assignments, spoken word, video, somatic body exercises, group discussion, individual creative projects, a field trip to a ravine, a standing invitation to documentary/movie nights at my place, possible special reading/discussion with guest writers, and most importantly, at the very end, a chance for you to share your work and your process at a final reading, where you are welcome to invite any and all loved ones to hear what you have to say.
Details & Dates
The plan is to meet at my house Monday nights in August, 7:00-9:30 pm.
If this schedule doesn't work, let me know, if there's enough interest I can potentially arrange another session. If you're gone during August but still interested in the sound of this workshop let me know, and I can notify you the next time I plan to offer it. Also, for those of you who may want to participate in something like this but are physically far away, you are more than welcome to contact me and we can work something out that involves you following along and participating in other ways. We can make it work. It's in the beginning stages, but I'd like this to be an ongoing thing.
I will have dinner provided. You bring whatever you need to write with, and a beverage if water is not your thing.
In addition to the four group workshop dates, each participant will also receive an hour of private creative writing consultation. So, that's about 10 plus hours of group instructional time and 1 hour of private.
There may also be an opportunity for guest writers to come and share their work and processes with us which may have to fall outside of meeting times to best suit their schedules. Imagine a potential weekend reading. I'd most likely make it an open reading so you could feel free to invite whomever you'd like.
Writers and artists we'll be looking at include (but not limited to):
Claudia Rankine, Ocean Vuong, Warsan Shire, CA Conrad, Li-Young Lee, Louise Glück, Janine Oshiro, Lynn Xu, Mary Ruefle, Gertrude Stein, BT Shaw, Michele Glazer, Mary Szybist, Adrienne Rich, Diane Ackerman, Karen Russell, Kiki Smith, Miranda July, Leni Zumas, Marie Howe, Maria Abromavìc, Maggie Nelson, Leslie Fiedler, Jordaan Mason, Heather Christle, Emily Kendal Frey, Dorothea Lasky, Matt Rasmussen, Zachary Schomburg, Kelly Schirmann, and Wong May.
Contact me
process
The act of intentionally entering a space you wish to curate. This takes bravery, vulnerability, & glee. There are a thousand ways to approach the things that matter, the things that rip us open, the things that connect us to the world. Writing can be a way to jostle us out of and then back into ourselves. We can train ourselves to locate various pulse points within our written expression and methods of thought. You can observe your mind making gestures, notice your tendencies--seek to understand them.
In my workshops we embrace the mistakes, the difficulty, the specificity. Through the use of various techniques we learn how to identify, articulate, and address the panging points within us. The things that matter, that confound, that fascinate, that maintain some sort of inexplicable hold on us. We will attempt to name those constellations, give them shape, form, voice. It takes rigor. We need those muscles to stretch. It might tickle, if you do it right, it should tear, but regardless, I'll be there to do it alongside you.
