“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish… Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.” – Octavia Butler

Greetings Colleagues,

As you make plans for winter quarter, I want to invite you and your students to participate in the next round of Writing Lab. We will gather weekly for five weeks, Wednesdays, 10-11:20 am, weeks 1-5. Writing Lab is a meeting place for students to share their writing, build a community, and crowd source best practices for working under these unusual circumstances. At the center of Writing Lab, we will open notebooks and dive into a series of free-writing, list making, and drawing exercises. We will share strategies and structures for doing work in the midst of this pandemic. Our goal is to follow Octavia Butler and build habits that will persist.

Please RSVP if you would like to attend. If you’re bringing students let me know your program name and how many students you have or anticipate and I will save you and your program a spot (and send a zoom link).

Looking forward to seeing you on the small screen!

–Stokley Towles: towless@evergreen.edu

PARTICIPANT FEEDBACK from Spring and Fall 2020

“Being in a community to write expressively is one of the few joys while in quarantine. I wish I had this as a core experience when I first entered college.” – Gavin

“It has been a really important (if not the most important) part of the last two quarters of school for me. It has been a through line I can follow and return to when I get bogged down in the external world or in my course work.” – Annabelle Morin

“I was there partly as a professor and partly as another participant. I think it’s actually a good model for faculty/student contact that Evergreen might want to think about promoting especially during the pandemic.” – Shaw Osha (Flores)

“It is honestly my favorite part of the week.” – Maya Nathan

“It’s an oasis in the frenzy of school work that occurs all week.” – Laura Allingham

“I love the ritual aspect of this, that every Wednesday at 10 we know we get to come together and tune in and listen to ourselves and each other with curiosity and without judgement. So I value the ritual and the feeling of community.” – Julia Zay