NEWS - August in the Monastery
Finally disappearing into the story...
[img: a screencap from Masaaki Yuasa’s KEMONOZUME—a metal crab claw hand gestures with the words “Look at reality.”]
Hello friend,
It may have been a while since I shared anything here. For months now my brain has been top full of too many obligations, so I’m losing track. But as you may or may not remember, I launched a subscription fan club (read: patreon—which you can “follow” without having to pay/sub), and have been doing ~some~ casual updating there, stuff I consider too frivolous to share here, considering my penchant for longer format stories and audio jawns. If you’ve been missing me here, let me know what you miss and maybe I can rustle something up—altho I do have stuff in the works, just everything’s taking me like 3-4 months. ~_~ Cause in the meantime I’ve been wrangling life and this manuscript.
Anyway, I did want to share thatttt…
I had made an informal announcement in a few places like a month ago, about doing another Mercury Monastery in August, and the plans for that thankfully morphed into a much gentler iteration:
I just want to write alongside my peers. There is a very small group of us starting to show up every day in my Mercury Monastery discord.
If you write fiction and have a big complex project you've been struggling to finish (like a novel situation)
If the majority of your time seems to go to work, other obligations, distractions
If you are critical of publishing infrastructure, conventional narrative structures, institutional training and its beliefs/objectives/purposes
If you never had time money opportunity for formal training
Join us—the small group showing up to write in the discord—when: a small effort every day or whenever our brains allows. We want and need to get this done.
I've structured the place as a fictitious and gorgeous cyberspace martial arts type monastery, with practice areas and socializing spaces. It's sleepy, it's quiet, sometimes there's chatter. Share writing. Talk about your process, your blockages.
To join, message and let me know if you're interested.
If we already know each other, esp in person or longtime online, great.
If we have never met, please tell me a bit about about yourself, why/how'd you get to know of me, what you're working on, if you have had formal writing training like Creative Writing or MFA, if you've been published/self-published, and how you make a living. I ask because I expect and desire ppl who can come into the Monastery as a space of practice and camaraderie. I don't wish it to be utilized as bonus resource for those currently well/regularly funded, but talk to me.
Still doing the damn thing and I hope you are too,
@}-}-;------
Monk