Reclaim your Writing Brain: from doomscroll to literary permaculture

Like the proverbial frogs we’ve been sitting in a pot of slowly boiling water for years, and now we find ourselves spending hours gazing at scrolling screens, handing over our attention in return for brain fog, anxiety, and a perpetual feeling of not being enough. Social media has gone from a tool that connects people to an addictive drain that pushes us to form relationships with AI personas and watch videos of things that never happened. We’re starting to lose ourselves.

This course is about taking the pot off the boil, stepping away, and reclaiming our writing brains. The goal is to reduce numbing screentime and replace it with slower, deeper observation of the world around us and a durable creative writing practice. We’re aiming to create a kind of literary permaculture where we generate ideas with both immediacy and longevity in a sustainable fashion. We seek the kind of intellectual friction and effort that helps the brain grow and writing deepen without succumbing to self-doubt spirals and distraction.

We’ll meet online for a 90 minutes once a week for eight weeks to learn techniques and tactics, do writing exercises, get inspired, and set goals. This will be followed by an optional online write-along where we keep each other company while working for a further half hour. You can also get regular personal feedback on your work from me.