Year of Mindful Writing
Applications are now open for this year-long journey of writing, mindfulness and community where we show up to the page with intention, curiosity and joy. Starting January 2027 with me and my co-guide, Teri Leigh 💜. Every year since this course started, people have continued when we get to the end. The group that started in 2024 will be going into their fourth year in 2027. It’s fun, transformative and creates deep connections.
“Amanda’s Year of Mindful Writing course is a lovely warm, safe and supportive space. Teri Leigh brings sparkle throughout, inviting connection to our physically felt experience of words. If I had to choose just one word to describe the lingering effect of being part of this, it’s NURTURED.” — Brighde
Writing From the Heart and the Bones
Amanda Saint and I have been friends for going on three years, and I still get a little fluttery around her. Before we met, I spent months watching her run the kind of writing cohorts I dreamed of running. Then she asked to meet. She’d been watching me too.
This year we got to swap classrooms. Amanda teaches a monthly writing workshop for the Creator Retreat, and I’m teaching five workshops inside her Year of Mindful Writing.
How the Year of Mindful Writing began
Amanda had been writing and teaching fiction for a decade when she realized the publishing industry had drained the joy out of her. Bringing her mindfulness practice to the page brought it back, and The Mindful Writer was born.
She launched the Year of Mindful Writing one October with six spots. It sold out in a month, including to a woman in New Zealand who got up in the middle of the night for every Zoom, all year. At the end, everyone wanted to keep going. Her first group heads into their fourth year in 2027.
Why we keep it small
We both cap our programs at 20. That’s the size where everyone gets seen and friendships grow deep enough to last. My Creator Retreat alumni are still cheering each other on a year later, and they asked for a second year too. Applications for the next Creator Retreat open in January.
Feedback that nurtures
Amanda is a sensitive soul who used to hear critique of her writing as critique of herself. So she built something gentle. Her workshops help writers find the stories living in their heart and bones, and the feedback starts with what’s landing.
What touched your heart?
What gave you goosebumps?
What made you want to cry, or laugh?
Once you see what’s working, the rest becomes clear. Those spots are usually just where we slipped into our head for a bit.
One of my Creator Retreat folks now organizes co-writing sessions between workshops. And one of Amanda’s participants summed up her whole year in a single word, nurtured.
Writing in color
In one of my workshops for Amanda’s group, we color coded a Maya Angelou poem, giving each sound its own color wherever it appears. What you end up with is the aura of the poem, a little like that moment in The Wizard of Oz when everything goes Technicolor.
Amanda tried it on an old flash fiction about a woman leaving a club at dawn, waiting for her Uber. She’d built the beat on purpose, with each section holding as many sentences as minutes left until the car arrived. The colors showed her she’d also filled the story with B sounds, without ever meaning to. That’s the sign you wrote from your bones.
Losing our way and coming back
We’ve both wandered off. A school careers advisor told Amanda writing wasn’t a proper job, and definitely not one for someone like her, and she stopped writing for twelve years. Later, chasing flash fiction prizes, she looked at a story she’d just sent out and asked what it was even about.
I started a novel during my last year teaching high school English, and it sat in a drawer for fifteen years. Then came a stretch of writing for likes and follows, until the Creator Retreat brought me home.
This year I accidentally started writing a book, right around Amanda’s first workshop with us. The manuscript is in the hands of more than 30 readers, and on Sunday I leave for a week-long solo retreat to revise. I’ll hear Amanda’s voice in my head the whole time.
How to join the Year of Mindful Writing
A welcome meeting in January to meet your group
Monthly coursework February through November in a private community space
Two Zooms a month, one deep-dive workshop and one embodied writing session
A simple application of about five questions, open now through mid-December
Before we signed off
If a writing group hands you a list of tick boxes your writing has to hit, Amanda says run away. I’d say run far, far away. Find the people who ask for more of what’s in your heart.
Her parting words were these. Keep looking inside your heart, see what wants to come through you, and keep writing.
Thank you to the 26 of you who joined us live, including my dad.
