the pelagic school
a resource for navigating the process of getting writing written
The Pelagic School is a living library of prompts, games, guided workshops, and meditations on narrative traditions, as well as a hub for ongoing writing groups and events.
Methods embraced here are image-rich and structurally expansive; they are gently weird and always playful; they operate through open-mindedness and a commitment to the pleasures of not knowing, when we set out, what the thing we are writing will become.
The material here is written by Karinne Keithley Syers, and grows out of years of teaching and thinking across playwriting, choreography, sound-making, and scholarship. Most of the material addresses storytelling broadly and can apply to any narrative project. Some material is specifically pointed toward writing for performance.
daily prompt lottery
—a warmup to get your language and image brain moving
—a tuning exercise to tune into your commitments or interests of the day
—a generator to grow a seed of something new
warmup
Useful Knowledge
Before you embark on your writing day, or in a little window of time set aside to leave yourself materials for later, go outside and do something useful for the space you live in. Depending on where and how you live, this might be weeding the vegetable plot, or going to the laundromat, or sweeping the stairs, or vacuuming out the car, washing the windows, picking up litter on your block.
When you are done, sit down with a new file or notebook page, and title it “____ Knowledge.” (Window Washing Knowledge; Litter Pickup Knowledge, Sweeping Knowledge, etc.) Then write a paragraph or two that holds and reflects upon, in a very generalized way, what knowledge of the world you possess from this activity. By knowledge of the world, I mean your understanding of how things are, how things work. There’s no need to extrapolate from this limited corner of the world to the larger world—this might be purely a discourse on how sand settles in the edges of a stairwell and the best way to sweep it off—but if this activity does present itself as an object lesson, embrace the lesson, follow its trail to other spheres of knowledge.
tuning exercise
letter of questions
Read over what you’ve written so far, and then write yourself a letter full of questions. Ask about the things that haven’t been included. Ask about the shadows and the edges. Ask about the things that are embarrassing or judged unworthy, that could have been here on your pages, but aren’t.
generator
Walking as Occasion
Go to your bookshelves (or wherever else your old reading is gathered), and collect a series of fragments that contemplate an abstraction. (For example the idea of the soul, the self, the nature of time, the color green, the presence of the past, the experience of hunger, the idea of renewal.)
Conjure a figure in mind. See the figure taking a walk through a site that is somehow well paired with the contemplation, whether through historical association or accessible quietude or any other line of connection. The site needn’t be an obviously contemplative place. You could write a walk for a subway platform that contemplates commute or migration. The same walk, deployed on a walk next to a river, might cast an entirely different tone on the contemplation. What about the same walk up and down the aisles of your local Target?
Write a short piece that counterbalances the geography and specificity of the site and the steady non-narrative progress of walking with the gathered contemplative fragments. Think of the walk as the jewel setting and the fragments the jewels. Or you might send the sparkle in reverse, make the description of the grocery aisle the real diamond.
The target of the writing is to think through the contemplative fragments, but the walk through the site is used as the necessary narrative occasion for setting the contemplation in motion.
You may choose to signal the quotation or not. This could be an exercise in incorporation, in which case you can offer citation afterwards, if you wish.
*This was adapted from a prompt for an audio walk. See the original prompt here.
upcoming groups and workshops
DAILY TEACHER
Thursdays in June, 2024 // 1-3(ish)pm Eastern // on Zoom
A simple, low-key weekly convening. We’ll bring small teacher texts, share them, glean prompts from them, spend some time writing and share again. No homework. Drop in for a day or come for all. $15 suggested per session, but as always Pelagic School is pay-what-you-can.
email KARINNE@PELAGICSCHOOL.NET to sign up.
PROCESS & PHENOMENON — FACILITATED WRITING GROUPS
P&P groups meet for five sessions: an introduction and then four cycles of sharing and responding to each other’s fresh pages. Emphasis is on making choices around practice and finding out what they yield. Work shared is fresh, unfinished, in emergence. The groups follow a witnessing-based response structure designed to maximize freedom in the emerging piece of writing and to expand the whole group’s repertoire of writing ideas and permissions. Sharing and response happen asynchronously via shared docs; the Zoom meeting is a chance to digest the process together and enjoy the company of your groupmates. Meetings are facilitated by Karinne, who also joins in the process of responding to everyone’s work. Be aware that as a group member, you will have an obligation to read and respond to each other’s work, a commitment of 1-2 hours per response cycle. Groups are for 4-6 writers.
$150-200 sliding scale for 5-session P&P groups. You can also pay what you can if the bottom of the sliding scale is still out of reach for you.
UPCOMING P&P GROUPS THIS FALL
no P&P scheduled at this time
WORKSHOP IN WRITING FOR AND BEYOND PERFORMANCE
$350/pay what you can
8 meetings with a two-week break mid-way; additional one-on-on conferences as desired
Thursdays 12-2:15 Eastern, weekly Aug 31-Sept 28; no meetings Oct 5 and 12; weekly listening rooms Oct 19-Nov 2
Exploring writing for and recording voices (mostly our own), field recording and sound libraries, and the edge space between sound and voice that becomes its own venue. Lots of guided exercises. The first two thirds of the workshop will orient toward studies in the compositional elements of sound and voice, playing with them both separately and in combination. In the break between the two phases, scaffolded compositional prompts through one-on-on conversations. The last portion of the workshop will approach and complete a composition. Culminating in a public festival of new shortform audio work.
Equipment: Ideally you’ll use a vocal mic, a field recorder, and a DAW (digital audio workstation which is to say an editing program) – although you could always just record the whole thing on voicemail and string it together in Quicktime. There are free DAWs out there (and most pay DAWs have long free trials) and lots of affordable field recording and vocal mics you can pair with a phone or laptop. I can help with recommendations. Some libraries and schools also have equipment you can check out. An example of budget-end recommended equipment: DAW: Reaper ($60, two month free trial); field recorder Zoom H1N ($99); Audio Technica dynamic USB vocal mic ($60).
Fall 2023: Audio Edition
$350/pay what you can
8 meetings with a two-week break mid-way; additional one-on-on conferences as desired
Thursdays 12-2:15 Eastern, weekly Aug 31-Sept 28; no meetings Oct 5 and 12; weekly listening rooms Oct 19-Nov 2
Exploring writing for and recording voices (mostly our own), field recording and sound libraries, and the edge space between sound and voice that becomes its own venue. Lots of guided exercises. The first two thirds of the workshop will orient toward studies in the compositional elements of sound and voice, playing with them both separately and in combination. In the break between the two phases, scaffolded compositional prompts through one-on-on conversations. The last portion of the workshop will approach and complete a composition. Culminating in a public festival of new shortform audio work.
Equipment: Ideally you’ll use a vocal mic, a field recorder, and a DAW (digital audio workstation which is to say an editing program) – although you could always just record the whole thing on voicemail and string it together in Quicktime. There are free DAWs out there (and most pay DAWs have long free trials) and lots of affordable field recording and vocal mics you can pair with a phone or laptop. I can help with recommendations. Some libraries and schools also have equipment you can check out. An example of budget-end recommended equipment: DAW: Reaper ($60, two month free trial); field recorder Zoom H1N ($99); Audio Technica dynamic USB vocal mic ($60).
pelagic radio
Pelagic Radio is a freeform channel for pop-up workshops, courses, guided writing prompts, and occasional conversations. Distributed as a podcast. The most recent microseason is The Map Room, a pop-up workshop that uses map thinking as as source for storytelling. Coming up next: Gertrude Stein in Space & Time.
why the pelagic?
Creative process is navigational; strategies for moving through process accrue over time, yet each one is a new encounter with a sea of vast possibility. A life spent making things, for me, is marked by the devotions and pleasures of repeatedly putting myself out into that sea.
The pelagic zone of the ocean is the part that is far from shore, inclusive of both the upper surface and the abyssal depths. This school is here to help you make it across to the other shore.
About kKS
Karinne Keithley Syers is a writer and teacher whose work spans plays, songs, sound, dance, animation, video, bookmaking, essay, and points in between. Before founding the Pelagic School, she taught at Amherst College, Bard Microcollege Holyoke, Mount Holyoke College, The New School/Eugene Lang, NYU/Experimental Theater Wing, Hollins University, Brooklyn College, New Jersey City University, American Dance Festival, and many other schools. She was the founding editor of 53rd State Press, cofounder (with Chris Yon) of the dance palace Ur, co-host (with Jason Grote) of the Acousmatic Theater Hour on WFMU, co-instigator of posses Joyce Cho and Machiqq, and is a currently resident playwright at New Dramatists. Her museum and chamber opera Montgomery Park, or Opulence won a 2011 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Production; other work has been seen or heard at, on, or in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern (Issue 64), The Chocolate Factory Theater, A.P.E. Gallery, WFMU, Incubator Arts Project, the Australian Broadcast Network’s late lamented sound art show Soundproof, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, Dixon Place, Tonic NYC, Galapagos Art Space, and Surf Reality House of Urban Savages. She has an MFA in playwriting from Brooklyn College (2006) and a PhD in English from CUNY Graduate Center (2014).
Find her personal website this way: FANCYSTITCHMACHINE.ORG