the pelagic school

a resource for navigating the process of getting writing written

daily prompt lottery
full site library
pelagic radio

upcoming groups and workshops

DROP-IN SESSIONS

Mondays, June 8, 15 & 22

12-2:30 Eastern, on Zoom

Pay as you please

 

Pelagic School Drop-In Sessions are mini writing days. Come to one or several. The structure is this: you bring a few short pieces of text with you as material to play with, one thing found, one thing out of your own archive. There are some warmup writing prompts. I present on the idea of the day, a microlecture oriented toward play and experiment, usually around the idea of permission (what does something allow us to consider or abandon?), or process container (how will we structure the path we take through the writing to get it written?), or shape (how can we build a thing; what form does it take when we turn it over to others to read?). We collect our various impulses as a group resource, then take an extended period of time to write (about 45 mins). Reconvening, we share portions of what we found, responding using the general pelagic method designed not to intrude, with any form of judgment, on the potential future of the writing. Maybe it is a way to be in writing for a few hours; maybe it is a way to re-approach something you have made; maybe it forms a seed you can bank for later. 

 

June 8: Puzzles, Unlocks

June 15: Walled and Unwalled Gardens

June 22: Exposures, short and long

 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

register or inquire

The Pelagic School is a library of prompts, games, guided workshops, and meditations on narrative traditions, as well as a hub for occasional 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

Chord Moods

This is a game for writing sentences. It plays with the voicing of different musical chords to find ingredients. In a chord, the root note is the tonic: it sets the basic tone, defines the sound. A major third is a happy, unobjectionable note hovering a little above the root. A fifth sits on top of that, bracing and giving ballast to the root. Together, without any other notes, the root and fifth together are known as a power chord. A minor third is a sad but unobjectionable and pretty hovertone above the root and below the fifth. A second jams the signal, together with the root, the sound is crunchy. A fourth lifts up from the root, curious and satisfying but a little bracing. A sixth is interesting. A seventh added to any of this lifts toward satisfaction but with the door always open. An eighth (octave) is all yes. There are other ways you could name the mood of all these intervals, of course. 

Think of a simple statement-based sentence. 

  1. Taking “root” as the primary image or substance of the sentence, write a sentence with a few extra clauses that plays the major triad: 1, major 3, 5. Root, happy hover, power ballast. 
  2. Using the same root, play 1-4-5: root, brace-up lift, power ballast. 
  3. Try the 1 minor 3 7: root, sad unobjectionable hover, bright open door. 
  4. Try any number combination you want, and really it doesn’t have to follow a chord structure so much as take a license from the way chords stack different intervals to change the mood. 

Try the same thing with a new root. Maybe with a question-based sentence, this time. 

Try to make the difference a matter of word choice. Use whatever grammatical tools are needed: compound, conjoin, subordinate, etc. 

tuning exercise

Relay Self-Interview

Do a self-interview (in which you interview yourself and fully answer your own questions, transcribed in a SELF:… SELF:… format or recorded as voice memo). Begin with the question, What do I need from the thing I am writing? Let each following question build on the prior answer, picking up a specific thread. Allow the path of the whole interview to take on a meander; insist only on a single line of connection between each answer and subsequent question. A handoff like a relay baton. 

generator

Valley Fold (Generator)

A generative exercise for creating a compact event as a springboard for a story. (There’s also a development version of this exercise for a story in progress when it’s lacking some zing.)

In origami, a mountain fold is made by creasing a section of paper along its middle axis and then joining two edges together so that the crease becomes a small peak. A valley fold is the opposite, where the crease is tucked downwards and the two edges come together, sometimes disappearing the paper in between into a supportive pocket (which may or may not be unfolded again in a later step). We’ll take this full possibility of the valley fold that hides the connecting paper for this exercise. The analogy followed here uses the what-happens aspect of narrative—the event sequence—as the paper to be folded.

The preparation for this exercise is a stretch of exploratory, improvisational writing. Try tracking a figure or character, one summoned to mind, perhaps from the archive of strangers you’ve observed out there in the world, someone who sticks in mind. Do a timed writing session, of at least half an hour, so you have a chance to get bored and a chance to push through the boredom, where you follow this character around, narrating what they’re doing, thinking, where they’re going — any kind of trail you can pick up on. Let it be an improvisation. You might do this in one sitting or you might do it in several. If you want a scaffold for this exploratory writing, try some of the prompts from the Saint Cards workshop, which consider character from the standpoint of relation. 

After setting this writing aside for a stretch (take a walk if you’re doing this in one sitting, or leave it for a day if you’re doing it in several), read back through it identify two vivid landmarks that surround a stretch of meander or exploration. Fold the narrative so that those two landmarks are now brought together, either into tight adjacency or placed one into the other, so that what might have been a simple event is now complex, or what might have been distant events are now happening in the same timespace. The stretch that has been valley folded to make this joining is now either a hidden or supportive space. Call the edge parts the joined event. Call the hidden parts the fold.

Consider two things:

(1) How can you come upon this joined event in the telling of your story? If there’s a new force or vividness to it, does that call for a rethink of how it appears or occurs, whether just in its local framing of the paragraphs around it, or in the larger framing of the entire event sequence that precedes it? Could it be a beginning? How does the fold influence your understanding of the joined event, without having to be shown to the light or actually explained? Or does the fold work to discard that understanding, so that your joined event is free of its prior tethering in cause or explanation?

(2) What follows from here? How does this set up a potential tone or energy for a sequence of events to follow? Or does it want to be a microstory or miniature, a single compact event, complete in itself? 

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).

register or inquire

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).

register or inquire

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. 

on apple podcasts
on Spotify

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 

Architecture of a Day (Notes on Practice)

One of the things I do with my time is facilitate writing groups, both short and ongoing seasons of writing in the presence of others through a series of cycles, which may be locally defined as writing weeks, or writing fortnights, or other durations. Usually I begin our meetings by asking each writer to report on how their practice of writing went in the last cycle. It’s seductive to meet this request for a report by reporting on the interval between what one wanted to do and what one did. I wanted to write daily but on I only wrote once, and so on. I wanted to develop this other project but instead I transcribed fragments from my notebooks. 

Maybe there is something in this metric of lack that has some use? Maybe it allows us to sidestep the question, what is this writing that I actually wrote, labels the writing as not our real writing, something less than our real writing, where “real” takes on the old romantic connotation of a glorious capital-R Real that somehow exceeds the illusory, fragmented confusion of the actual world we find ourselves in. But I am interested in perceiving the being of the writing that has actually been written, which includes a perception of its futurities, its potentialities, its realities, perhaps, but attends most closely to what it is now. 

If a writer reports on the gap between plan and actuality as a form of lack or failure, I ask them to reframe the gap. The writing that happened: how did it happen? What were you doing when you wrote? In distinction to what you thought you needed to do to get yourself writing, what did you find out you actually need? How does the perceived failure to follow the plan teach you something about the expansive conditions in which writing can get written? The interval between what we project and what we find ourselves doing can be playful, can be a conversation, rather than just a source of disappointment. 

The question comes up again and again, what actually constitutes “the writing”? 

The other question is: Could we play with different understandings of the architecture of a day, a week, or a month, and the way that writing or making or just being with that free creative impulse might live within that rhythm. What containers create enough containment that we feel back inside their flow when we return to them? 

Some containers are marked by time. In one group, a writer shared her practice of folding her writing day into the way the light changed. On days she wrote, she would begin in late afternoon, in daylight, without any lamps or lights on, and continue writing through dusk as her room slowly darkened. In another group, a writer chose the same window but at the other pole of the day, rising in the dark and writing until the day was full day. In another group, another writer wrote late at night before bed, freely making a mess, then re-read her night pages first thing in the morning, making morning notes toward bringing them into some kind of order. All of these practices embedded themselves in the rhythms of the day and night. They might have been productive of something, but they were also, like toothbrushing, like eating, like waking and sleeping, something that belonged to the day and not only to the writing’s future as something that might circulate among others. 

In other groups, with other writers, different containers were found. Letting go of the ideal of dailiness, something else functions as a sustaining rhythm. Often these containers are documents combined with particular and limited tasks. One writer who is always with her phone, not only because we’re all always with our phones, it seems, but because her obligations take her away from her desk for most of her time, keeps an open note in the notes app, and adds to it whenever a small thought crystallizes in mind, and later, maybe only once in a writing cycle, carries these collected entries to her desk and transfers them to new pages, allowing herself to write into them, to reform them, to cull them, in the transfer process. Another writer kept an open document in which she collected words and images that appealed to her. Then once a week, as determined by the obligation to share pages, she looked through that collected pile of appealing things and wrote with or from it, leaving the pile at the end of the document like a combination pantry-compost. Something I am writing these days is held by its document and by a simple task. I open it up on a whim whenever I think of it, no more than once a day and often not for weeks at a time, and I add a single paragraph, either doing a fill-in-the-blanks game that amuses me and repeats as a grounding pulse throughout the ever-growing document, or picking up another thread that also carries through the pages. The limitation of the single paragraph is a pleasure for me, an inveterate spewer and piler-up of raw source material. Instead of going on and on, I fold as much pleasure-treasure into my paragraph as my whim that day holds and the paragraph can take. Then I close the document and forget about it. 

If the desire is to create writing that is alive, rather than writing that is good (thanks to Agnes Borinsky for reminding me recently of this way of renaming and so enlarging and enlivening the desire that attends the relationship we each have to our own writing), could we think of aliveness as something that is in cooperation with and maybe nourishing to our own aliveness. What does that mean for how writing occurs and is invited in the architecture of a day or week or year? Within what time cycle do we track its living energy? What numerical freedoms and mysteries are at play in its pattern of occurrence? What would its scene of communication be?