Write Something!

Write Something! is a social writing session that provides writers a place to work with the communal energy of a café, but without the expense of buying cup after cup of coffee. We’ll bring our computers, notebooks, snacks, coffee, and/or tea to the Exchange Collective Arts Centre (Exchange Street, Upper, Temple Bar, D2) and settle in for a couple hours of work and conversation. Whether you’re working on a novel, a blog, a love letter, a curriculum vitae, a poem, an essay, or even a PhD, writing can be too solitary and Write Something! will ideally facilitate productive writing sessions with “just enough distraction”. 

Left is the front cover of their Book of Promptings, the brainchild of Miss Claire Layton. If you come to a Write Something meeting, but know not what to write about, you can turn to the Book of Promptings and it shall, well, prompt your imagination.

Enchanted by the concept I spoke with the girls behind the group; Muireann Crowley and Sarah Thelen. Muireann had the following to say; "Basically, the idea for it came out of me and Sarah meeting regularly for writing dates. She's working on her PhD and I'm working on a novel. We used to meet once a week in a café to do some work together, tap-tap-tapping away on our keyboards.




We had several thoughts about this:
(i) It would be nice if people would schedule writing for us, and just make us sit down and DO IT! (I originally wanted to call the event 'Shut Up and Write'. But Sarah thought we might not want to shout at people, which is true.)
(ii) It would be nice to be able to work in a public place that wasn't a library, but didn't require buying anything, and we could bring our own food and drink.
(ii) It would be nice to work in a place where we knew we'd have access to power points.
(iv) Other people must be thinking the same thing.

I guess that I should say that Write Something's location is flexible. We've been hosted by the Bald Barista café in Avalon House once, and we're returning there for the next two events. We're hoping to return to the Exchange after that, but we're toying with the idea of making it a moveable feast, of sorts. The Exchange is a fantastic resource, and we're really pleased to be able to use the space for our writing sessions.

That said, providing a free space for people to work in is one aspect of what we're trying to do. We're also trying to provide a time and a social space in which writers can meet and work, so we're not restricted to one place.. There are lots of great cafés in Dublin, and we're happy to support local businesses with our need for caffeine! We've also been supported by the amazing Nick's Coffee Company of Ranelagh and Tara Street who have provided us with coffee for our Exchange meetings. I cannot say enough about their wonderfulness and the smoothness of their coffee.

The format of Write Something is fairly straightforward and loose at the moment. We go in, we sit down, we write. We chat every now and then, refuel with more coffee, continue writing. Sometimes people wander in and out. We have a little prompt book for people to flick through, if they want to write but don't have something to write about. We're also open to non-writers; some people have come to work on photo editing or do some drawing. The event's called 'Write Something' because that's our own goal, but we want to provide a time and space for anybody who needs to work quietly"