No current workshops on the schedule.
Past Events
The Writer’s Mind Part One: Tapping Into Your Hidden Logic
February 25, 2024
An hour of upbeat, philosophical, and inspirational conversation began a three-part literary salon series delving into the writer’s mind in search of our hidden gifts of logical, emotional, and intuitive intelligence. This first salon explored our native talent for integrating hard logic into the wilds of fantasy as we calculate character logic, draft story structure architecture, and set it ablaze with the “Unity of Opposites,” as introduced by Heraclitus in ancient times. From there we sprang into an entertaining look into artificial intelligence as an auxiliary form of logic trying to infiltrate the writer’s den with lofty promises backed by inevitable disappointments.
11 AM Pacific Time USA
1:00PM Central Time USA
2:00 PM Eastern Time USA
19:00 / 7:00 PM London
21:00/ 9:00 PM al-Khobar/Dharhan
00:00 AM/ Midnight April 25, Bishkek/Thimphu
04:00/ 4 AM Melbourne
Meetup groups in London, New Orleans, and Portland (Oregon).
You are free to join any group that interests you.
Book Marketing for the Humble
January 21, 2024
Writers in London, New Orleans, Portland (Oregon), and other communities around the world for joined for the Jan 2024 Writing for the Soul of the World salon when Dr. Hazel hosted Cristina Deptula, founder of the book publicity agency Authors Large and Small. Christina is a publicist, writer, and magazine editor who is experienced in both academic and commercial publishing. Her specialty is in guiding writers to take the often-nerve-wracking focus off themselves and put it back on the book. Traditional marketing can leave authors feeling like they need to brag, plead, spam every online group, or turn every conversation into a commercial. Cristina sees marketing as an act of literary citizenship offering a service to our community and to bookstore managers, reviewers, podcasters, and others who genuinely need your work.
Cristina offered a short overview of how to turn book marketing from a dreaded chore into a craft you can love and feel good about. This salon was especially designed for shy, humble writers preferring to approach the marketing side of our craft with mindfulness, grace, and wisdom.
Dr. Hazel presented an overview of the Universal Grammar of Story® online for the Texas Mountain Trail Writers on Saturday, October 8, 2022 at 4 PM Central US Time. Writers joined for a fascinating dive into the nature of our craving to write and how to awaken the ancient storyteller archetype within us.
This salon was held on
Sunday, April 24, 2022
SET YOUR CREATIVITY ABLAZE!
Reset your perspective and embolden your confidence as you venture with Dr. Hazel into the heart and nature of the writer’s creativity. Learn about recent findings in psychology and neuroscience along with powerful insights from ancient philosophy and mysticism.
The Life-Giving Force of Conflict
This salon was held on Sunday, December 19, 2021
Writers from London, New Orleans, Portland, and Montreal joined our ongoing “Writing for the Soul of the World” literary salon with Dr. Hazel for a presentation and discussion on “The Life-Giving Force of Conflict” followed by a philosophical conversation among members as to how this theme is playing out in their work and that of others.
Writing Into Destiny
Do We Write Our Stories or Do They Write Themselves through Us?
Join through the London group by clicking on the above image.
Our topic draws from Sigmund Freud’s work in the personal unconscious, Carl Jung’s work in the collective-unconscious, and Roberto Assagioli’s work on the super-conscious, as well as a bold dive into straight up magic.
In all the decades I’ve been teaching, I have yet to meet a writer whose story developed exactly as it was imagined at the start. Stories come to us one way, only to shift and morph inevitably into something entirely different with full maturity. Like parents holding a newborn child, we writers too have an overwhelming instinct to nurture our creation. And like parents, we too experience the anguishing reality that our vision for it is not its vision for itself. Stories are autonomous entities coming into the world bearing their own destiny regardless of what the writer might have wanted.
This short presentation was followed by a long conversation about the destiny of the writer’s story, as we contemplated to what degree the writer controls the story and to what degree the story controls the writer.
Writing as a Sacred Act July 25, 2021
In this salon we contemplate the questions:
- Where do stories come from?
- Do they spontaneously emerge from some Freudian scrap of unresolved memory?
- Or, do they descend like angels from a Jungian archetypal kingdom?
- Do we choose our stories or do they choose us?
- What’s the best way to begin a story?
- What’s the best strategy to overcome writer’s block?
Some stories taunt their writers with an irresistible idea then outright refuse to cooperate with the telling, leaving their writers completely in the dark as to how or where begin. Yet these rascally stories incessantly demand to be written. Other stories get rolling with great momentum only to abruptly abandon their writers leaving nothing behind but an unending, never diminishing, unrequited hope-against-hope of return.
In the great cave of the unconscious runs a gold vein of fables waiting to be mined by your daydreams and forged into shape through a fiery battle of ego and soul. Stories are “literary beings” that carry our knowledge and wisdom. They are as essential to our survival as food. The archetypal role of storyteller is a powerfully serious, ultimately sacred role. It is from stories that we form the phantom body of our collective identity, be it a small family or an entire people. Stories can spark new nations into manifesting, while carrying others into disillusionment and disintegration. The imagination of a single writer can carry millions of others to the glorious heights and devastating depths of human experience. Stories lull babies to happy sleep, send us chasing after love, or sometimes marching off to war. Stories show us where to find the courage to sacrifice our egos for the greater ecstasy of compassion. Stories not only inspire us, they are us.
May 2021 salon: The Life-Giving Force of Conflict
Join writers in Portland, New Orleans, Montreal, and London for our ongoing monthly “Writing for the Soul of the World” literary salon. Dr. Hazel Denhart will open the salon with a 10–15-minute presentation on the May theme “The Life-Giving Force of Conflict” followed by a philosophical conversation among members as to how this theme is playing out in their work and that of others.
Together we are awakening our ancient writer archetype and retaking our role as cultural scouts guiding society along the uncharted edges of an increasingly dangerous social frontier. We as writers recognize the consequences stories bring into the world and are gracefully navigating those consequences to the best possible outcomes for the wider world. Join us and learn about how writers are called from deep within the personal and collective unconscious. Together we reach into our higher emotional and intuitive intellect where stories take on life energy and become entities of their own. These ideas and much more are richly explained in the main book “Universal Grammar of Story™: An Author’s Guide to Writing for the Soul of the World,” by Dr. Hazel Denhart. Complementary chapters from the main book and companion workbook can be found at: https://independent.academia.edu/HazelDenhart/Books. The text is not required to participate in the salon.
For more information on Universal Grammar of Story visit the Invisible Press at https://invisiblepress.com
Sunday, March 21, 2021: Writing for the Soul of the World
Leap over writer’s block with our next Zoom salon bringing London into the mythopoetic writing movement unfolding in New Orleans and Portland (Oregon). Together we are awakening our ancient writer archetype and retaking our role as cultural scouts guiding society along the uncharted edges of an increasingly dangerous social frontier. We as writers recognize the consequences stories bring into the world and are gracefully navigating those consequences to the best possible outcomes for the wider world. Join us and learn about the three primal forces calling writers from deep in the personal and collective unconscious. Together we reach into our higher emotional and intuitive intellect where stories take on life energy and become entities of their own. These ideas and much more are richly explained in the core text “Universal Grammar of Story™: An Author’s Guide to Writing for the Soul of the World,” by Dr. Hazel Denhart. Complementary chapters from the main text and companion workbook can be found at: https://independent.academia.edu/HazelDenhart/Books.
The text is not required to participate in the salon. Informative videos can be found on our YouTube site
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlKyh65YqeJpyLEgP16nwA
For more information visit the InvisiblePress.com.
You can register on this site or by joining the London Meetup page at:
https://www.meetup.com/Writing-for-the-Soul-of-the-World-in-London/events/276563116/
Thursday, Feb. 11, 2021: An Introduction and Overview of the Universal Grammar of Story
Do you feel the call to creative writing? Is there a story you are yearning to tell? Dr. Hazel Denhart, founder of a new mythopoetic writing movement, invites you to her literary salon that is FREE and open to the meetup members on February 11th at 5:30PM Pacific time. This will be a Zoom meeting joining writing salons in Portland and New Orleans. For more information visit Dr. Hazel’s website
universalgrammarofstory.com
or visit her YouTube channel for short informative videos at
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlKyh65YqeJpyLEgP16nwA
Thursday, Aug 20, 2020: An Introduction and Overview of The Universal Grammar of Story
Dr. Hazel will present a 35-40 minute introductory overview of Universal Grammar of Story followed by 20 minutes of discussion with writers. This is a great opportunity to learn how to apply “The Grammar” to your own work in progress, or to a work that you crave to write but which refuses to take form.
Other Past Events
Dyslexia Rising/Add Advancing Think Tank: Sunday, July 25, 2021, 3PM Central Time, 4PM Eastern Time USA
A discussion of dyslexia and ADD/ADHD as a healthy part of normal human variation. This salon begins with a presentation of recent research demonstrating the role and importance of these phenomena in the human experience. The discussion centers on how those with learning differences understand their gifts and navigate a poorly informed society.
Razing the Roof: Building Deconstruction for Community Health and Legacy
May 2021, Toronto
Dr. Hazel and Rick Denhart look beyond the economic and environmental benefits to reveal essential psycho-social implications and outcomes.
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/aco-toronto-spring-speaker-series-on-deconstruction-tickets-153244431219