ELEMENTAL WRITING: BOOK MONSTER

starting June 24, 2026

You cannot forget the body of a monster.

You don’t want to look, but you must look.

You don’t want to touch, but you must touch.

The embodiment of a monster is unforgettable, unignorable, imminent. Hooves clomping, echoing. A putrid stench. A growl. Fangs dripping with saliva. Claws scraping lines into stone.

I mean, you’re right there. Whether you want to be or not, you’re right there. Because, dear writer, you too are a body. So am I. And I don’t want writing as a disembodied experience, where I'm adding in sensory details like they’re something separate.

I want writing that helps me remember that I AM a sensory detail, that I am a detailed sensory experience. I want writing and a writing process that doesn’t forget my body AND acknowledges the complexity of it.

As I'm finally answering the wild call to write my next book, all of this is not only a want, but a need for me. And if you too are hearing such a howl or growl summoning you to write your own book, please read on, because I have a new, scary-good offering for us.

Move over book baby; now there's something creepier.

When working with writers over the years, I’ve often used the phrase "book baby." But it doesn't ring true for me anymore. "Book baby" sounds so precious, like something I want to cuddle. And while it's been deeply fulfilling and wonderfully mysterious, writing a book hasn’t been a very cuddly experience for me. 

Writing a book leaves marks. Along with encounters with what I find beautiful, writing a book often involves confrontations with what horrifies me. Writing a book is a hot date with what’s wild, what doesn’t fit, what will not be contained or domesticated. This can apply to both process and content. 

Writing a book also involves confrontations with myself as writer. Can I endure this? Can I face all of the ways I avoid, hold back, self-deprecate, and resist devotion to the writing process, to a particular project? Can I meet my ghoulish insecurities and self-doubt with compassion and decide to write anyway? Can I embrace the beast in me and know it as part of what makes me the writer I am?

Here’s how I think about it:

The book is a monster. The book is also beautiful.

The writer is a monster. The writer is also beautiful. 

The writer and book are both beauty AND the beast.

What about you? Does any of the following describe you?

• You avoid writing your book because it feels like an unmeetable monstrosity--the ridiculous scope of it, the disappearing edges, the endless gooey themes oozing out. Because you feel like you must tame this monstrosity, before you even get started.
• You avoid writing because YOU feel like an unmeetable monstrosity— your wild unruly ideas, your shaggy imagination, the way you hiss and snap when someone tries to contain you or pin you down. Because you feel like you must tame yourself into being a good, orderly writer-- again, before you even get started.

I know this describes me, and if it applies to you, too, a question for us:

What if it’s not about taming it, but naming it? As in,

Hello book monster. I’m writer monster. Let’s be beastly together.   

I propose that:

• you don’t need to be fixed or tamed.
• your book doesn’t need to be fixed or tamed.
• you and your book need to be ALLOWED.

Allowed space and grace and a pace in which you can move, grow, get nourished, run wild, get messy and monstrous when needed, and take shape without judgment or reprimand.

I’ve had the experience of being slapped back into order when a true part of me pops out, and it feels awful. Don’t touch that. Don’t say that. Don’t even THINK that. Don’t write that. Nobody wants that. Well that’s ridiculous or hideous or an intrusion into polite society.

I have a neighbor who spends HOURS many days a week wandering the field by his house, hunting for dandelions, determined to cut each one off at their first emergence.

I know what it’s like to be that dandelion. Sometimes I’ve even treated myself and my wild story ideas like that dandelion. It makes me want to shrink, cower, disappear. Know what I mean?

But I've also learned and know better. I now know dandelions as the nourishment they were for my ancestors, and for me. Not wicked weeds, but rather, persistent and beautiful flowers. Blessedly bitter in their sustenance. Monstrous in their wild urge to bloom. I’ve also remembered myself as such. And this, this makes me want to stretch up strong and supple, proud of my unruly golden fringe. 

As you may know, I listen deeply to what Elemental Writing offering wants to come through next, and part of this listening is paying attention to the intersection of my own deep desires and those I feel in the collective. My own deep desire to get down to business with the memoir that's been lurking within and around me is big and wild right now. As well as the need for a container and community to hold me in the process. And I've been tuning into what I hear and feel from others as well. What's loud and clear is a "Now is the time energy" when it comes to writing the book. The one that keeps saying "hey, remember me?!" with insistent whispers during day and night dreams. That one. Whatever that one is for you.

What I've also been hearing is I can't do this alone! and Help! It seems to me like so many of us are done with toiling in isolation, with writing as a lonely and excruciating endeavor. It seems to me like so many of us are ready to remember writing, and all of life, as relationship.

So I've been dreaming up this new offering/container that will be 3 months long, in which we'll devote ourselves to the books of our dreams, or nightmares, as the case may be. All genres welcome. A group of 12 participants, a merry, scary band of writers to brave the wilds of book-writing together, fortified by creative community and collective intention. Monstrosities fully welcomed.

Enter the Book Monster. 

THE DETAILS

The adventure will go for 3 months, June 24 – September 9, 2026

What will be offered to you/how this will work:

• 12 facilitated weekly gatherings, Wednesdays, 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. PST
• Monstrous themes and inspiration woven into every week.
• First session: ritual & intention setting and joining in solidarity, calling in resources and rooting in embodied participation in the process. Monster naming & claiming. Choosing a monster ally.
• The rest of the sessions for months 1 & 2, we'll start with a brief lesson/intro and then spend the rest of the time writing and sharing writing. Generative feedback as we usually do in Elemental Writing offerings.
• First month lessons led by water, earth, air, & fire. Second month lessons led by our five senses, one or two a week.
• For the third month, we'll each submit a chapter for group feedback (both written and discussed when we gather), going deeper than the generative. This will also be an opportunity to tap into the magic of communal creative adventures, specifically in the way we all can learn more about craft and gather resources for our own work when we hone in on the particulars of each other's work. NOTE 1: I know that putting your writing out there in this way is a vulnerable act, as well as how many of us have had shitty critique experiences, and I'm committed to creating a container for this to be a nourishing, helpful, and supportive process. NOTE 2: Once we begin, I’ll send out all the logistics and guidelines for this.
• As we go, I'll be offering various craft resources (books, articles, interviews, etc), based on the needs of the group, sometimes when we gather and other times in our shared private community space. Speaking of which…
• Shared private community space for our group to discuss weekly themes or our works in progress, ask questions or request support, voice fears, celebrate accomplishments or revelations, etc. This will be here, on Mighty Networks. When you register, if you don’t already have one, you’ll create an account, and that login information is how you get to the private course area.  
• The fortification, nourishment, and enlivening support and presence of creative camaraderie and community, with collective intention.
• FYI: If this adventure is the practical magic I envision it to be for bringing our book dreams into form, I’m imagining I’ll dream up a part two for those who want to keep going.

What will be asked of you:

• Showing up for and committing to yourself & your book monster, when we gather and in between those times.
• Showing up for the other participants, for generative feedback in the first two months, then in the third month, through reading and responding through written feedback for each other participant. If you need to miss a session during month 3, you’ll still be accountable to give written feedback to the participants whose work we’ll be responding to that week.
• Remembering yourself not as an isolated artist, but as a participant in the give and take of creative community.
• Compassion, curiosity, and devotion to yourself and your book monster.

Financial commitment

To make this offering accessible and because I know financial resources are different for each person, I’m making spots available at each of the following three tiers. You can pay in full or in three monthly payments. 

I put great care into setting prices, and I trust you also to consider carefully what you can afford, as another aspect of choosing to be in creative community. Please know that if you can pay more, you’re making it possible both for me to earn a living wage and for others to participate who may not be able to otherwise. Whatever tier you choose, I’ll be delighted to have you as part of the adventure!

• TIER 1: $960 (pay in full or $320/mth) 
• TIER 2: $780 (pay in full or $260/mth)
• TIER 3: $609 (pay in full of $203/mth)

Are you ready to leave a mark? Beastly beauties welcome. Registration closes when all spots are filled or June 17.

Scroll all the way down (past the Elemental Writing Ecosystem description) to choose your tier and register.

ELEMENTAL WRITING ECOSYSTEM 

(opening to new members later in June)

Welcome. Remember: you belong here. 

Your belonging is inherent, cellular, without question. You're already in relationship with all of life—humans, dogs, clouds, rivers, trees, mountains, planets. What and how you write is in that relational web. This ecosystem is your place to revitalize your words and your process, rejuvenate your understanding of craft as a living, breathing, pulsing art, and connect with other writers remembering their own wild rhythms.

This is not a membership, but a re-membership. What you’ll experience here is not some hierarchical bestowing of knowledge, but rather a remembering of the wisdom within you and your interconnectedness with all life.

I'd love for you to join the adventure. New members will be welcome later in June 2026!

Please feel free to join my love letter list for updates and creative nourishment or visit www.jenvioli.com to get in touch in the meantime.

Elemental Writing Ecosystem 2026: 

Regeneration & Circulation

for the renewal-seeking writer in need of a regular space for creative fortification, devotion, construction, and imagination cultivation.

Usually, with the Elemental Writing ecosystem membership, I put out a preview of monthly themes three months at a time, but for 2026, I felt a distinct urge to expand that and offer a big vision for the year ahead. What came calling to me was a Part 1 and a Part 2, six months each, and I’m here to share that vision and invite you to be part of it. 

Part 1: REGENERATION

January through June monthly themes: Boreal forests, starfish, lion’s mane, olive, antlers, river. 

Where and how have we been creatively injured? How might we seal and heal these injuries? What could it mean to What could it mean to let the earth of you rest and remember your capacity for growth? Or to resurrect from the roots? What resources can we mobilize to grow back our voices, to discern what we need and long to write? What new form or forms can we take on with our words? In which ways might we experiment and shapeshift what it means to be a writer, right now?

Part 2: CIRCULATION

July through December monthly themes: Sand dollars, tumbleweeds, blood, eyes, atmospheric circulation, moon. 

What does it mean to let life force flow? What are the gifts and reminders of circles for writers? How might we play with new ways to get from here to there, from a beginning of the story to the end? How does circulation lead us to reimagine endings and beginnings? Who are we orbiting as we write, and who is orbiting us? What if going in circles doesn’t mean we’re lost, but rather that we’re finding ourselves in a potent, ancient rhythm?

As per usual, Ecosystem membership includes 2 live monthly gatherings, a marvelously magical community, and more, and you can read all about that below. I so hope you'll join us for Regeneration & Circulation. I don't know about you, but I'm ready for it!

love,

Jen

P.S. Please feel free to join my love letter list for updates and creative nourishment or visit www.jenvioli.com to get in touch in the meantime.

What You'll Receive (and release)

This space is alive, like you! That means that sometimes you'll be growing new parts of yourself, and sometimes you'll be shedding the parts that are ready to go. What's important to remember is that none of this happens in a vacuum. Instead, it's a living system, with all manner of other living beings, composing and decomposing with you. 

Here are a few of the things you'll experience as a member of the Elemental Writing Ecosystem:

• Reconnect with your embodied self, and as you do, experience the rush of vitality that brings into your writing, process and content.
• Cultivate a deeper sense of belonging to the animate earth, and encounter the patterns and rhythms of life as teachers, guides, and companions for you as a writer.
• Discover new aspects of your writing voice and surprise yourself with all that you didn't know was possible for you as a creative being.
• Reenergize what and how you write, enabling both growth and development in your craft, as well as allowing what's not working to become compost.

When You Join Today

When you join the Elemental Writing Ecosystem today, you’ll get access to:

• A monthly theme: a vital touchstone to play with and explore in multiple ways (see below!). Upcoming themes: Lion's Mane (March), Olive (April), & Antlers (May). 
• 2 monthly live two-hour, facilitated writing adventures: Each month, we'll come together twice! Fine to come to one or both, and also fine if you there's a month you just can't make it. You'll still get all the prompts and resources. On the first Friday of the month, from 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. PST we come together to write and share writing with each other for generative feedback (not critique). Each adventure framed by simple opening and closing rituals and embodiment practices, and each  adventure inspired by and co-facilitated with all manner of living creatures and processes, i.e. wolves, summer, caves, juniper trees, mist, and mushrooms. Each month we'll also have a second two hour gathering, on the third Friday of the month, from 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. PST, including opening and closing rituals & community check-ins, a mini-lesson, and prompts to play with however you like, in solidarity.
• Weekly wonders in a shared discussion area, including: writing prompts, check-in questions, poems, articles, and reflection ideas. 
• Community with other wondrous writer-humans: We're here with and for each other. Here in the ecosystem, may you find exactly the connections you need--maybe a new accountability partner for writing, maybe someone to nerd out on whales with, maybe someone who wants to trade pieces of writing for generative feedback or trade favorite poems or...
• Occasional bonus Elemental Writing lessons, some live, some recorded: Occasional 20-30 minute recorded lessons will sprout up for your pleasure. Each lesson will include a PDF with prompts, embodiment practices, and integration questions. Sometimes live gatherings, too! For instance, this past January, we had a bonus live two-hour session: Forest Respite. A wildly different approach to the craft of writing. 

If all of this stokes the fire within you, say yes to becoming a member below!

FYI, the invitation is to give yourself the gift of committing to this re-membership for a year (or a minimum of six months), to experience a full cycle of seasons. If you need to split this into monthly payments, you'll find an option for that below.

And please note that when you sign up, for as long as you're an active member, you'll have the same annual or monthly rate.

I can't wait to adventure with you!

Love,

Jen