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Writers' Hour at the Women's Prize

2 min read

A morning of writing, a cold can and a room full of people doing the hardest thing there is: starting.

We sponsor the London Writers' Salon because the thing they teach is the thing we make drinks for. Attention. Not the productivity-hack kind, the ordinary kind: sitting down, staying put, letting the page fill up. Their Writers' Hour has run every weekday morning for years, thousands of writers logging on to write together in silence, and it works for the least glamorous reason imaginable, which is that showing up at the same time each day is most of the job.

Women's Prize Live

This summer that partnership moved outdoors, into the Bloomsbury gardens for Women's Prize Live, a weekend celebrating female fiction and non-fiction writers. We supported the literary programming inside the tent, including Finding Flow and Creative Focus with London Writers' Salon co-founder Parul Bavishi, and Tarot for Fiction Writers with Jill Dawson.

Set for the page

Every seat had a worksheet, a pencil, a bottle of FOCUS and something cold. Writers arrived, sat down, and were asked what conditions actually help them write, then what they meet resistance with when it turns up. Fear met with play. Self-doubt met with self-compassion. Procrastination met with presence.

Long tables laid with worksheets, Grass & Co. FOCUS jars and cans before the workshop begins

A Returning to the Page worksheet beside a jar of FOCUS gummies and a can of Liquid POWER

An hour of nothing but a page

Then the room went quiet and everybody wrote. That is the whole method. No app, no system, no promise that a supplement will write your book for you. Just an hour set aside, protected, and shared with other people doing the same thing, which turns out to be the part most of us cannot do alone.

Parul Bavishi of the London Writers' Salon leading the Finding Flow and Creative Focus session

Writers making notes in the workshop with Grass & Co. FOCUS and Liquid POWER on the table

What we brought

FOCUS with 600mg organic Lion's Mane, FOCUS MAX Lion's Mane gummies, and the drinks: Liquid FOCUS for the morning, Liquid POWER for the mid-afternoon slump, Liquid RELAX for after. None of it is a shortcut. It is a ritual you can hold, which is roughly what a writer needs at nine in the morning.

Grass & Co. FOCUS jars, FOCUS MAX gummies and Liquid RELAX cans laid out on the workshop table

Chilled cans of Grass & Co. Liquid RELAX in an ice bucket

Talking to the room

Between sessions we sampled in the gardens, poured a lot of Liquid RELAX, and had the same conversation over and over: how do you get back to the page after time away from it. Nobody had a clever answer. Everybody had a routine.