Writing Beauty
An Online Class Aug. 17 - Sept. 27
“Beauty will save the world.”
~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
Many of us are drawn to the beauty that saves and the beauty that gives us meaning, joy, guidance, and purpose. In this class, we'll explore writing as a practice of engaging with beauty as well as beauty as source to deepen and enhance our writing. What's more, we'll look at writing itself as its own beauty in action. Along the way, we'll question and name for ourselves and our writing what beauty is can be.
Through innovative and lively writing prompts, sharing our writing and witnessing what one another write, and through discussions and solo excursions into inspirations and new ways of seeing, we'll write our way into a deeper relationship with beauty and our own writing practice.
Who Is This Class For?
This workshop meets you where you are, whether you're just getting started, returning to writing after a stretch, or looking for renewed inspiration to generate new writing. It's also open to people wanting to create a bunch of new poetry or creative non-fiction (such as memoir, essays, etc.). Feel free to write poems or stories about what you're perceiving in and around you. This class is a springboard for writers of all stripes and spots looking for new ways into their words.
If you have questions, please email me here.
Writing Beauty Week by Week
Week One: The Beauty of Home and Here: We dwell in the common, everyday beauty of where we live—from the rooms that we inhabit to the natural world right out the back door that inhabits us. This week, we explore how what's around us—from a glass paperweight in the sun to the indigo bunting at the bird feeder—can make the visible visible. Cultivating greater mindfulness of what and who is around us opens up the possibilities in our writing and our lives off the page.
Week Two: Beauty in Motion and Seasons: Writing is a way to train our minds and educate our hearts in the art of glimmers: glimpsing the momentary beauty of the living earth and changing sky moment by moment. Tuning into seasonal beauty, including the micro-season of this particular day or night, helps us better understand, as Mary Oliver writes in her poem, "Wild Geese," our place in the family of things
Week Three: Wabi Sabi Beauty: The Beauty of the Imperfect and Impermanent: Wabi Sabi, the Japanese philosophy and aesthetic, points to the beauty of all things (including us) in process and in all our vivid imperfection and daunting impernance. Through this way of seeing the world, we can better connect with ourselves at our particular age and phase with deeper appreciation of how growth, change, beginnings, and endings have their own beauty.
Week Four: I Sing the Body Electric: The Beauty of the Body Regardless: "As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than there is wrong, no matter how ill or how hopeless you may feel,” writes Jon Kabat-Zinn. This week, we write about, even celebrate, the beauty of the body regardless of what it looks like or how it’s acting up in our lives and the lives around us. Embodied writing lands us where we live with greater gratitude for the strange miracles and challenges of bodies.
Week Five: Making and Practicing Beauty: “I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty," writes Edgar Allan Poe. This week, we'll delve into creativity, as a process and way to life, as a key and very renewable source of beauty. We'll also look at how we can grow our creative resilience into wilder vision and freedom.
Week Six: Beauty of the Mystery and the Mystery of Beauty: How do we cope with the broken and further breaking world? One way is to tune in often enough to the beauty we can feel and find in the sacred. This week, we'll journey into whatever we each name and claim as sacred, holy, or otherwise rooted in the true power of the life force, whether we find it in a clear night of staring into the Milky Way, laughing our asses off with friends, or cooking up a batch of biscuits.
Class Format & Ingredients
We meet mostly online via a private, interactive, easy-to-use website (called Wet Ink), where you have a whole week to read and peruse the weekly material and also share up to two pieces of writing in an online forum. We read each other's writing, share encouraging comments, and find greater inspiration and community together.
The class includes two hour-long Zoom sessions from on Thursdays August 20th and September 24th at 7-8 p.m. CT/ 8-9 p.m. ET/ 6-7 p.m. MT/ 5-6 p.m. (which are recorded in case you can't make it). You'll also have a one-on-one 20-minute coaching session with Caryn.
Each week's online material includes:
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A short reflection on the weekly topic, including short essays on various writing traditions and practices (including eco-writing, embodied writing, writing and mindfulness, Wabi Sabi writing, and more).
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Creative prompts for your new and evolving writing (which you'll receive positive feedback on from fellow students and me),
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Examples in poetry and prose of a whirlwind of astonishing writers to further inspire you,
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A bevy of quotes and images to further spark your writing.
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Resources for further reading, listening, and exploration
Registration
Fee: $310. early bird until 7/15/26 (regular price: $340). You can register by:
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Venmo (Caryn-Goldberg-2, and please email Caryn so she has your contract info.),
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Check (email Caryn for details), or through
Add-on Coaching Package: If you would like to meet with me one-on-one for three 45-minute sessions (in addition to the mini coaching session the class includes), sign up for a special discounted coaching package for an additional $260. You can use this time to work on particular pieces of writing, talk about your writing practice, publishing, and other aspects of the writing life (coaching can be done during or after the class). Email me to make arrangements.
Cancellation Policy: Full refund minus $30 handling fee for all cancellations six weeks before start of the class. One-half refund for cancellations three weeks before the class begins. No refunds within three weeks of the class, but if there are extenuating circumstances (hospitalization, death in the family, etc.), please contact me about a credit for future classes.
Testimonials About Caryn's Classes
I have fallen in love with your writing instruction within the last year. You make us all feel fulfilled and artistic in our striving to express ourselves. Your class has, indeed, saved some lives! ~ Georgia Copeland
As a once upon a time educator before my disability, I recognize superlative teaching. And I just want to say that your handout, the poems you chose, the prompts, the way you hold space for your students, and the rhythm of the workshop you offered all demonstrated that you are a top-notch teacher. Your kindness and understanding were like a salve to my hurting and struggling writer self. And I just want to say that aside from your mastery of teaching, who you are shines loving kindness into the dark and difficult spaces. ~ Marya Summers
Caryn’s skill, talent, wit, and wisdom have shown me the way to begin writing again, which is a restorative healing process. Caryn has taught me to reach deep within and unabashedly, without apology or shame, to tell my own story. ~ Julie Flora
After each class I recognize the peaceful place the class creates in me. My response to listening to others and hearing your responses to our work fills me with contentment, joy, and satisfaction. The level of trust that we experience opens us to heartfelt honesty even as deeply painful experiences are shared. Thank you for the sparks your words create. ~ Patricia Durkin
You are truly one of the best facilitators I’ve ever seen, and your ability to create a safe space for all of us is so magical. ~ Beverly Stewart
I have taken three online classes with Caryn and have enjoyed them very much. She encourages a very positive online community atmosphere, provides an inspirational variety of readings and writing prompts, and gives useful and supportive feedback on student writing. ~ Anne Marvin
Caryn’s workshops provides both hope and a distraction from the issues of those suffering. ~ John L. Swainston
I found the course to be a gentle invitation to probe one’s life experiences and bring them to the present in a nurturing and kindly way. I especially liked how the course was structured from the immediate to the universal and opportunities for growth. Readings were relevant and inspiring, and it was refreshing to interact with the other participants. ~ Jennifer Pratt-Walter
I was not expecting your course to change my life, but I was very eager to have the immersion now in more poetry, as well as a structure (which I need) to start up writing again. I also appreciated your very inclusive approach to teaching online, including acknowledgement that people could engage with the material at any level they wished, up to what you called “living in it.” ~ Jan Hitchcock
