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Back by popular demand and better than ever—I loved this workshop 10 years ago and I love it even more now—The Erotic Voice Writing Mentorship & Workshop. For those who’ve been here since 2014, this was called The Original Voice Workshop.
A voice that’s exactly yours isn’t what you’re after at first. You’d rather sound like the ideal person you wish you were. Maybe you’re convinced your original voice is boring and there’s another elusive one that’s captivating, magnetic, enchanting, alluring and decidedly not the one you currently have.
I’m gonna give it to you straight cause I’d be 6 people ago if I didn’t: Your voice is insanely erotic and what you have to say is the most compelling thing I’ve ever heard. You have a relentlessly attractive, unique, and provocative voice. You are captivating. I’m hanging off your every word.
Someone convinced you; you were safer a few shades away from your original voice, in pursuit of another one, and they have their personality as their karma. You’re as fascinating as your yearning, not because it’s ethereal or mysterious but because it’s where your erotic charge is currently welcomed, in your wishing. But over the years, even the fantasy has begun to feel like what it is—pennies lodged in your throat.
Whenever a wishing spell comes undone, and it unravels often, in its place is a subtle and bitter fixity toward the world for refusing your actual birth. The primal rage toward whatever rejected your erotic energy in your mouth might only come to you in dreams, through the bridge of a song or in the furnace of envy. It might have stopped coming at all, knowing your shame brings a gun to that knife fight but, your erotic life force will never settle for a life of fantasy. It will rage until it finds you in the dark and guts whatever you’ve built on falsities. It might not be strapped but all your natal Pluto needs is a Pluto transit. Sometimes, a Scorpio moon. Even a lunar return. It’s always looking for a way in. Eros is relentless. It animates your body. Your pulse is proof of its consistent and unyielding desire to be here, with you.
I’ve worked with hundreds of students in writing workshops over the years, but this one is special. It’s a collaboration with Eros/Pluto, a mashup of workshop, mentorship and your natal chart. It’s welcoming erotic (plutonic) creativity at your front door so Hades doesn’t burst through your basement. The Erotic Voice Writing Mentorship & Workshop is a potent blend of what makes both a workshop and a mentorship effective—practical progress and one-on-one depth work, respectively. It leaves nothing out. It’s a midwifery to the light at the end of that relentless tunnel that has grown three feet every time you’ve taken one step forward.
The truth is the light at the end of the tunnel is you. She’s something like 9 years old and still looks at people like the next one might see her. He still knows who he is. She hasn’t yet been fully convinced she isn’t safe here. They haven’t severed themselves from their soul to keep anyone’s ‘love.’ He’s still whole. They’re waiting for you as am I. They’re dope. You’re dope.
The reason you don’t like your speaking voice/writing voice/what you have to say is because you don’t sound like yourself. The reason you don’t like what you said is because you didn’t say what you actually wanted to say. Maybe you don’t even know what that is because no one witnessed you in love, the essential mirror for conscious selfhood. You don’t like your voice because it sounds to your soul like a dissociated searching. Because it gives you away—your most ancient secret—that no one ever found you. They didn’t even try. Maybe your words are a distant echo of what once sounded like an excited expectation to be well-received, before your “hello?” stopped being a question, before it became a nod to a grief that lost its name through the passage of time.
Maybe you decided to save your life-force for later, for when someone unlocks you.
This workshop is for you if you’re wondering what it tastes like to finally spit out the truth—on and off the page. It’s for you if you want to finally become the place where your wishes come true and if you’re tired of checking everything you say for the stink of copper.
This workshop is for you if you have a sneaking suspicion there is no later, that you make that key by hand.
I’m so sorry someone dampened your fire. If he took it when he left the very last time, or she snatched it when you laughed, sung, and dared to say the truth as you saw it, or if they broke what was left of your heart, if the people who mattered the most never heard a single word you said—if all of this and more is true, know this: the fire in you is not dead. It cannot die until you are gone. They did not snuff you out.
Maybe you’ve decided, ‘Fuck it, fuck them and as a matter of fact, fuck this god forsaken world, too, I have nothing to say.’ Maybe you feel like your erotic voice is only real when someone special is in love with you. Maybe every time you sit to write or tell someone the truth, it’s “it hurts” and maybe you’ve said fuck you to that pain, too, ffs. Maybe you don’t even wish for anything the way you used to. Maybe even the fantasy is dead. Maybe you feel a void in its place.
Perfect. You’re where Eros comes from.
I’m a lover girl to my core and true lovers are sent from hell to tell you what’s burning.
The Erotic Voice Writing Mentorship & Workshop is four weeks of us showing up to your eroticism, and your shame, with Eros. Alongside four weekly hour-long meetings, we’ll each send each other two voice notes/week, each up to five minutes. You receive one lecture via email every week which details an in-depth lesson on how to cultivate your original erotic voice and sustain it. Your natal chart and transits are used as context alongside your personal needs.
Our weekly sessions are held in a space where we write to each other about your writing and your voice. If you have something to bring, great. If not, we’ll do a free write and go get it. The space where we chat is Google Hangouts and real-time feedback (for your weekly writings, free-writes + the piece we’ll be working on to completion) is given to you via a shared Google Doc. You keep the entire conversation we have on Hangouts, from beginning to the end. This, and the voice notes, are the core of the workshop. You receive several rounds of detailed feedback in each hour via Docs as well as our mentorship session via Hangouts where we dive into the process of unearthing your erotic voice, what you have to say and how you have to say it. In weekly voice notes, we’ll continue your mentorship by getting to know your physical voice and its entry points for eros.
Each weekly meeting is where shame meets its match and your unique erotic signature finds its reflection. You’re welcome to bring a journal entry, a poem, an essay, a spiritual writing, a free-write, a prompt, a favorite line of music. You’re welcome to bring nothing. At the end, you’ll leave the workshop with access to your erotic voice and at least one piece of completed writing, rough draft to final, that reflects it. Your eroticism will be found in your writing, in your physical voice and in the way you use it. This means when you start the workshop, you’re ready for your erotic voice to start mattering to you more than your silent commitment to almost-you.
Reading recommendations are provided throughout the workshop based on your context and natal placements. Please note that 10 minutes of writing/day for the duration of the workshop is a soft requirement for participation. There are of course ebbs and flows and this isn’t inflexible, but it’s the ideal for you to get the most out of our time together.
This workshop, without the voice notes, has historically leaked into the spoken voice of those who’ve taken it. With the voice notes, your voice will become saturated with your erotic energy.
In summary:
-we meet once/week for 60 minutes for your mentorship-workshop on Google Hangouts with a chat history that is evergreen and searchable
-we each send each other two voice notes/week, each for up to five minutes, uncovering your erotic voice
-you receive one lecture a week detailing how to write and speak using your original erotic voice
-we take at least one piece of your writing from rough draft to completion
-you receive all guidance and personal reading recommendations according to need, your natal placements and current transits
-you leave week four with your erotic voice, spoken and written
*If you’d like to split the fee into two payments, the first is due before we begin, and the second is due at the beginning of the third week of the workshop. In two months, the fee will resume its usual rate of $650.
If you’d like to donate to a scholarship for those who can’t afford to pay the full fee, please email me at fstukhnairy@gmail.com.
This workshop is a prerequisite for The Erotic Surrealist’s Workshop.
There is something very special about writing to each other about erotic energy and, about writing itself. I’ve created what I always wish existed.
This is Eros knocking on your door. You coming?
eros, always,
Nairy
P.S. Scroll for a few testimonials from previous workshop students.