Hello and a very warm welcome to Restorative Writing – a space to nurture your writing, your creativity and your wellbeing.
I’m so glad you’re here with us.
I’m Sophie - bestselling novelist, award-winning poet, writing teacher and researcher.
I believe that writing, health and wellbeing are intimately connected and I'm on a mission to help you to use writing to nurture your wellbeing and develop your creative confidence.
Restorative Writing is a space where you can:
Harness the restorative power of writing for your life and creativity.
Develop a holistic approach to your writing practice.
Access creativity and self-compassion - in writing and in life.
Become a supportive reader of yourself on the page.
Investigate the differences between private and public writing and find what works for you.
Find a safe space to share your reflections on your process with other people. (You don’t need to share your writing if that doesn’t feel right for you.)
If you’re starting out as a writer, asking yourself questions like ‘Can I write?’ or ‘Can I call myself a writer if I’ve never published my work?’ this is the space for you.
If you’re an experienced writer or creative, feeling stuck, weary, burnt out, this space and community can help you to find rest and fulfilment.
It may be that writing is primarily a deeply private process for you. You don’t have to write in your journal alone. You can be supported in your private writing.
"I love the energy of your posts and our Write Together sessions, Sophie. They're so supportive. I can't thank you enough for the January session. It has helped me set up ritual, space, and momentum for my writing.” -
Restorative Writing is for everyone everywhere.
When I began this community, I initially posted weekly. However, because of my own experience of the need to slow down and give our writing – and ourselves – space to breathe, I now sent out new in-depth posts once per month.
All subscribers receive these monthly free posts, which include my Writing Invitations and links to further resources.
If you’d like to participate in this community through live writing sessions, you can buy the annual subscription at $55, which includes access to :
✨ Writing Together: Your invitation to a monthly paid subscriber-only live writing session on Zoom. Writing Together live workshop sessions are a very supportive space where we spend an hour writing and reflecting together in response to a theme, text or idea and then share our questions and reflections. The first part of the session is recorded so that you can join in later, if you can't make it in real time. The discussion part is not recorded in order to honour confidentiality.
✨ Restorative Writing Seasons: Seasons are lovingly researched and curated mini-courses with a focus on nurturing yourself and your writing and finding creative ways to rest deeply, all delivered to you through weekly short video ‘lessons’ and posts. They include audio tracks, writing experiments and links to further resources that you can work through at your own pace in the way that feels best for you. Your membership will give you access to two of these courses: Core Practices (which ran live in summer of 2024) and Creative Rest, which ran in summer 2023). You can take these courses in your own time as self-paced development or even organise to work through them as a personal writing retreat.
⚡️ My full archive of posts.
These include over fifty additional posts with inspiration, resources, and writing experiments, all with a holistic approach.💜 + When you buy a subscription, you’re also supporting me in continuing to make all my monthly posts and resources free to as many people as I can. Thank you so much. 🙏
I believe that the world needs your creativity, your spark and your well-rested energy. I hope that Restorative Writing can be a source of that for all of us.
Dip your toe into Restorative Writing
Here are some of my most often read and shared free posts:
Why write when it feels like the world is falling apart?
Can you call yourself a writer if you don’t publish your work? Spoiler: Yes!
Try one of my Gentle Guides:
Writing as a mindfulness practice
Suggestions for writing about the big, scary, difficult things
Play with one of my Experiments (experiments in writing and life)
An old way of calling
Let your words take flight
Make a secret writing pocket
More about me
I’ve been writing, teaching writing and using writing in my work with others for over twenty-five years including:
Designing and facilitating hundreds of writing workshops for corporate employees, educators, health professionals and trainees, patients and carers - anyone who wants to write or use the transformative power of writing to feel better.
Work as a ‘writing mentor’ with refugees and asylum seekers, using writing to help people to process and recover from severe trauma. My poetry collection Refugee was informed by this work.
Work as a therapist for seven years in private practice, specialising in mindfulness, hypnotherapy and creative embodied techniques to support mental and physical health.
Twenty-five years teaching and designing creative writing curriculum in higher education at the universities of Leeds, York, Sussex (where I helped to develop the MA Creative Writing and Personal Development) and Teesside (where I established two highly successful global online courses and the postgraduate Creative Writing Lab).
Two bestselling novels, translated into eight languages; several peer-reviewed papers on writing in academic journals; several poetry awards.
My PhD Writing the Body (2006), which suggested a model for writing in health and personal/ professional development. Since that time, I’ve developed new research in creative writing and wellbeing, supervising hundreds of postgrad students and securing over £200k in research funding for projects using writing in mental wellbeing and social change.
I live in beautiful North Yorkshire in the North East of England with my daughter.
I’m currently working on my next books: a middle grade novel about climate emotions and a book about writing and wellbeing.
I love swimming - but not in the North Sea, except in a wetsuit and woolly hat! - and walking and reading and cooking and eating large quantities of very dark chocolate. I’m about 80% cocoa-powered.
The world needs your creativity, your spark and your well-rested energy. I hope that Restorative Writing can be a source of that for all of us.
Sophie x
