The Slow Ink Circle

The slow Ink Circle is a concept born out of a need. It’s been on my mind for a while how to navigate this new AI world we are entering as a writer.

You may have seen me exploring Bealtainn and its implications for otherworld rebellion in Scottish folklore history. I’ve always wondered about the good folk interacting in protests and people’s lives before they were demonised via the Kirk. It’s my first return to writing long-form since the book launch, and I im enjoying it immensely. It was much inspired by a birthday party I was asked to attend to talk about land use and folk practice -good craic, but we need more of this. It got me thinking about how sustainable putting writing onto the web is, given the current state of AI copyright infringement and general bad actors and how lovely it is to connect with people outside of the internet. This is what fired me up, really, thinking about another way of doing what I do. Something anti-accelerationism and slower.

You might remember the chat about the student using AI in a recent lecture to generate what he thought were crucial questions. I lost the plot a bit, and instead of using laptops, we wove grass together. Helping him to think away from the screen and be less performative was the best bit of learning I could provide at that moment.

I’ve been thinking about how I can apply this same idea to my writing. How can we weave grass together away from AI?

You might know I am currently engaged in two book drafts, one on Scottish Herbalism and plant traditions and another on applied folk magic traditions (a how-to if you like). Both take up where Mill Dust and Dreaming Bread left off. Of course, I want to share it with people as I research, but the AI trends have me worried, and well, sharing new work in the open before it’s copyrighted has its own issues right now, so this is where the Slow Ink Circle was born. 

Introducing The Slow Ink Circle

The Slow Ink Circle is a new monthly postal (snail Mail/analogue) subscription for people like you who support authentic writing and research, offering a chance to step inside the process with me and spend time with something tangible in a world that is increasingly not.

In an accelerating world at our fingertips, there is something different about words and ephemera that arrive by post.

Slower. Quieter. A tactile feeling of the thumb on a paper’s edge. The smell of the paper read on a sunny step, and if you supported the kickstarter know how particular I am about paper. If you want to know more and sign up, I’d be really grateful.

The first letter will be sent from your weird one-way pen pal on June 1st, filled with Scottish folk traditions. You can sign up here or find out more after the jump.

What arrives to you

Each month, a physical envelope, but inside, something different.

For example, you might find:

• Field notes gathered in archives, landscapes, and conversations
• First draft chapters, with markup, and unfinished thoughts
• Fragments and reflections from the writing desk
• Transcribed moments, insights, or lines that have not yet found their place
• A found recipe or craft idea, postcards, photo copies photogrpahy anythgin pertinent, really!

I hope you get the idea. No two months will be the same and represent my magpie methodology. That is the nature of my work, and I’d love to share some of it with you 

From my desk to your hands

You will receive the working documents and the first living drafts.

You will see the hesitations. The changes in direction. The ideas that deepen, and the ones that fall away. You will see what makes its way towards the final manuscript, and what does not, with red pen thoughts and notations to boot, no doubt.

I hope I can share a kind of honesty with this and a quieter, more human way of sharing the work away from screens. 

Why the Slow Ink Circle exists

I wanted to find a way of supporting my writing without having to rely on an increasingly difficult to be on online world and yet still send something, maybe beautiful and meaningful, to people like you who care about these kinds of things. 

I also wanted folks to have a peek into my process and what I research because writing is only seen once it is complete, and I have enjoyed the community aspect of Kickstarter, so I wanted to include some of the discovery. All clean and certaina nd resolved. This way, I get to share some of the spaces with you that don’t make the final manuscript. 

But the real work is slower than that, and these missives you receive as part of the Slow Ink Circle will contain ideas and connections in the research I didn’t think to make, and you might.

Writing involves following threads that lead nowhere. Sitting with uncertainty. Returning to the same idea more than once until it begins to open. This way I can invite you into that process, and who knows what you might be inspired to explore. 

The Slow Ink Circle is a way of staying with that process. Of noticing what usually goes unseen, and hopefully a seed for your own research and application. 

Supporting the work

Your subscription directly supports the time and resources needed to do this well.

Archive access, travel, conversations, archive access, photography, old manuscript copies and thespace required to write with care all sit behind what you receive.

This circle allows the work to continue at the pace it needs, rather than the pace the world demands. 

The longer arc

Over time, these monthly envelopes will gather into something larger.

A body of notes. A sequence of drafts. The gradual shaping of a manuscript.

If you stay with the circle, you will have read the finished books, but also know how they came to be.

You will also have a version of the books that does not exist anywhere else. In the form of personal correspondence, letters and ephemera. 

A slower rhythm

In a world that pushes for speed and constant output, I hope this snail mail subscription offers something different.

A slower rhythm. A shared act of noticing together.A chance to sit with a story as it grows.

Away from the pull of screens and scraping.Held instead in paper, ink, and the quiet intimacy of something made and sent by hand. 

If this kind of work speaks to you, you are welcome to Join the Circle

Sent Monthly. Limited places available.