Sunday mornings in Hampstead carry a particular quality of quiet anticipation. At Waterstones on the High Street, the “Write Together” session transformed the bookshop’s familiar browsing space into something more intimate—a temporary writing sanctuary where strangers gathered to work in companionable silence.
The format proved refreshingly straightforward. No forced introductions or prescribed exercises, just the simple proposition of writing alongside others who had chosen to spend their weekend morning with notebooks and laptops instead of lie-ins. The bookshop’s tall windows let in grey London light while participants settled into corners between poetry shelves and fiction displays.
There’s something oddly comforting about the sound of other people’s keyboards clicking, pens scratching across paper. Individual creative processes unfolding in parallel rather than isolation. The occasional pause as someone searched for the right phrase, the quiet satisfaction when a sentence finally clicked into place.
Between concentrated writing sessions, brief conversations emerged organically. Someone working on memoir excerpts, another wrestling with dialogue that wouldn’t cooperate, a poet testing new forms. The usual writerly concerns—does this scene work, how much backstory is too much, why do endings remain so elusive. Nothing profound, but the kind of shop talk that reminds you the struggle with words is universal.
Waterstones provided the ideal backdrop for this experiment in collective creativity. Books lined every surface, silent witnesses to countless other writers who had faced identical blank pages centuries ago, decades ago, or just last year. The weight of literary history felt encouraging rather than intimidating.
By early afternoon, when the session wound down, something had shifted. Not dramatic breakthroughs or sudden inspirations, but the quieter satisfaction of sustained attention, of time carved out specifically for the work. Sometimes the most valuable writing events are the ones that simply create space—physical and temporal—for stories to emerge at their own pace.
London’s writing community continues to find new ways to support individual creativity through collective presence. These modest gatherings matter more than grand literary events sometimes do.
— Writer Anastasia Dubinina