What I Learned Hosting A Sex Writing Workshop

On Doing Things One Clock Speed Faster

P.C. Icons8 Team

I’m hosting a Sex Writing Workshop on Thursday, April 18th, 2024. The event is limited to 10 females only. Here’s the story of how we got here:

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A couple of months ago, I had an idea. It came about while I was talking to Kimberley Healey, a love and intimacy coach I’m grateful to know. I was sharing with her that writing about my sex life had changed my relationship with my sexuality. From exploring my own intimate stories, I learned so much and became so much more confident in what I liked and what I wanted in bed. My favorite stories I’ve written include pegging my boyfriend, not swallowing cum, when no one comes to mind, and getting a man who loves your bush. Maybe, I thought, other women would like to do the same, and I could teach them how to do it? And so, the sex writing workshop was born! 

Or at least, it was born in my mind. I was really excited about it. I dreamed of curating a safe but curious space for women, like a sacred portal we could all enter together and tap into something deeper within ourselves. I thought about the importance of writing: how when we write, we have a voice. When we write, we take ownership of our experiences and everything that has happened to us because we were there. Rather than letting some outward influences of society or the media infiltrate our brains, when we face the blank page, it forces us to think: what was that experience actually like for me? What details are the most vivid in my memory? What did I like or not like? What did I love? What drove me crazy, in a good way or a bad way? This was the brilliant, earth-shattering gift that I was going to give all the women in my workshop whenever I got around to hosting it someday.

Before long, weeks had passed. I sat on the idea. I thought and thought about it. I had so many expectations that I had constructed for myself that the fear factor started to engulf me. I was putting it off while still riding high on the feeling of accomplishment that I would do it someday. Somehow, continuing to entertain the idea made me feel like I was doing something, even when I wasn’t. 

Then it was April 1st. It wasn’t just April Fool’s Day, but also it was the beginning of Q2 2024. And as I got into planning my goals for the quarter, I looked at my list, and I finally thought: Fuck, I better just do this while I’m in an experimental mood. So, finally, I got my act together. 

I made a simple event page. I set the ticket prices and limited the event to 10 people. I put out some feelers on social media. And I finally published the Sex Writing Workshop event page on Luma. This all took me about two hours. Two of my friends signed up to take the class, and I was over the moon! Yes, it is going to be awesome. And yes, I am still scared of hosting it, in a good way. I felt proud to have finally organized it. But when I remembered that I had first written about sex writing over three months ago, it hit me: 

Why had I waited more than three months to complete something that only took me two hours?

It didn’t seem logical. In fact, I had just sat around stagnating and wasting a bunch of my own time. I had procrastinated out of fear, almost to the point of never hosting the workshop at all. If I had just put in those two hours in January or whatever, I could have learned things that I’m learning now more than 3x faster. 

On Lenny’s Podcast, Claire Vo, CPO at LaunchDarkly, puts this idea very eloquently: 

“If I look at an organization that is operating at a slower pace than I would expect, I communicate to my leaders that my expectation is they bring in the clock speed one click faster, which means if you think something needs to be done this year, it needs to be done this half. If you think it needs to be done this half, it needs to be done this quarter. This quarter, this month. This week, today. End of day, in this meeting.” — Claire Vo, Lenny’s Podcast.

The fact is that if we want to grow creatively, professionally, or personally, we need to do things that terrify us, like hosting sex writing workshops. We need to do things that challenge us and run little experiments so we can explore things that could potentially be amazing. But whatever it is that we want to do, no matter how much fear we are feeling, we should try to do it sooner rather than later. Doing it, as Claire recommends, one clock speed faster. 

It feels uncomfortable. It feels unsafe. But that’s the kind of kick in the butt we need to bring our creative visions to life. Otherwise, we never will, and our stories, our songs, and our art will die with us. So, yes, maybe today you didn’t need more pressure or more of a time crunch or another reason to be anxious in this world. But ultimately, it helps to bring the timeline forward for ideas that we’re excited about and could potentially change everything for us. Like I said in my piece about adjusting to the real world after college, 

“If you want to make a change in your life, set a date. Then, find the day six months earlier than that date. Mark this in your calendar as “Deadline for Change.”

So, this Thursday, April 18th, I am finally hosting the Sex Writing Workshop, the first of its kind! It will be a hybrid event in my apartment in Mexico City and with a Zoom option. I’m glad to share that paid subscribers will get a 50% discount on the ticket price (worth $8.50, so that’s more than your monthly subscription to Misseducated, should you wish to attend!). I will drop the coupon for paid subscribers under the paywall below. 

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