Nemesis Writing Protocol (Summer Reboot Edition)

Enrollment for this workshop opens soon!

Would you like to start a daily or more regular writing practice?

Figure out how to approach or re-start a longer writing project?

Jump start your creative practice for the summer?

Navigate a creative transition?

Develop your ear and sense of language?

Learn to observe the world in a new way?

Break through blocks about writing, creativity, experimentation?

Connect with peers creatively, meet new people?

Get new eyes on your writing?

Learn interesting, generative, unusual, entertaining writing techniques and processes?

Find a container and new context for experimentation?

Us too. Even after years of writing, we still need to reboot from time to time. That’s why we put together the Nemesis writing protocol, our process for getting started again when we’ve gotten off track.

Introducing the Nemesis Writing Protocol (Summer 2025 Edition)

In this summer intensive (one weekend, two 120-minute sessions with lots of hands-on writing) we’ll explore a full stack of techniques to reboot your writing practice. This is what we use to write trend reports, cultural analyses, essays and novels – and how we approach getting through a creative transition or out of a writing slump.

Maybe you feel things rattling around in your mind but you aren’t able to give them space to develop. Or there’s a bigger thing you want to write but you’re not there yet, or it’s not happening, or it’s not happening fast enough. Perhaps you need a creative or intellectual reset. Or maybe you just need a setting in which to get your pen and/or keyboard moving again.

This protocol works well whether you’re a writer-writer, a strategist, a “creative,” never write, or simply want to write more.

The details

Saturday July 19 & Sunday July 20, 9-11am PDT

Each session is 120 minutes

Replay shared after each session

$359 full workshop fee

$289 early bird, returning students and Substack paid subscribers

What you get in addition to the live sessions

Nemesis writing syllabus

Daily writing practice approach and topics

Option to join ongoing writing groups with other participants

Group Telegram

Topics the workshop will cover:

  • States of mind for writing
  • Daily writing practice
  • Timed writing experiments
  • Automatic writing
  • Found text
  • Cutups and remixing
  • Randomness and third mind
  • Creative vs uncreative writing
  • Different types of writing time
  • Reading and how to find things to read
  • How to structure your writing sessions
  • How to approach longer projects and big topics
  • Reprogramming your writing consciousness
  • Misconceptions about writing practice
  • Ideal stacks and atmospheres
  • When to start and when to stop writing

Who we are

Emily Segal and Martti Kalliala, the founders of Nemesis, which the New Yorker called an “’alternative’ consultancy” (scare quotes noted). We’ve worked with many iconic brands doing strategy, trend forecasting, and design consulting. We’ve also initiated many independent projects, separately and together – K-HOLE, Deluge, KNOTS, Amnesia Scanner, and SCAMMER. We’ve also taught and lectured at the Rietveld Academie, Columbia Architecture School, the Yale School of Art, the Yale School of Management, Harvard GSD, Design Academy Eindhoven and others.

As for writing, we both do a lot of it. We’ve both published books: Emily is the author of the novel Mercury Retrograde (Deluge Books, 2020) which was a New York Times New and Noteworthy Book, and Martti is the author of Solution Finland (Sternberg Press, 2011). Our individual essays and interviews have appeared in many magazines and newspapers all over the world. Together, we write cultural analyses at Nemesis Memos on Substack.

Our workshops

We’ve been teaching the Autonomous Strategy workshops – read some testimonials here