“One does not find solitude, one creates it,” wrote Marguerite Duras when she moved from Trouville to her new house in Neauphle, France. She’s one of my favorite writers and now in my almost-finished new house in Pasadena I’m rereading her: “Finding yourself in a hole, at the bottom of a hole, in almost…
We’re all so busy – and if not busy with our personal life and work, there’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram et al; we can plug ourselves right into music or have movies and tv instantly appear on our computer screens.There’s so much noise and news and fun to be had that we never…
“I write to discover. I write to uncover. I write to meet my ghosts…I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words.” – Terry Tempest Williams Come write with us – there are two spaces left in my October 20-22 Writers Retreat in Lake Arrowhead. It’s a…
To write, a retreat is needed – whether it’s going into a room in your own house and closing the door for an hour, or finding space at Starbucks for your computer, or driving up to the mountains and leaving your daily life behind. People who don’t write (usually your family) can have a hard…
Last week I taught my Courage & Craft class at the Writers Studio at UCLA Extension. This was part of four days of intensive workshops – ten courses in creative writing and screen/tv writing. Classes started at 10:00 in the morning and went to 6:00 in the evening. It was boot camp. Students began to…
Come join us at Vromans this coming Saturday (12/10/16) 9:00 – noon for a writing workshop. We’ll be doing writing exercises and workshopping (if you have something you want to read for feedback please email me or leave a comment so I can schedule you in.) We meet the second Saturday of every month…
Here’s the rollercoaster of writing a book: Oh, it’s good! Oh, it’s boring! Oh oh! Awful! Wonderful! Up and down for months if not years. Sometimes you have to write a bad book to get to the good book. Sometimes you get breathless with anxiety and decide take up knitting or skate boarding or raising…
Yesterday was a hard day. I was lucky though, I had a class to teach. A roomful of like minded people who wrote their way through tears and anger. Some of the writing exercises I had prepared a few days before turned out to be timely. A line from a Mary Oliver poem as a…
I’m excited about the new writing workshop that starts next Saturday (October 8th) at Vromans Bookstore in Pasadena. Whether you’re just beginning to write or have a manuscript in process, come join us on this new adventure. Below is the info about the workshop from Vromans website: Discovering Your Story: A Writing Workshop Saturdays,…
I read somewhere that the two things people fear more than death are public speaking and writing. Now when you combine the two, getting up and reading what you’ve written in front of a bunch of people – well it’s a wonder that anyone ever has the nerve to take a writing workshop. After…
