This is the name of the course (also a book I wrote) that I’m teaching in The Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension starting in two weeks. I’ve taught a course called Writing the Healing Story for years and it suddenly dawned on me that it sounded awfully pretentious. Both courses are actually the same –…
Someone just had to drop out of the next Writers Retreat in Lake Arrowhead three weeks from now. (October 2 – 4) If anyone is interested in taking her place please let me know as soon as possible. The retreat begins Friday at 1:00 and ends Sunday after lunch. Lodging, fantastic meals, workshops, one-on-ones with…
There’s a saying that when the student is ready the teacher will come. And for me the teacher came Sunday morning. Richard and Carol King host a salon on the spiritual creative life every month in Pasadena and yesterday I went for the first time. The speaker was Thomas E. Backer, PhD, a psychology professor…
Tomorrow in a roundtable discussion in my Advanced Non-Fiction class at UCLA Extension I’m going to ask my students two questions: 1. Why do you read? (and how do you chose what you’re going to read?) 2. Why do you write? (and would you write if there’s no chance of getting published?) These seem like…
On NPR this morning there was a wonderful interview with the poet Stephen Dunn. Here’s what he said about basketball and poetry: …I was not a particularly good student, and I was a pretty good basketball player. I’ve written an essay called “Basketball And Poetry,” in which I try not to push the metaphor too…
Anne Perry, Victoria Zackheim and I launch our new workshop “WriteTeachers: Inspiring Writers” on September 13th. It’s an all day affair, each of us will be teaching three workshops during the day and participants can sign up for whatever teacher/genre they’re most interested in. Anne Perry (who is famous for her best selling mysteries) will…
I’m teaching “Writing the Healing Story” starting early October at UCLA Extension in the Writers’ Program. Of course 95 percent of all stories written have something to do with healing – emotionally, spiritually, physically, or mentally. As writers we do this either consciously or unconsciously; it’s the reason we write. This is not one of…
Happy New Year, dear readers. If you’re a subscriber and received dozens of of posts you’d already read, please accept my apologies. We were transferring the posts to my website, www.BarbaraAbercrombie.com and they flew out like birds, landing everywhere. 2014! You have a whole new year in which to write dangerously. (And if you read…
I’ve been meaning to post these photos ever since my UCLA Writers’ Program class ended last month. Everybody broke out dancing at the last class to Sara Bareilles’s “Brave”: “Don’t run, stop holding your tongue/Maybe there’s a way out of the cage where you live/Maybe one of these days you can let the light in/Show…
This is such an inspiring story from the New York Times, and at the same time you read it and weep. But there are still small independent publishers out there so maybe it’s time to finally send your manuscript out.
