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…
My 10 week advanced non-fiction course in the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension begins tomorrow and I’m going to post part of it every week on this blog. I’ve been teaching the course forever so I decided to come up with new subjects/themes for each week to keep the course fresh not only for me…
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…
Tomorrow, Sunday 7/17/16, I’m part of the WriteTeachers Workshop (with Victoria Zackheim and Anne Perry) at Flintridge Bookstore in La Canada. My first workshop is ‘Writing Your Life Into Story’ and I decided to make a post out of my notes for it (below). If any of you haven’t started writing yet, or are stuck,…
It’s overcast in L.A. today – May Gray soon to become June Gloom – the sky feels like it’s pressing down on my head, pushing any creative inclination out of my cranky brain. So I thought I’d do something really lazy and just post an article I wrote a few years ago about doing five…
Here’s the thing about writing an essay, or a novel or a memoir – each time you do it you learn how to do it all over again. At least I have to. I’m writing an essay now that’s due in January for an anthology on faith. Ever since I signed the contract for this…
I taught a writing workshop for UCLArts&Healing today and a wonderful group of people showed up. They wrote poems and stories from prompts such as “I remember…” and a list of stuff from their current life that might be turned into personal essays. And I’m thinking (as I always do) that people who show up…
Phyllis Theroux, my favorite pen pal, sent me this wonderful quote from The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer last week. It rings especially true for writers: “‘You must do everything that frightens you, JR. Everything. I’m not talking about risking your life, but everything else. Think about fear, decide right now how you’re going to deal with…
A dear friend and student emailed me last night about feeling burned out – she just had a baby, just moved into a new house, has a consuming profession, has had a past history of scary medical surprises, etc. And she was now frustrated about being unable to write and feeling burned out. I wrote…
Did you see it last night? In Santa Monica it was coming in and out of clouds. I was emailing to friends who were also watching it, and it seemed like this wonderfu community event. And it was! Another community event this weekend was all the amazing people who showed up Saturday for my writing…
