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…
I was going to write a very earnest possibly boring post about habits – how by changing our habits bit by bit we can change our lives, especially our writing lives. But you have to admit the headline for this post about screaming in the parking lot grabbed your attention a lot more than Changing…
I’ve been thinking about kindness lately and what it really means, how necessary it is. When people are kind it’s easier to move through the world, and when we’re kind to others we’re more generous, more loving, happier. Here’s a wonderful poem on the subject by one of my favorite poets, Naomi Shihab Nye. All…
This is an online free course on creativity offered by Stanford. Check out the video. I just signed up. A Crash Course on Creativity – Video
The UCLA Extension Writers Studio started last Thursday and ended last night (it goes from 10:00 to 6:00 every day.) It’s intense and exciting to teach and such great people show up to take the workshops. I taught a workshop called “Courage & Craft” which covered both non-fiction and fiction, and I’m missing my students…
My annual Lake Arrowhead Writers Retreat is a private weekend workshop and retreat for all writers – those with work in progress as well as those looking for a nurturing environment in which to jumpstart their writing. It’s held at the UCLA Conference Center in the beautiful mountain town of Lake Arrowhead, California (less than…
Read This: Some Great Books I’m reading Ann Patchett’s collection of essays This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, and I’m going slowly because I don’t want it to end. I’m also discussing it in my UCLA Writer’s Studio workshop next week so I’m underlining and marking pages like crazy. Her essay “The Getaway Car”…
We’re home after a quick wonderful visit to Purdue University in Indiana, where the weather was freezing (and I mean freezing) but the reception couldn’t have been warmer. R. gave a talk at the celebration for Dr. Arvind Raman becoming the Robert V. Adams Professor of Electrical Engineering. All of Arvind’s family was there,…
On MLK Day there’s this skinny kid with his drums in the parking lot next to our house, facing the ocean and the about-to-set sun, drummng his heart out. It’s wonderful – loud and full of life and making a lot of the neighbors crazy. On the other side of the parking lot is a…
I’m celebrating! I just finished the essay I was grumbling and fretting and trying to keep calm about a few posts ago. (It’ll be in an anthology about faith edited by Victoria Zackheim and published next year by Simon and Schuster.) You go through such doubt and chaos before you find what you’re really writing…
