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 her back with what I hope was love and encouragement, but she’d already moved on and started a blog! (Which is what she’s always done in the past decade since I’ve known her – managed to move on.) I love the idea of blogging about what’s  consuming you at the moment – this does not mean you vent, but you write about your own circumstances in a way that other people might identify with you and learn something.  Here’s the link to her blog:

http://juliepelcadler.blogspot.com/2013/08/when-we-were-ready-to-begin-our-what-we.html?m=1

 

I did a workshop at the Santa Monica Library a few days ago (above)  and found myself going on and on about writing blogs, and encouraging people to think about one of their own. It’s often hard to find the right voice for the book or story you’re writing, and a blog can be a way of discovering that voice or tone. That’s what happened to me with A Year of Writing Dangerously – I used the same voice as I have for this blog.  There is a difference though – I pop off posts pretty fast (another good thing writing a blog can teach you: your writing isn’t so precious and you can write faster than you think) but I do take much more time when writing a book.

I’m going to start another blog soon for the New Project. I don’t know the voice yet for the N.P. but I hope to find it. Stay tuned.

FYI: I’m teaching a workshop for UCLA Arts and Healing on October 19th in Santa Monica, and submissions for my Advanced NonFiction class at UCLA Extension are due by 8/30/13.