On a writing retreat, I read through a manuscripts-wanted listing in an arts commission newsletter and noticed a magazine asking for short essays by women on work. I thought about my work roles and how I felt about them–mother, teacher, co-owner of my husband’s computer networking business, poet. How I wished that my “job” as…
Category Archives: Instructional Exercises
Letter to a Columnist
I have always been a reader of letters to Ann Landers and other newspaper columnists to whom the public writes. Even after my own children were grown, I continued to read the Sunday column in Parade Magazine, in which teens wrote in about their concerns, and the following week, other teens responded with what they…
Writing Better Holiday Letters
The holidays are a time of turning to traditions that symbolize our love and connection to our families, friends, communities, earth, and the divine. With the pragmatism characteristic of Americans, many of us have made holiday card sending into a vehicle for mailing yearly catch-up letters. These letters allow us to perform the task of…
Writing For Thanksgiving–Rituals and Memories
Each year in the US, the period of time from the last days of summer through the end of December seems more and more like an overgrown garden. It is hard to perceive the holidays separately from one another. There are no pathways between them, no mulch to keep them apart. How can we sort…
Writing with Feeling, Grounded By Place
Our connections to the important places of our lives are deeply personal, based on unique experiences and relationships. At the same time, the feelings that bind us to those places can be shared and understood by most everyone because they are tied to universal human experiences and longings — to the comfort of home, the…