As I wrote last week, I feel lucky to have recently had journalist Amy Hewes on my KPTZ FM radio program, “In Conversation: Discussions on Writing and the Writing Life.” Here’s the link to listen to our conversation. In it, Amy explains how she goes about writing her opinion pieces, and her explanation will help those … Continue reading
I was lucky enough to have recently had journalist Amy Hewes on my KPTZ FM radio program, “In Conversation: Discussions on Writing and the Writing Life.” Here’s the link to listen to our conversation. In it, Amy explains how she goes about writing her opinion pieces, and her explanation will help those of us interested in … Continue reading
Sheila is talking with writer Amy Hewes about her work with New Times in San Luis Obispo. Hear her thoughts on what makes a good opinion piece and read her columns in the paper’s archives at New Times under Opinion, Rhetoric and Reason. … Continue reading
Many of us know the poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night“ by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who is pleading in his famous villanelle that his father not easily give in to death. The archetype of the father is strong in all of us, even if our own fathers remain enigmas to … Continue reading
Writing a litany of praise for anyone to whom you owe gratitude for life lessons will work in interesting ways if you take on the seemingly unpraiseworthy as if it were praiseworthy. You will get interesting results that push your writing past easy sentimentality or blinding anger to the important waters of insight. Praising What … Continue reading
A participant in my recent online class,”You: Writing in the Second Person” shared a website with us: Dead Housekeeping: Moody Home Tips, which features a string of short pieces in the second person contributed by writers on subjects as disparate as how to feed the yellow cat, how to have a house guest, and how … Continue reading
5/9/19 Hello Harlan, We had a wonderful time recently celebrating my mother’s 92nd birthday with my daughter’s family and her in-laws, who have moved from the Midwest to a town just north of Seattle to be near their son and grandsons. They are originally from the southern part of India and came here years ago … Continue reading
Sheila is talking with Stewert Pugh about the work and connections he made in dismantling the late poet Gwen Head’s famous Dragon Gate Press in Port Townsend, WA. Visit Stewert’s blog to learn more about his varied interests and skills. … Continue reading
In the work world there are quarterly reviews in which employees do self-evaluations on how well they have performed in their jobs. Bosses also evaluate each employee’s progress. You can take this model as your opportunity to write as both boss of your writer self and yourself as the writer-employee. Here’s how: Write a job … Continue reading
Sometimes I go to sleep with my heart full of sadness. A student’s poem that day about a bicycling daughter killed by a bus as it made a turn, someone’s essay about losing her son to a strep infection that went to his heart, and someone else’s essay about grieving the mother she had and … Continue reading
Sheila is talking with new Port Townsend resident and writer Marcia Myers, whose coffee table books include Special Delivery, an interesting, illustrated history of the US Postal Service. Visit Marcia Myers Publishing on Facebook. … Continue reading
[This article appeared first in April, 2012.] April is National Poetry Month. Feeling a little badly that I hadn’t started new poems to celebrate the month, I decided to look through old files in a computer folder labeled “archived poems.” I had completely forgotten some of the drafts I’d created. When I read them, I … Continue reading
How do we move our writing and characters in time and space without slowing our readers down and certainly without confusing them? We must learn to stop doing what I call “taking the reader down the hall,” filling in the whole journey, every bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling and every crack in the … Continue reading
Sheila talks with poet Holly J. Hughes about her poetry and her teaching career as a writer. (Originally recorded on November of 2014) … Continue reading
[The following article in honor of National Poetry Month appeared in slightly different form in March of 2003.] John Keats created the term “negative capability,” the idea that a poem holds within it one thing as well as its opposite. For example, when we eulogize someone’s death, we also celebrate their life. When we ache … Continue reading
Our guest judge Holly Hughes, wrote this about Nancy Lamb’s essay: In this essay, the narrator recalls her first visit to Martin’s Ranch in the red rock canyons high above Santa Fe and her first experience with the landscape as sanctuary that’s still part of her today. In fresh descriptive language, the writer brings us … Continue reading
Sheila talks with urban fantasy romance writer Rashida Scholz (pen name Jasmine Silvera) about today’s romance genre as well as her own Grace Blood series which feature an alternate present-day Prague, where a mortal woman draws on the power of gods through dance in solving murders. Learn more at www.jasminesilvera.com. … Continue reading
Our contest judge Holly Hughes wrote these words in choosing Laurie McConnachie’s essay as one of our three winners: This is a deeply moving account of a daughter who lost her mother to a brain tumor when she was in her late 20s—and how she learns to move through grief and open her heart to … Continue reading
I am pleased to share another essay by a Writing It Real member. “Beginning Again with Tree Spirits” illustrates the diverse topics our members write about. Reading Katlaina’s essay will definitely change your relationship to the trees and forests in your towns and counties as well as inspire courage to write about topics you fear … Continue reading
Sheila talks with Young Adult writer Constantine Singer about his first novel, Strange Days, what writing for the Y/A audience lis ike, and his path to publication. You can visit him on facebook. … Continue reading