[When writer Philip Kenney noted in the introduction to his book, So Many Surprises: Essays 2013 — 2023, exactly when he came to know he was a writer, I realized it would be interesting to hear more such stories so … Continue reading →
In his book Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore writes about a client he saw in counseling who was having problems with food and dreamt that her esophagus was made of plastic and wasn’t reaching her stomach. Moore says: The … Continue reading →
Writing It Real contributor Philip Kenney is on a roll, publishing books of poetry, novels, and essays. For our June article, he is sharing his introduction to a new collection of essays, So Many Surprises: Essays 2013 — 2023. Many … Continue reading →
From our tiny second-floor apartment, the orange sun slipping past the horizon cast a harvest glow onto the rows of crops fanning out from the farmhouse. Sitting for Francesca’s simple farm dinner had settled an ache into my joints, and … Continue reading →
[In this essay about writing and revising his memoir, author Bill Thorness generously shares his experience creating and publishing All Roads Lead to Rome: Searching for the End of My Father’s War –ED] Inspired by a cache of letters from … Continue reading →
Last week, I posted a reading I made of my poems for Writing It Real members. The link to the YouTube video is below. This week I added the YouTube video of a reading I gave outdoors in Port Townsend … Continue reading →
This is the day I turned 77. It is a good day for review and reflection. I came to the writing life seriously when I began studying poetry as a non-matriculating student at the University of Washington near my home … Continue reading →
This month I am delighted to share a recent interview I had by email with Writing It Real member Merle R. Saferstein about a book project dear to her heart. I think readers will be inspired not only by the … Continue reading →
Whether we live on farms or in city apartments, grow up in logging camps or in suburban homes, move all over the world or remain in just one town, take on unusual jobs or work at home, we too often … Continue reading →
Writing It Real contributor Philip Kenney has a new novel out, The Mercy Dialogues, and this month I “talked” via email with him about the premise of the novel, his reason for writing it, and what that experience was like. … Continue reading →
Author Susan Luzader has had an inspiring book publishing journey, and this month our Writing It Real article explores it with her. Visit her website Wine and Cereal: An Irreverent Look at Sixty-ish and Single to sign up for her … Continue reading →
We are excited to announce the digital publication of Writing It Real members’ newest anthology! The essays and poems in it tackle the subject of listening to or refusing to listen to advice. We hope you enjoy reading the entries … Continue reading →
There are so many times that our minds are cluttered with responsibilities and obligations and worries. These are the times that we are upset with ourselves for not writing and instead, we dig deeper into what is keeping us from … Continue reading →
Writing It Real Contributor Judy Gruen has a second memoir out. I had the lucky experience of interviewing her about how she came to write her memoir, Writing Bylines and Blessings, Overcoming Obstacles, Striving for Excellence and Redefining Success, and … Continue reading →
Dating mature women offers a unique and fulfilling experience that goes beyond conventional relationships. These confident, self-assured women bring a refreshing dynamic to dating, prioritizing authenticity, mutual respect, and emotional connection. Whether you’re intrigued by the idea or already considering … Continue reading →
I am grieving today. This week has brought a firestorm of events that are devastating for an elder with daughters and grandchildren. The January 6 hearings have been riveting, dignified, terrifying and clarifying. If we don’t clear out all the … Continue reading →
Years ago, I was flying Southwest Airlines from Seattle to Tucson where I was going to teach a weekend writing class. Southwest Airlines gave boarding passes at the gate, first come, first serve, and then loaded their planes in boarding … Continue reading →
Originally Posted on December 11, 2013 by Sheila Bender Writing depends on our willingness to observe closely and our ability to allow ourselves to engage emotionally with what we are observing. So often, though, we don’t remember to take time to … Continue reading →
Poet and cat lover, David D. Horowitz hatched the idea of creating an anthology of cat poems he would call Purr and Yowl: An Anthology of Poetry About Cats. Putting together any book of poems, whether one of one’s own … Continue reading →
Ruth Linnea Whitney is a novelist who has lived in Port Townsend, WA, on the Olympic Peninsula for decades. She is also a woman who has traveled extensively to third world countries with her doctor husband, who many times over … Continue reading →
Tarn Wilson tells us: When I was in my twenties, I joined a writing group of more experienced writers, which, for fifteen years, felt like having my own creative writing graduate program. Mike Karpa was a founding member of that … Continue reading →
The Fog Casey wandered the Port Authority bus terminal, newly disembarked off her bus from Memphis and feeling like midtown Manhattan had punched her in the face. A guy approached. The man looked like a farmworker who’d wandered in straight … Continue reading →
On a summertime road trip between Newport, Oregon and Seattle, Washington, I started writing a book with my friend. As we sped up I-5 I sang to the highway exit signs: “The book you hold in your hands is a … Continue reading →
This week we are hearing from author and Writing It Real member Morgan Baker. You can listen to her reading an excerpt of her memoir Emptying the Nest: How to Get Better at Saying Goodbyes during an interview with Hippocampus … Continue reading →
This month’s publishing article and book excerpt comes from Writing It Real member Rhonda Wiley-Jones. Kirkus Reviews summarizes her book Song of Herself, Atmosphere Press, September 22, this way: Wiley-Jones packs her narrative with a plethora of captivating themes and … Continue reading →
Dorothy Ross’s memoir, NOT Just a Secretary, holds all the alertness and wry humor she evidenced during her years at work and in retirement. She shares a spirited description of getting her book written and then out there followed by … Continue reading →
One afternoon as I lay in bed staring at the ceiling and recovering from a near-brush with heatstroke, an idea for a short story popped into my head: What if a teenager in, say, the year 2039 started railing against … Continue reading →
For decades I jotted down phrases that captured images that came to me—a dollhouse staircase, a cat lapping sunlit water, or icicles reflecting a sunset like jeweled daggers—then stuffed them in folders or slid them in desk drawers. I never … Continue reading →
Philip Kenney and I met pre-pandemic at a Northwest Writers Association Conference in Seattle when we presented on the same panel. I was introduced to his book The Writer’s Crucible: Meditations on Emotion, Being and Creativity, which had been a … Continue reading →
Writing While Masked: Reflections on 2020 and Beyond By Mary Ann Gonzales, Tyson Greer, Wanda Herndon, Laura Celise Lippman, Jane Spalding, Suzanne Tedesko, and Beth Weir, Published by Washington State University Imprint Basalt Books, 2022 Description from the publisher’s website: … Continue reading →
The how, when, where, and why of the process – (the who is my “collected” writing selves) Early in 2021, a full year into the pandemic, I signed up to listen to Canadian writer and self-described writing “mid-wife,” Traci Skuce … Continue reading →
Exiled South is a dual time-line novel, that poses the question, can a contemporary woman’s international quest heal family wounds going back to the Civil War? After a personal tragedy, Lizbeth Gordon, returns to her home state of South Carolina … Continue reading →
My Path to Publication of Apertures: Findings from a Rural Life from Shanti Arts Publishing, September 2022 Premise My book, Apertures: Findings from a Rural Life, is a memoir-in-essays, following the examples of David Lazar’s Body of Brooklyn and Harrison … Continue reading →
On the Creation of Green River Saga, a Novel by Michael W. Shurgot and Rick O’Shea Sunstone Press, Santa Fe, April 2020 When I retired as Professor of Humanities from South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia in 2006, I … Continue reading →
I am asking for Writing It Real members to write articles about their book creation and publishing experience. We kick off the series this first month of 2023 with an article about the story behind the publication of Telling Tales … Continue reading →
Each year, exactly two weeks before Hanukkah and beginning the year our family immigrated to the U.S.A., Aunt Esther and Mom began their debates. We had moved to a suburb only a fifteen-minute drive from Esther, my mother’s sister. The … Continue reading →
I write this on Tuesday, the 20th of December 2022, the third of eight days, along with other Jews, that I will celebrate the holiday of Chanukah, the Festival of Lights. Each night at sundown we light the candles on … Continue reading →
Each holiday season I buy about six to eight gift cards, redeemable at a coffee shop or bookstore. I tape one gift card to a greeting card and mail it to a particular friend. The greeting cards are not holiday … Continue reading →
I am excited to introduce you again to author and poet Alison Townsend. I have been reading her beautiful lyric prose and poetry for years. I admire her sense of place and nature in what she writes. With the publication … Continue reading →
Nowhere But Up from Here Dinner was ready to serve. Turkey, dressing, spices, pumpkin pie … the traditional Thanksgiving smells wafted through my sister’s small suburban home. It was nearly dark out. The cloudy day had dampened the sunset and … Continue reading →
It was the year I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, leaving the boarding school where I’d been teaching in western Massachusetts. I was living in an apartment – actually, the 2nd floor of an old home that had been carved into … Continue reading →
In autumn turkeys grace the field in front of our house almost daily. Lately, these visitors, often up to twenty-five, have come closer to the house, maybe to forage fallen apples from the tree in the front yard. Or maybe … Continue reading →
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, hey, you guys, Mom made seven pies this time, two cherry, two apple and three pumpkin! She made cinnamon rolls and bread, too.” We had to wait to eat until Uncle Mac, Aunt … Continue reading →
In mid-October 1969, my twin daughters were born a month early. After a few days in the hospital, we brought them home. What followed were days and nights filled with them drinking only an ounce or two of formula before … Continue reading →
This month, I am pleased to introduce you to Florida author Merle R. Saferstein and her goal of helping others create legacy writing. She was director of educational outreach at the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center in Miami, FL and … Continue reading →
As we end October, here is a link to a recent short (8-minute) interview podcast with me on why I write and why I believe in the value of facilitating others’ writing. I always enjoy writing about writing and why … Continue reading →
My husband was a schoolteacher and we lived in a very small town. He didn’t want our children trick-or-treating and I said we had to do something special for Halloween. So, we compromised. We seldom ate dinner at a restaurant … Continue reading →
40 minutes with Marcia Breece of Publishing Partners in Conversation with Sheila Bender offers writers a complete understanding of what a book designer and publishing partner can do for anyone interested in self-publishing. The information is also useful for small … Continue reading →
Things that Go Grrrr in the Night by Marlene Samuels One particular year, Beggar’s Night fell on a Saturday. As luck would have it, it also was the Saturday evening our parents had, uncharacteristically, left us home alone longer than … Continue reading →
Happier Halloweens by Julie Trout Jake was happy with any holiday, but Kirsten had a favorite. Halloween. We dressed up, carved pumpkins, baked goodies, ate candy, and decorated the house with spiderwebs and green glitter. I loved watching my kids … Continue reading →
It Wasn’t Easy Being Green by Pat LaPointe Many people might call Mom “creative.” As a witness and often the “victim” of her creativity, I would define it as “wacko.” One would need no more proof of this distinction than … Continue reading →
My Mom’s Good Taste by Carol Blatter Mom was very fussy about how I looked when I went to school. She had very good taste and she could go through a rack of dresses at almost the speed of a … Continue reading →
Conversation Starter by David D. Horowitz As a child, I always regretted the end of summer vacation. How I loved waking late, playing softball until dusk, and gathering afterward with friends for sodas, ice cream, and raucous conversation. School offered … Continue reading →
Memoir: First Grade by Julia Blocksma My enthusiasm knew no bounds: I was going to start first grade, in a school in America! After years in Lahore, Pakistan, where my father, a surgeon, had helped start a hospital just after World … Continue reading →
I am pleased to publish my interview with author Kathy Harmon-Luber, a colleague, poet, and non-fiction writer whose book will touch many. Hearing from her on how she approached writing her book, organized her effort to write it, and then … Continue reading →
For our last week’s August posting two more Writing It Real members have sent in short essays about summer memories. I know you will relate and remember your own summer games and family time as you read. It is so … Continue reading →
My Parents’ House by Suzy Beal This twelve-hour drive begins in the dark hours of the early morning. Little girls strapped in their sleeping bags in the VW van, puppy at their feet in her box. Did I remember their … Continue reading →
Outcomes By Judy Kvinsland The summer that I turned six years old, my parents bought our family home, a fifty-year-old shingled craftsman perched on a hillside in tiny Harper, WA on the Kitsap peninsula mainland, about seven miles from the … Continue reading →
Last week I begged for more essays and here are three generously shared by Writing It Real members for our post this week. Thank you three! Love Anyway by Sandra Hurtes It was a hot night in August 1969. My … Continue reading →
Meeting My Sister in the Big Easy For Maurine By Nancy Levinson It’s a sauna not inside outside it’s June in New Orleans after all yet my younger sister and I are weathering the stifling air laughing at vanilla … Continue reading →
Writing It Real member David D. Horowitz offers his memories of playing softball and baseball as a child. We learn and remember that even our best memories can be tinged by the experience of difficult situations. Whether your own memories … Continue reading →
It’s summer, oh, those lazy days. When was the last time you had one of those lazy days? If you are lucky, there were one or more of them and not too long ago. But with the political turmoil in … Continue reading →
When times become threatening, dangerous, and oppressive, we must write to show our humanity and influence others to do the same. Writing It Real member David D. Horowitz shares his thoughts. I hope that encourages others to take to the … Continue reading →
Waking up each morning to learn what new horror has been committed inside this country, most often by white young men filled with hate, and what the NRA hypocritically says about their prayers and condolences while all the while they … Continue reading →
I was delighted to receive submissions over this past week from Mona Anderson and David D. Horowitz, and I very much hope for more Writing It Real member writing to post next week as we close out May. It has … Continue reading →
I have the request out for people to write about the merry month of May and two Writing It Real members have shared work on the subject. First, we hear from Robert Komishane and enjoy his sense of humor and … Continue reading →
And we wind up National Poetry Month with two more short essays on impactful poems chosen by Writing It Real members. It has been a month of learning about poems new to us and poems to revisit. Thank you to … Continue reading →
Writing It Real member David D. Horowitz shares the impact on him of a 1681 poem by John Dryden. David operates an active poetry press, Rose Alley Press and writes poetry and essays. Visit his website to learn more about … Continue reading →
Thank you, Judy Kvinsland, for reminding us of just how important poetry is when we are grieving. The healing it offers deep into our experience is incomparable. And in times of need, it is miraculous that poetry reaches out to … Continue reading →
One of my Favorite Poems is “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes. It is too long to include in this letter but may be found at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43187/the-highwayman. Hearing it read was the first time that I understood the power of poetry. … Continue reading →
We wrap up our epistolary writing for March with a joyful letter from Richard Elam about his writing life at age 93. Richard Elam Writes to My Husband and Me About His Writing Since He Moved from the Northwest to … Continue reading →
Whether we want to explain ourselves to readers and editors and thereby to ourselves or use what we lament about our publishing process to help others along the path in publishing, writing about it helps us as writers and builds … Continue reading →
This week we post two letters by Writing It Real members about why they have or are writing their books, one by member Desiree Woodland to the people she hopes will read her book because of their contact with young … Continue reading →
March epistolary essays have begun arriving. This week enjoy two Writing It Real members’ letters to their books’ audiences. Whether you are writing to explain yourself to your audience (and thus to yourself) when it comes to the book you … Continue reading →
Here are three more epistolary works to round out our February posts. I hope you will leave the author comments at the article’s end and go to the other postings from February to read even more from Writing It Real … Continue reading →
Our February epistolary writing posts continue this week.! I am grateful to Marlene Samuels and Kurt VanderSluis (co-founder of Writing it Real) for their pieces, Marlene’s to her mother, and Kurt’s to his father. Each piece is poignant and addresses … Continue reading →
We are off to a good start for our February epistolary writing! I am grateful to David Horowitz for writing a piece for us to post this week. I also tried my hand at writing in this form and am … Continue reading →
Dear Mother, Dear Father, Dear Sister, Dear Brother, Dear Grandmother, Dear Grandfather, Dear Aunt, Dear Uncle, Dear Friend, Dear Neighbor, Dear Librarian, Dear Doctor, Dear Professor, Dear Roommate, Dear EX, Dear College Advisor, Dear Therapist— Who in your life had … Continue reading →
Introduction As a poet and essayist, my canvas is life. Its array of hues, emotions, and experiences come together to form a symphony of words. Each verse, a story, and each sentence, a testament to life’s manifold beauty. But the … Continue reading →
This week we finish off our January postings with two more open letters to those who tried to discourage our writing. I think you will enjoy these two and hope you catch up on reading the others posted all month. … Continue reading →
I am so happy to be posting two more letters to those who discouraged you as writers. I know we all resonate with these situations. And again, I hope to see more of these letters in my inbox by 1/25 … Continue reading →
This week’s writings come to us via members Howard Tanzman and Julie Hayward-Trout. You will relate and you will chuckle after you’ve read them both, and who doesn’t need to feel affirmed and amused to balance the ship of authorship? … Continue reading →
This month we have three examples so far of letters to persons or entities who have tried to dampen enthusiasm for writing with criticism, by limiting opportunities or by nurturing self-doubt. Thank you Writing It Real members David D. Horowitz, … Continue reading →
This week’s writings come from Cyndi Lloyd, Amy Muscoplat, and Lizbeth Hartz. I hope you enjoy these three and have enjoyed all of those from the past three weeks. Merry Christmas! Dear Mrs. Claus by Cyndi Lloyd 12 Dec. 2021 … Continue reading →
This week’s Dear Santa writings come from Nancy Levinson, Christy Schwan, Barbara Simmons, and Mona Anderson. I hope you enjoy reading them. Nancy Levinson, Dear Santa Dear Santa (s) I am scrambling through photo albums and shoeboxes of collected letters, … Continue reading →
December 2021 brings to Writing It Real adult letters to Santa from members who contributed their thoughts, memories, and requests to the icon of Christmas for children and the parents who helped them believe in a beneficent universal spirit. It … Continue reading →
December 2021 brings to Writing It Real adult letters to Santa from members who contributed their thoughts, memories, and requests to the icon of Christmas for children and the parents who helped them believe in a beneficent universal spirit. It … Continue reading →
Authors Brenda Miller and Julie Marie Wade have published a book of collaborative essays rich in imagery and music. Published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center, Telephone: essays in two voices is, according to award-winning poet and essayist, Hanif Abdurraqib, … Continue reading →
“Memoir that bears witness to history, I’ve come to realize, is never a simple matter of finishing,” author Mimi Schwartz writes at the end of the preface to her new memoir, Good Neighbors, Bad Times Revisited, about her Jewish father’s … Continue reading →
I was very fortunate to receive my copy of Tarn Wilson’s new book, In Praise of Inadequate Gifts, a Memoir in Essays the day before I left for 11 days of wandering beaches along the Oregon Coast. On the road … Continue reading →
Years ago, before my father died of Parkinson’s disease, I interviewed him about his life as a young man and wrote what I now see as an oral history. Twenty years after his death, I have revisited that piece and … Continue reading →
I am so pleased to share news of Brenda Miller’s new book, A Braided Heart: Essays on Writing and Form, available now for pre-order ahead of the July 13 release date. She has answered questions I posed to her and … Continue reading →
Recently, I was going through a box of saved drafts from decades ago. I had forgotten about the box and the poems inside. But the pandemic-induced itch to go through papers and clean up my studio had me in its … Continue reading →
Earlier this spring, I received a review copy of Writing the Novella by Sharon Oard Warner, and I continue to pore over it. I have loved many novellas in my time, often without even realizing they are novellas. Warner’s method … Continue reading →
In March, my husband and I ran into Joanne while we were out walking and she was returning home from a walk. Over the CDC prescribed distance, we remembered the radio interview she had done with me for KPTZ, and … Continue reading →
Today is the first day of National Poetry Month 2021. I am posting an interview with James Sulzer, a remarkable writer, who spoke with me about writing two novels that not only celebrate two of history’s favorite and most influential … Continue reading →
Product Name Modafinil (Provigil) Tablet Strength 100mg, 200mg Best Price $0.88 per pill Payment Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, BTC Shipping Worldwide Where to Buy? Buy Now Modafinil (Provigil) is a powerful wakefulness-promoting agent that helps combat excessive sleepiness, fatigue, and … Continue reading →
Writing It Real member Mara Lathrop created a project during the pandemic that offers us a chance to experience her play Is Story of Poor Sea Village Girl directed by Cynthia Stokes and performed by SAG actors, Mark Lewis and … Continue reading →
In 2018 and 19, I worked with Writing It Real member Marilea C. Rabasa consulting on a second memoir she was compelled to write and wanted very much to get right. She wasn’t happy with the way it was unwinding … Continue reading →
Here it is in PDF format: Holiday Times: The Ones We Like Remembering, Others We’d Rather Forget, our third Writing It Real anthology for free download. It features writing by 17 Writing It Real members and altogether has 18 pieces … Continue reading →
On Creative Writing “The world — this shadow of the soul, or other me, lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys, which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself. I run eagerly into this resounding tumult…” –Ralph … Continue reading →
I am very pleased to introduce author Helen Donnelly Goehring live via Zoom. I think you will enjoy Helen’s discussion of how she came to writing and specifically to writing her book Transformed by Grief, published recently in Helen’s 88th … Continue reading →
I am pleased to share an essay by Writing It Real member Helen Donnelly Goehring from her recently published collection, Transformed by Grief: A Personal History. Helen’s essay “Taking Notes: Assisted Living” was a winner in Writing It Real’s 2012 … Continue reading →
Last week, we posted Chapter 40 of Jennifer Jamieson Woods’ autobiographical novel No Guarantees. This week’s post is an interview with the author about writing the novel she needed to write. Sheila Jennifer, thank you for sharing the story of … Continue reading →
Chapter 40 of No Guarantees Josie went to work as usual on Monday morning. Although she was a person who found comfort in the predictable rhythm of life, today she felt irritated and bored with her life. She felt stuck … Continue reading →
I am delighted to introduce authors Dave Cunningham and C.K. Tyler who have collaborated on a newly published novel entitled What Loves Feels Like: The Dawn of Human 2.0. In the video below and the Q&A following, the two speak … Continue reading →
The Writing It Real August 2020 article is a compilation of writings by Writing It Real members for On Mishearing: Miseries, Mysteries, and Misbehaviors. EBook Formats We will soon have three different formats available. Which one you choose depends on … Continue reading →
Sheila is speaking with Charlie Fleishman, the sound engineer she worked with creating recordings for the program that aired for over six years on KPTZ.org 91.9. They discuss what went into creating the programs and most importantly what it mean … Continue reading →
This month’s article is a video of a discussion many of us have been waiting for! I am talking with Marcella Smith, publishing consultant and Barnes and Noble career book buyer. In our conversation, Marcella fills in gaps for us … Continue reading →
Sheila is talking with Oregon writer Richard Weeks about the memoirs he writes about times past, decade by decade. A retired high school teacher, Weeks has honed the ability to tell stories that engage and delight.
Continue reading →Sheila is speaking with Portland, Oregon poet and spiritual director Peg Edera about her work with others and her poetry collection Love Is Deeper Than Distance: Poems of Love, Death, a Little Sex, Als, Dementia and the Widow’s Life Thereafter … Continue reading →
Port Townsend poet Gerry McFarland reads from his poetry collection The Making, as he and Sheila talk about the collection and about the source of his poems.
Continue reading →Sheila is talking with Philip Kenney, therapist and author, about how he came to writing, his new writing, and about his book The Writer’s Crucible: Meditations on Emotion, Being and Creativity.
Continue reading →You may have already read Maya Smith’s description of how she is approaching the writing of her book about the life of Alvenia Bridges, a woman of many lives. She answered questions about obstacles and joys of writing the … Continue reading →
Maya Angela Smith is an associate professor of Francophone studies at the University of Washington, Seattle with a PhD in Romance Languages and Linguistics from UC Berkeley. Her scholarship broadly focuses on the intersection of race, language, and mobility among marginalized groups in the … Continue reading →
Sheila is talking with Washington State Book Award winner in memoir, Brenda Miller, about her updated third edition of the co-authored classic Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining and Publishing Creative Nonfiction.
Continue reading →William Kenower is the author of Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write With Confidence, and Write Within Yourself: An Author’s Companion, and the Editor-in-Chief of Author Magazine. In addition to his books he’s been published in The New … Continue reading →
On February 6, Poet William Mawhinney presented his farewell as the 13-year host of the Port Townsend Washington Northwind Poetry Reading series. At the start of National Poetry Month, his message will inspire all of us to listen to poetry … Continue reading →
Sheila is talking with Los Angeles novelist Robin Page about Small Silent Things, her novel in three voices.
Continue reading →Sheila is talking with Everett, WA fiction writer Sue Pace about her short story collection and how those stories came about.
Continue reading →The Writing It Real March 2020 article is a compilation of writings by Writing It Real members on a topic dear to our hearts–how and why we write. EBook Formats We have 3 different formats. Which ones you choose depends … Continue reading →
Sheila is talking with Mindy Pollack, Boston newspaper feature writer and first-time novelist, about her novel and her transition to writing fiction.
Continue reading →Sheila is talking with Port Townsend poet Joanne Clarkson about her poetry and how family and a nursing career have influenced her work.
Continue reading →Sheila is talking to KPTZ radio soap opera playwright Susan Solley about her show the Port Ludlow Project, a zany episodic comedy.
Continue reading →When I received a review copy of Take Daily As Needed, Kathryn Trueblood’s “novel in stories” from University of New Mexico press, I dove right into reading it. A novel in stories sounded a lot like how I often advocate … Continue reading →
Sheila is talking with poet Tess Gallagher, a 2020 WA State Booksellers’ Award winner, about who and what have and continue to inspire her poems and creative life.
Continue reading →Sheila is talking with mathematician Virginia Thompson about her book series Family Math, the continuing project she created with others decades ago. We learn how activities in one’s passion area become books that help many more than one can meet … Continue reading →
Christina Baldwin is a writer and teacher whose work is embedded in community-making and story-catching. She is co-founder, with Ann Linnea, of PeerSpirit,Inc. and The Circle Way Process, bringing modern structure and application to the human heritage of circle. Christina … Continue reading →
I visited Istanbul for almost a month recently, and while I was there, I spent a morning with members of Writing It Real member Yesim Cimcoz’s Yazi Evi (Writing House–you can read Yesim’s essay on the project’s beginning and growth … Continue reading →
Sheila is talking with poet Dianne Avey about her poetry, the value it has for those in grief, and her experience directing a small writer’s conference on the Pacific Northwest island she calls home.
Continue reading →Introduction to an Excerpt from Tell it Slant (Available from Powell’s and Amazon as well as your favorite bookseller). By Brenda Miller In 2001, when Suzanne Paola and I began talking about writing a textbook for creative nonfiction, no such … Continue reading →
Sheila is talking with Toni Kennedy about her memoir, Far from Home, in which she explores the family life and personal attributes that led her to become a nun as well as leave the order 25 years later for secular … Continue reading →
We know that writing requires a kind of sacred attention to what we see, hear, taste, touch and feel in our surroundings and memories. It can be difficult, though, to linger in those places when time flies swiftly by. It … Continue reading →
Sheila is speaking with the Director of the International Association for Journal Writing (IAJW.org) about her goals for the organization and how journaling helps people heal and transform their lives.
Continue reading →Sheila is talking with novelist Molly Tinsley about her new novel, Things Too Big to Name, a literary mystery with a touch of the paranormal, all in the service of the protagonist’s deep self-reflection about a purposeful life.
Continue reading →This week, wanting so much to write on the day that would have been my son’s 44th birthday, but not knowing how to put my heart-filled words on the page, I reread “Canoe” by Sherrie Flick, a story in 446 … Continue reading →
Sheila is talking with poet and book artist Marilyn Stablein about how her travels as a young woman and interest in the visual arts have influenced her career in writing and creating.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with award-winning journalist and film reviewer Kirk Boxleitner about his career in community journalism.
Continue reading →This spring, thrilled to be reading a new novel by Molly Best Tinsley, both a teaching colleague and Writing It Real contributor, I was even more thrilled to have found a novel that I could not put down from the … Continue reading →
Words: Sheila speaks with Seattle area poet Edward Harkness about his poetry career and teaching from its beginnings to his newest volume of poetry, The Law of the Unforeseen, and his most recent poems.
Continue reading →A Princeton professor I once read while for some reason I had no pen or device to record his name and the name of the article wrote that when we read a novel we are speeding up time as one … Continue reading →
I am reposting an article form the 2012 archives with exercises for using the epistolary form to stay inspired and to keep writing. I had been a reader of letters to Ann Landers and other newspaper columnists to whom the … Continue reading →
Shella is talking with poet John Delaney about his writing, both in the 1970s when he was earning his MFA, and his return to poetry now that he has retired from a career curating old maps for Princeton University’s library.
Continue reading →Sheila is talking with poet Gary Lilley about his new books, his start in poetry and what writing and teaching poetry means to him.
Continue reading →Emma Lazarus’ 1893 sonnet engraved on a plaque on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty has been made famous again this week. The New Colossus Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land … Continue reading →
Sheila is talking with KPTZ sound engineer Fleishman about his own writing, his work with authors and his accomplished editing for “In Conversation: Discussions on Writing and the Writing Life.” Learn more about Charlie here.
Continue reading →Sheila is talking with L.A. screenwriter Ariadne Shaffer, about her work, how she transitioned from acting to screenwriting, and the best ways for others to enter the field. Learn more about Ariadne here.
Continue reading →The list is endless, of course, but here are some of my favorites. First, four more podcasts from the Writing It Real archives and then seven more resources I’ve learned about and very much enjoyed recently. My hope is that … Continue reading →
Every month, two of my 30-minute interviews with writers air on KPTZ 91.9 FM. Over many years now, I have interviewed not only well-published poets, journalists, novelists, memoirists and other creative nonfiction writers, but those who are at the beginnings … Continue reading →
A few months ago, I was listening to Ira Glass on NPR while doing an errand. He was talking with David Kestenbaum about a preschool experiment in which kids were encouraged to say their complaints about unfairness into an unconnected … Continue reading →
This week I am posting links to 20 sites that I’ve been “reading around” online. It’s summer and supposed to be those slow, lazy days, but there is so much going on for so many of us, that we may … Continue reading →
NINE TRAVEL JOURNALING EXERCISES Exercise 1 – Ask For What You Want As one of my first entries, I set goals or ask for what I want from a trip. The activities are slightly different: setting goals implies I have … Continue reading →
Sheila is talking with poet Lauren Davis about her poetry and participation in Port Townsend’s literary community.
Continue reading →[Summer often means travel and/or entertaining guests who have traveled to see you. Often times, we think of this as taking time away from our writing, but keeping a travel journal can keep us writing during our travels and during … Continue reading →
Following the opinion pieces by Amy Hewes posted over the past two weeks, here is instruction on writing the argument and persuasion personal essay. It appeared in Writing It Real in 2014. I look forward to hearing from you in … Continue reading →
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 … 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 … 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, … 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 … 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 … 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 … 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 … Continue reading →
Sheila is talking with Stewart 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 … 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 … 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.” … 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 … 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. … Continue reading →
Drug Name: Clomid (Clomiphene) Tablet Strength: 100 mg, 50 mg, 25 mg Price: from $0.49 per pill How to Buy Order Now Clomid (Clomiphene) is a widely prescribed fertility medication that helps stimulate ovulation and increase the likelihood of … 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 … 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 … 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 … 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 … 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 →I met poet, novelist, and playwright Gary Langford through a long time friend of mine who met Gary years ago in Australia when they were both young men. In the years since, Gary has written in many genres, run a … Continue reading →
As Black History Month ends and we have learned more about black religious leaders, scientists, politicians, professors, film directors, sports figures, journalists, poets and authors, among many other professions, those of other ethnicities have had an opportunity to reflect on … Continue reading →
Sheila is talking with CO poet Laura Weaver about her work in Luminous: Poems and Inquiry for the Soul’s Journey. Learn more about Laura at lauraweaver.org.
Continue reading →Writing It Real contributor Carol Smallwood is a poet with several volumes to her name, a retired career librarian who has produced books of value to those who direct and run libraries and educational programs, and she is the editor … Continue reading →
The relationship began three winters ago. Driving a country road in the early dusk, I hit a deer–or as a knowledgeable friend suggested afterward, a deer hit me. A buck with branching antlers leaped from the trees on one side … Continue reading →
Sheila is talking with CA poet and professor Kevin Clark about his poetry, career in poetry and teaching. Visit kevinclarkpoetry.com to learn more about him.
Continue reading →What is flash writing and why do authors like to write flash pieces? It’s quicker to write than a novel or memoir. It’s a challenge to see how much you can say with a short word limit, up 500 to … Continue reading →
According to Webster’s II New Riverside University Dictionary, commitment means “the state of being bound emotionally or intellectually to an ideal or course of action.” Emotionally or intellectually are good words for the writer to fuse. To keep on writing … Continue reading →
This week’s article is a second excerpt from Rebecca McClanahan’s instructional book Write Your Heart Out: Exploring & Expressing What Matters To You, published by Walking Stick Press. It originaly appeared in 2003. One of the problems with being a … Continue reading →
Sheila is talking with William Powers about his memoir Dispatches from the Sweet Life: One Family, Five Acres, and a Community’s Quest to Reinvent the World. You can learn more about his book, his life in building sustainable communities on his website williampowersbooks.com.
Continue reading →It’s time for some post-New Year’s inspiration so I am reposting a slightly updated article that is full of quotes to inspire and approaches to creating new material from that inspiration. Thirteen years ago, my grandson Toby turned three. All … Continue reading →
Writing poetry, no matter what genre you usually work in, is truly an experience of re-creating a self. In writing poems from experience and from meditative and reflective moments, you become the maker of something that builds increased intimacy with … Continue reading →
Sheila is talking with WA novelist Peter Donahue about his approach to historical fiction and writing about place as he authored There Sides Water: Three Short Novels, each set in a different decade and location on the Olympic Peninsula.
Continue reading →In this video, I talk for ten minutes with Bill Kenower about my beginnings as a writer and what I know now about the craft and about the value of a life path in writing. Bill asked me some intriguing questions, … Continue reading →
Sheila is talking with Port Townsend writer David Cunningham about his career from sports writing to screen writing to his present new novel (What Love Feels Like: The Dawn of Human 2.0) and spiritual writing (Travel Within: The 7 Steps … Continue reading →
About the size of my palm, the orange glass turtle with stout yellow feet has been with me since 1972. We started out in Matawan, New Jersey, where my 7th-grade class presented him to me as a goodbye gift–I was … Continue reading →
It is holiday time and amidst the tornado-like whirl of shopping, decorating, traveling, baking, cooking, and gathering with family, friends, colleagues and community, of offering help in shelters and churches, it may seem hard to write. And even harder still … Continue reading →
Sheila is talking with CA poet, novelist and Emeritus Professor about her writing and her career efforts to advance environmental awareness and women’s opportunities to publish their writing.
Continue reading →The two flash stories I am sharing this week offer you kernels for writing clever stories yourself. A Story with a Joke at Its Center Click over to “World’s Best Joke” https://www.passagesnorth.com/archives/issue-34/worlds-best-joke/ by Allen Woodman, one of my favorite short, … Continue reading →
I haven’t posted in the Writing It Real category of “Writing Makes a Difference” in a while now as I’ve concentrated on writing exercises to keep you inspired. This week, though, I am returning to that category to share Susan … Continue reading →
Sheila is speaking with Nahid Rachlin about her new novella published online and her long career writing memoir and fiction.
Continue reading →Writing Flash Memoir is great exercise for writers. I’ve been experiencing this in my own writing and editing and in the classes I have been teaching online and in-person. Getting to the point and writing tight while still relying on details … Continue reading →
Sheila is speaking with Vashon Island elementary school teacher Margie Butcher about the way she facilitates her young students in writing grant proposals for environmental awareness projects in their school and community.
Continue reading →We praise writing for its voice, but run into problems when we try to describe exactly what it is we’re responding to. Just as we each have an identifiable voice when we speak, there is something we call a writer’s … Continue reading →
Tuesday, as I waited for election returns, I thought of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl,” written in 1955, so full of despair at what he had seen around him. I wondered what I would howl when I found out whether or … Continue reading →
“The Institute for Propaganda Analysis: Protecting Democracy in Pre-World War II America,” an article authored by Zachary Reisch and kept in the Bryn Mawr Institutional Library, offers clarification about the exploration of propaganda in our country. “What is democracy?” Reisch … Continue reading →
Sheila is speaking with poet Susan Landgraf about how she came to poetry, how her career as a poet began, and how it culminated in numerous published poetry collections.
Continue reading →For the past month, I have been teaching an online class in writing in the flash subgenre. Last Saturday, I taught an all-day in-person seminar on the genre. So, this week, I am sharing some of my lesson ideas and … Continue reading →
…the heart…and the learned skills of the conscious mind… make appointments with each other, and keep them, and something begins to happen. Mary Oliver A Poetry Handbook Whether you are someone who sets out to write poems, essays, stories … Continue reading →
Sheila is talking with Port Townsend oncology therapist Tess Taft about how counseling her clients living with cancer diagnoses led her to become a writer. Google her name and learn about her talks and books.
Continue reading →Essayist, nonfiction author and poet Priscilla Long has given me permission to share an excerpt from her recently released new edition of her already classic book for writers, The Writer’s Portable Mentor. All of Priscilla’s advice is clear and sound. … Continue reading →
Sheila is speaking with Marrowstone Island, WA’s new romance writer Rachel Fordham about how she started writing and publishing while mothering her own children and fostering other children.
Continue reading →Here is a collection of writing ideas to keep you going for days as our schedules start to fill with fall commitments and shorter daylight. Let the Seasons’ Personas Inspire You to Write It’s the change of seasons now. Some … Continue reading →
Sheila is speaking with former Seattle resident, poet and songwriter, John O’Connor about how he came to writing poems and winning a distinguished contest for publication of his first volume.
Continue reading →As I update an earlier book of mine, A Year in the Life: Journaling for Self-Discovery, I will be sharing some of my favorite writing exercises with you over the next few weeks. Here’s the first of several lessons I … Continue reading →
When I was in third grade, my teacher asked me to write a Chanukah play to be presented along with a Christmas play for the kids in my class. I am not sure how she identified me as a writer. … Continue reading →
Sheila is speaking with Ellen Forney, Seattle cartoonist and graphic nonfiction book writer, about her career, her teaching, and her recent work about bi-polar disorder.
Continue reading →Pam Robinson’s entry into the fall 2011 Writing It Real contest is an essay about her memories of her mother’s cooking and life on a farm. As I spend time harvesting onions, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, various beans, Asian pears and … Continue reading →
The first Labor Day was celebrated by some on September 5, 1882, when Knights of Labor leader Peter J. McGuire requested that the first Monday in September be a day of rest for American workers. A parade in New York … Continue reading →
Sheila Bender talks with Marrowstone Island, WA’s Michael Buschmohle about writing tips and his career in helping writers create and edit effective email, speeches, blogs and more.
Continue reading →I was sitting at my dining table this morning with a cup of coffee looking out over the still smoky and haze-ridden sky we had experienced on the Olympic Peninsula for a week because of fires in Eastern Washington and … Continue reading →
August is the Gregorian calendar month named after the Roman Augustus Caesar, the man responsible for spreading the Roman Empire over the earth. He wrote about his great accomplishments, writings some think of as the typical age-old boastings of a … Continue reading →
This past weekend, I was in conversation with fiction writer and memoirist Nahid Rachlin about her books and writing career. for my radio show on KPTZ ?In Conversation: Discussions on Writing and the Writing Life.? It had been over a … Continue reading →
Sheila is speaking with author Robert Devereux McEliece about his reasons for writing a memoir about his boyhood and time in the armed forces.
Continue reading →Creative writing requires that we create experience through our words. We can’t just say a day was amazing, or it was depressing, or that a character felt ecstatic about something without our readers becoming disengaged. If we do that we … Continue reading →
Sheila is talking with retired Alaska Glacier National Park ranger Daniel Zobrist about the picture book he’s published to help children (and adults) understand glaciers, how they form and how they move. Author Dan Zobrist Shows off New Children’s Book … Continue reading →
I am so enjoying reading Patricia Hampl’s The Art of the Wasted Day. Early in the book, page 18, she records one of her many to-do lists. She says first that she admires Montaigne, know as the father of the … Continue reading →
Sheila is talking with Jonathan Stratman about his five novels, three for middle grades and two adult mysteries, each set in the Alaska of his growing up. Learn more on the author’s Amazon page.
Continue reading →Years ago, a poet friend of mine, Jim Mitsui, ended a poem with an image of people “following their keys home.” That image has lingered with me as a lesson about what the writing life saves us from, which is … Continue reading →
[This article originally appeared online for the Eleven Stories online writing program.– Ed.] My mother called me after the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to talk about the bride’s gown. The daughter of a ladies coats and suit … Continue reading →
Sheila is speaking with Tin House editor and essayist Cheston Knapp and experimental novelist and culture critic Curtis White during their 2018 joint book tour.
Continue reading →Sheila Bender is talking with Port Townsend author Barbara Sjoholm about her newest book Black Fox, the story of Danish artist and ethnographer Emilie Demant who lived with Sami families in their tents and on migrations.
Continue reading →Here’s the second part of the series I created for Kahini’s Eleven Stories program. I hope you enjoy the short stories as you follow along on the included documents as I read. And, of course, I hope you enjoy my discussions … Continue reading →
Here is a video I prepared for a program online called Eleven Stories. I hope you enjoy my talk (with documents in there so you can follow along as I read and lecture). I will post Endings Part II next … Continue reading →
Flash prose, sometimes called flash literature, is creative writing between 500 and 1500 words. This term includes further subgenres prose poetry, short essays and vignettes. Like the longer essay, or something now called short memoir, the flash personal essay evokes experience and arrives … Continue reading →
Cris talks with our own poet and writer Sheila Bender, host of IN CONVERSATION about her poetry, teaching and most especially her book A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in Time of Grief. (First airdate: June 6, 2018) ► Listen … Continue reading →
Earlier this month, I spoke with Linda Joy Myers of the International Association of Memoir Writers as a guest on her podcast series Breaking the Silence (the player link for you is below). I spoke about tools for getting to … Continue reading →
Here is an article, originally posted in 2003 that deserves our writing attention again. In The Writer’s Idea Workshop, author Jack Heffron sets himself the task of letting his readers know what to do after a first draft is on the … Continue reading →
Have you had a difficult time finding a title for your work? Needed help from others or resented help from others when you thought your title was just right? Here are 12 stories by 12 writers about how titling worked … Continue reading →
I’ve been teaching the how-to essay again and reading models. I love how the how-to format offers the personal essayist a structure that inspires poignancy, honesty, and humor. Here is an excerpt from my book Writing and Sharing Personal Essays. … Continue reading →
We have to leave a story, of any length, both satisfied and wishing the story stays with us—having fallen in love with the protagonists or having been at least drawn close to their situations, we want to carry the characters … Continue reading →
When our 2018 winter contest judge Kelli Agodon awarded 3rd Place to Morgan Baker’s personal essay “Talk Much?” she commented: As someone who loves finding words inside of words and who has struggled with dyslexia, I thought “Talk Much?” was … Continue reading →
Our fall/winter 2018 contest judge Kelli Agodon felt that two poems tied for 2nd place. We posted one last week, ?Grave Site Visit? by Nancy Levinson, and this week we are posting the second second-place winning poem, Barbara Simmons “Driving … Continue reading →
One of two writings tied for second place in our fall/winter 2018 writing contest is “Gravesite Visit,” a poem by Writing It Real member Nancy Levinson. Our guest judge Kelli Agondon described her choice this way: “Gravesite Visit” is a … Continue reading →
Our contest judge, Kelli Agodon, wrote this of her first choice piece in the fall/winter 2018 writing contest: Judith Barker Kvinsland’s essay, “Disturbing the Calm,” explores how sometimes, despite the ease of our lives, we need to take a risk. … Continue reading →
We all have favorite recipes we’ve used for food preparation and sets of instructions we have followed to succeed in putting something together. What recipes or instruction sets might we write up concerning what we have learned in negotiating other … Continue reading →
I’ve made a short video for a program called 11 Stories that has “aired” for the people in that program. I am sharing it with Writing It Real members this week. In the video, I give a lesson on the third-person omniscient … Continue reading →
I wrote this essay a year after my widowed mom moved from the home she had shared with my dad after his retirement. It was a new time in our lives, my mom widowed, my husband and I stepping up … Continue reading →
Who among us wouldn?t envy the stamp of approval Vicki Horton?s personal essay ?Fishing with My Father? received from Writer?s Digest magazine in 2016? In answer to some of my questions about this writing and her writing life, Vicki responded: … Continue reading →
This week’s article by Nancy Lamb is a repost from 2008. It includes information on easy readers as well as on shaping other stories for children (or for any reader, really). Nancy Lamb, author of The Writer’s Guide to Crafting … Continue reading →
Author Beth Bacon is teaching her popular online workshop “Writing for Young Readers ? Words of Honesty, Hope, and Wonder” for Writing It Real members March 15 – April 12, 2018. When I called Beth recently and asked her how … Continue reading →
There are many strong essays and stories written in the second-person point of view. One I’ve come across recently, “Bread” by Margaret Atwood, is especially instructive for its use of scenes to build an argument. With just the right details … Continue reading →
[This article appeared in slightly different form in 2014 — ed.] As writers, our ears are tuned for measuring the quality of the words we hear around us. Sometimes, our ears catch speech we think is pure poetry or could be if … Continue reading →
The flash sequence uses poetic leaps of association for examining the impact of difficult-to-articulate circumstances. Sometimes it is accomplished in journal entries, other times with meditations about place, or people or objects. Sometimes it is composed of collections of scenes. … Continue reading →
In The Night Child, Nora Brown, descends into the kind of fragmentation that results when traumatic events have been repressed, her world becomes anxious and dark. In Anna Quinn’s skillful hands, both the world inside of Nora (who is no … Continue reading →
As writers. we should always be on the lookout for interesting and helpful resources online as well as places to publish our own work. I share a lot of resources on Writing It Real’s facebook page and on Pinterest at The … Continue reading →
This winter’s holiday school break, my grandson, now 15 and a half years old and equipped with his driver’s permit, took a two-week intensive driver’s education class. I certainly felt the passage of time as I remembered using an image … Continue reading →
Many say that the hardest part of writing is moving from daily activities to being able to create work that transcends the daily. There are ways, though, to launch new writing that unexpectedly gets you to your deepest material while … Continue reading →
Whether you are writing poetry, fiction or nonfiction, our first contest of 2018 is for you. The theme is: “A New Season.” And that can mean season of the year, turning over a new leaf, of one’s time in life, of … Continue reading →
The winter holidays are thought of as a time of joy, a time to chase away the northern hemisphere’s winter dark with lights, candles, sweets, gifts, gatherings and community festivities. To be sure, all of this is important, but for … Continue reading →
Listening to successful children?s book writer Patrick Jennings during an interview with him for ?In Conversation: Discussions on Writing and the Writing Life,? I realized again how much authors of books for young readers have to teach all of us … Continue reading →
A few years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing memoirist and novelist Pam Houston. At the time of the interview, her book, Contents May Have Shifted, was Port Townsend?s Community Read. I did the taping on behalf of our … Continue reading →
For several years now, I have been interviewing writers, editors, writing program directors and publishers for ?In Conversation: Discussions on Writing and the Writing Life,? my regular program on KPTZ FM radio. At Writing It Real, we archive the programs, … Continue reading →
This is a revised and updated article based on one from 2002 when I first read “Learning to Drive: A Year of Unexpected Lessons” by Katha Pollitt, published in The New Yorker magazine. I hope you’ll read the essay and go on to … Continue reading →
For us in northern states, fall brings shorter daylight, leaves to rake and cider mills to visit where we sip fresh apple cider and eat sweet doughnuts. We fill a nip in the air. In warm climates, fall begins the … Continue reading →
Years ago one of my writing students wrote this line in class, “Ms. Failure paints her self-portrait, then hangs it on a wall in your world without asking permission.” He was speaking, he told us, of a time when he … Continue reading →
Writers write. Writers write to seek and tell truths, whether that is in poems, essays, memoir, fiction or articles. As writers, we must raise our voices in dark times, even when we think few are listening. I recently interviewed journalist … Continue reading →
The word epistolary comes from the Greek epistol?, which means “letter.” Writers use the letter form in writing personal essays, poems, creative nonfiction and fiction because the form provides a ready-made container to hold an exploration of events and experiences. Writing in … Continue reading →
What have writers shared about unleashing one?s best and most insightful creative work? G. Lynn Nelson, a professor of English at Arizona State University believes we must undo some of what we have been taught about language and use language … Continue reading →
There are times in a person’s life when everything is tinted gray and the future looks too dark to step into. Then in one single shift of the universe, something happens—we turn left, instead of right; we answer the phone, … Continue reading →
All of us benefit from the memory of a place held dear. Such a memory keeps us breathing; such a memory calms our nerves; such a memory refreshes when life’s difficult times enervate us. Read Nancy Lamb’s well-drawn description of … Continue reading →
Two weeks ago, I posted an article with writing ideas for getting started on new material and asked those who wanted to do so to send me accounts of the games they have played and enjoyed, especially in childhood. My … Continue reading →
Whether you have wanted to write a play or a screenplay or are involved in writing memoir, thinking like a playwright will help you tell a story well by writing in scenes, creating evolving characters (yourself and others in your … Continue reading →
In All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Robert Fulghum writes about hiding in a pile of leaves in his front yard and not being found by the game’s seeker. He likens this hiding-too-well as a kid … Continue reading →
Writers write. That’s the definition. And sometimes, we-who-write feel cranky and rebellious toward our job. That can lead to not writing and then to becoming upset with ourselves for not writing, for not being writers. For the prompts I share … Continue reading →
William Zinsser edited a book in 1988 called Spiritual Quests: The Art and Craft of Religious Writing. In his introduction to the book, Zinsser states “the act of writing is ultimately a sacrament for both writer and reader.” The act … Continue reading →
For this video lesson, I have selected three passages from a memoir I love and admire, Tarn Wilson’s The Slow Farm. I discuss them as a lesson on using details and sensory information to evoke the point-of-view of a memoir’s … Continue reading →
Writing poetry, no matter what genre you usually work in, is truly an experience of re-creating a self. In writing poems from experience and from meditative and reflective moments, we are the makers of something that helps us come to … Continue reading →
It may seem hard to imagine how to write a life in short pieces rather than with a more traditional narrative arc, but it works. Here are excerpts from memoirs-made-of-pieces that I like very much: Excerpts from Abigail Thomas’ What Comes … Continue reading →
Part One To get a feel for short memoir, you might enjoy reading from Writers’ Digest magazine’s column called “5-Minute Memoir.” Here are links to a few of the columns: Writing from the Mat Hidden in Plain Sight The Beauty … Continue reading →
I have been an eager reader of flash stories by Jim Heynen for years. I’ve read The Man Who Kept Cigars Under His Cap, One-Room School House: Stories About the Boys, The Boy’s House: New and Selected Stories as well … Continue reading →
I am an avid fan of Jane Friedman’s blog on writing and publishing. She is informative and up-to-date, presenting her expertise with scope and clarity. This week, I read her interview with screenwriter turned novelist, Nina R. Sadowsky. I was … Continue reading →
A couple of weeks ago, I posted an exercise I call ?Find the Motto Writer Within.? Here are three writers’ outcomes from that exercise: The first is by Barbara Furniss, one of the writers I gathered to try out the … Continue reading →
In writing, we only feel included as readers when our senses are involved. As we read with our senses involved, we learn more about ourselves and others by encountering the way the others record surroundings through their senses. As writers, … Continue reading →
We are motto (and affirmation) happy in our culture. We circulate phrases from manufacturers and social service organizations from “Just do it” to “Just say no,” from “You deserve a break today” to “I brake for animals.” After I studied … Continue reading →
I am pleased to share long-time Writing It Real member Mary Ann Payne?s writing in response to the writing exercise I shared last week. Grave Matters by Mary Ann Payne It?s time to bury the piano. Chop it up in … Continue reading →
A writing colleague of mine once shared in an essay that when she angrily broke up with a beloved college boyfriend under duress because her father didn’t like him, she took the Dutch oven they used for cooking and buried … Continue reading →
In our final week of posting contest entries from the fall/winter WIR writing contest, we have seven poems by Linda M. Robertson. Our contest judge Sharon Bryan wrote this about selecting these poems as winners: These poems speak in a voice … Continue reading →
Our fall/winter writing contest guest judge Sharon Bryan chose Emma Hunter’s essay, “Long Meg Speaks,” as one of three winners. This week, we have the judge’s words about the essay as well as the author’s words about writing it, and, … Continue reading →
[I will be posting the work of our recent three winners this week and then for the next two weeks. I hope you enjoy their comments about the writing of their work, our contest judge Sharon Byran’s comments, and, of … Continue reading →
When I teach in person, people sometimes show up having purchased a copy of the recently updated edition of my first instructional book on writing: Writing in a Convertible with the Top Down, which I co-authored with Christi Killien Glover. Their interest prompts me … Continue reading →
Librarian, poet and author Carol Smallwood came to my attention over the years when she emailed calls for essays to consider for anthologies she was editing. I was very pleased to learn about these anthologies and very pleased when she … Continue reading →
Mining the Three Freewrites: Whether you have done these freewrites ( see Part 1 and Part 2) ?in the course of one writing session or over several days, find out what the freewrites have to tell you about an essay … Continue reading →
[The following article appeared first in “The Heart and Craft and of Life Writing.”] Last week’s article included a freewrite to get you going toward writing on a topic that surprises you or allows you to get into a piece … Continue reading →
[The following article appeared first in “The Heart and Craft and of Life Writing.”] It might not be obvious that those of us who write personal essays can benefit greatly from not knowing what we have to write about. That … Continue reading →
“The Way I See It” is the “Prologue” from Writing Personal Essays: Sharing and Shaping Your Life Experience, Published in print and digitally by Sheila Bender’s Writing It Real, March, 2017 [Note: I wrote a slightly different version of this … Continue reading →
Creating Self-Understanding Despite Fears of Revealing Your Own Shortcomings and True Experience Before we see what writers have said on the issue of fear about revealing oneself through writing, try this exercise: Select four or so pieces of your writing. … Continue reading →
Healing Through the Dark Emotions From journal writing to writing finished plays, memoir, poems and fiction, writers evoke and examine encounters with the dark emotions incited by misfortune, abuse, divorce, severe lack of confidence, fear of difficult and horrifying situations … Continue reading →
I have been teaching a class called “Writing is a Friend with Extraordinary Benefits” for a couple of years now through Women on Writing. I have been extremely engaged in what my students write and thrilled by the evidence that … Continue reading →
My friend, the essayist Brenda Miller, wrote the introduction to my memoir A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief. “I understood then,” she wrote, “that grief can be a channel in which you swim alone, where … Continue reading →
In 2005, I posted an article with excerpts from Riding in Cars with Boys by Beverly Donofrio’s and A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries by Kaylie Jones along with exercises based on their writing. I am reposting the following short excerpts … Continue reading →
This week, I have made a video for Writing It Real’s Weekly Article. In it, I share a passage from Canadian author Miriam Toews’ novel All My Puny Sorrows in which a talented 15-year-old piano player exercises her genius against … Continue reading →
As my mother?s 90th birthday approaches, my husband and I have sorted through photographs from nine decades of her life. He is making a photo essay book to be given to her this Sunday and shared with guests at the … Continue reading →
For January: Dreams and Repetitions In this month of the inauguration of a new president of our country, it seems particularly appropriate and important to study the orators of our great nation who called out for freedoms we enjoy. Reading … Continue reading →
How does one muster the courage to keep writing even when no one has asked for her to write? How does a writer handle restlessness and disappointment? The author Ralph Keyes writes in The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend … Continue reading →
We’ll soon be thinking about the New Year’s Resolutions we want to make for 2017. For those who write, at least one of those resolutions will likely be about finding more time to write. I know that’s what I’d like … Continue reading →
This time of year, we are often flooded with memories of our childhoods, especially of winter holiday times. Some of the memories may be of difficulties and some may be of times filled with excitement and joy. Happy or sad, … Continue reading →
[Editor’s note: Sometimes I teach a class for Women on Writing that I call “Writing is a Friend with Extraordinary Benefits.” The following essay by Katherine Clarke is reprinted with permission of the author, is an example of what happens … Continue reading →
[Note: I originally posted the following article in December, 2007. It’s holiday preparation time again and lists keep us sane. They can also keep us writing! Try the exercise I am suggesting based on writing lists poems. Try it more … Continue reading →
What are we writers to do in a nation where so many young and old seem to have gone mad, publically shouting and bullying, using crude names for those of the female sex and for people of non-Christian religions and … Continue reading →
Often, we feel we can’t start writing because we are not inspired. Or we feel that we have become “flat” as writers when we look at what we have written. Here are 10 writing prompts inspired by the opening lines … Continue reading →
Many of us writing memoir are used to writing from the first person (I) point of view. Others of us write fiction in the first person, often as an autobiographically-based main character. Some of us write in third person (he … Continue reading →
Through books, articles and often in-person seminars, Seattle author and poet, Priscilla Long, shares her experience with those of us who write. Her recent book, Minding the Muse: A Handbook for Painters, Composers, Writers and Other Creators, is, at just … Continue reading →
Joan Leof’s collection of essays Matryoshka: Uncovering Your Many Selves Through Writing Personal Essays and Questions for Reflection is intended to share her personal experience essays in a way that encourages others to write from their experiences. After reading her … Continue reading →
I think you’ll enjoy this new radio conversation about the power of the image, whether you write poetry or write prose. And you’ll have the opportunity to hear Michael Dylan Welch read from several of his poems. After you listen … Continue reading →
The late poet Richard Hugo was for many years head of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Missoula in Montana. In 1977, during a time of insecurity and writer’s block, he published a small volume of poems entitled 31 Letters and … Continue reading →
What is a prose poem? “It is a piece of writing in prose having obvious poetic qualities, including intensity, compactness, prominent rhythms, and imagery.” — Chrome Browser Link. Why write it? “Baudelaire used prose poems to rebel against the straitjacket … Continue reading →
When someone asks (or you ask yourself) why you write, I bet that many of the motivations you think to cite are on this list: • to understand your experience, • because you have a story in your heart, • because you can’t … Continue reading →
Want to write an article for a local publication, an online site or a niche publication in a field of interest to you? Here are some prompts to get you going: Write a tourist type tour of your town for … Continue reading →
We have two new podcasts ready for you to listen to. They are conversations with Meg Files and with Jack Heffron. It was fun and informative having two of my favorite writing and teaching colleagues as guests this summer on … Continue reading →
Whatever our role in life, however well we perform in it, there is always the not knowing if we are doing it right, if what we are trying to accomplish will be accomplished. Sometimes that situation offers us a prompt … Continue reading →
Author Joyce Carol Oates says, “The pleasure is the rewriting.” Author John Irving says, “More than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn’t say I have a talent that’s special. … Continue reading →
Exploring your life on the page is daunting whether you are writing short memoir (the personal essay) or a book-length manuscript. Where does one start? How does one choose the highlights for the story’s exploration? How does one find surprises? … Continue reading →
Adam L. Diament, the author of Kosher Patents: 101 Ingenious Inventions to Help Jews be Jewish, is a practicing patent attorney in Beverly Hills, California. He earned a B.A. in Religious Studies with an Emphasis in Judaism from the University … Continue reading →
“If I’d only known what was in this book forty years ago, how much more money would I have made and how fewer problems would I have encountered?” Karen wonders. Isn’t that true for all of us in our lives—if … Continue reading →
Deborah Berger asked women to write letters about what they never told their mothers. Ultimately, she edited a selection of the contributions, along with profiles of their authors, into Dear Mom, Women’s Letters of Love, Loss and Longing. In her … Continue reading →
When Marlene Samuels found a publisher for her deceased mother’s World War II memoir, The Seamstress: A Memoir of Survival, her editor at Penguin-Berkeley had two conditions. She would have to ensure the accuracy of all the book’s facts (the … Continue reading →
This book is a big one?in every way. In its 813 beautifully designed pages and over 450 gorgeous photos and images, a story unfolds not only of fine handpress printing but the man who printed works by many great 20th … Continue reading →
Writing It Real member Arla Shephard Bull worked back and forth with me on developing an essay that was important to her to write. She had decided to use the third person as a way of distancing herself enough to … Continue reading →
Our fall/winter contest judge Stan Rubin was struck with the lyric qualities in Afrose Ahmed’s entry, “the world did end…we just didn’t notice.” He wrote in his comments: “A gorgeous piece of lyrical writing. The odd but wonderfully sustained angle … Continue reading →
Stan Rubin, our guest contest judge, shares these remarks about his choice of Amanda Noble’s essay, “The Meditation Room”: A nuanced portrayal of the shifting stages of private grief––and its gradual acceptance. This process is depicted with precision, intelligence, and … Continue reading →
Contest judge Stan Rubin, a master teacher, poet and friend of writing, wrote that Emma Hunter’s essay: Gracefully lives up to its rather daunting title, with wit and philosophical sweep. Concisely renders a dual vision — adult and child, the mundane and the cosmic — … Continue reading →
Tarn Wilson delivered this paper for a panel on “Hydra-Headed Memoirs & Well-Connected Essays” at the 2015 Nonfiction Now conference. I am delighted to have her permission to post her words for Writing It Real readers. Tarn’s lovely memoir is … Continue reading →
In this excerpt from Jack Heffron’s book project?that combines fiction and nonfiction, you’ll notice the strength of Jack’s?scenes and dialog, exactly the craft skills?he?will be teaching this year at the June 9-12 Writing It Real conference. In the book, Jack … Continue reading →
HERE’S AN ONGOING LIST OF PLACES SEEKING SUBMISSIONS. CHECK BACK FREQUENTLY FOR MORE LISTINGS AND PLEASE, PLEASE ADD IN ANY VENUES OF WHICH YOU ARE AWARE. WE ALL APPRECIATE LEARNING OF OPPORTUNITIES TO SEND OUR WORK OUT FOR CONSIDERATION.
Continue reading →Go on! Brag a little or a lot. Include your blog url, literary journals, anthologies, books, plays produced–wherever we can find your writing. By learning where one another publishes as well as reading your work, we learn. Let us help … Continue reading →
The opening of Meg Files’ fine novel The Third Law of Motion?introduces the?book’s first-person narrative as we enter protagonist Dulcie White’s life as a college-bound high school student. In alternating chapters throughout the book, the young woman’s sometimes boyfriend, a … Continue reading →
As the Presidential candidates for nomination continue to gather followers with predictable phrases, and pundits attempt to predict who the will be the frontrunners, I am reminded of the importance of writing toward felt insight. We need to leave abstracting and sentimentality behind if we … Continue reading →
Every few months, I sit with sound engineer Charlie Fleishman at the studio of Port Townsend, WA’s all volunteer FM station KPTZ.org and record conversations with four writers. Each of these Sundays includes telephone conversations with writers from anywhere in … Continue reading →
Contest Winners: Marie Hartung, Judith Sornberger and Cheryl Johnson. I am pleased to post the three winning poems in our last Writing It Real writing contest. You remember the challenge—to include the number 12 in some way in the poem. … Continue reading →
This week, Judy Reeves, author of the new book, Wild Women, Wild Voices, shares her thoughts on writing practice. Here article serves as a good review for all of us who are busy concentrating on revising and publishing and may … Continue reading →
The following is an excerpt from Phyllis M. Washburn’s book Good Morning Sam. In this part of the story, Phyllis and her husband Ralph rescue Sam, a mute swan, from bleeding to death. In all, the couple shared twenty-four years with mute … Continue reading →
Phyllis Washburn sent me a copy of the book she’d written, Good Morning Sam, which includes many of her husband Ralph’s photos. In photos and words, theirs is the story of the mute swan Sam, whom they named when he … Continue reading →
Sheila talks with poet, journalist, and memoirist Beverly West about the writing of her memoir Finding My Way Back to 1950s Paris.
Continue reading →I believe that we write in three stages–we act as playful inventors on the page, move on to the task of shaping our experience, and finally edit what we have written. Although these stages sometimes overlap a bit, on the … Continue reading →
The back and forth you’ll read this week on the development of an essay-in-progress demonstrates the power of my three-step response method for helping writers revise. Years ago, Marjorie Ford sent me an essay-in-progress that she was having trouble developing to her satisfaction for meeting an upcoming anthology … Continue reading →
We too often receive unhelpful, even harmful, response from first readers of our early drafts. We may feel our writing is being ripped apart or our readers are more interested in fixing punctuation and grammar than in our subject and feelings. Or we may … Continue reading →
Sheila talks with author Rita Kepner about her memoir Through Fire and Water: True Stories of Rita Marie Matthiesen as told to Laura Callender, which she wrote using a pen name.
Continue reading →As both an accomplished writer and a career librarian, Carol Smallwood knows a lot about what women ask when they wish to learn about the writing and publishing process. Over the years, I’ve received email invitations from Carol asking for … Continue reading →
Jody Gentian Bower’s new book, Jane Eyre’s Sisters: How Women Live and Write the Heroine’s Story, is sure to change some minds about the path of women’s literature. I am pleased to post the following interview with Jody. I know … Continue reading →
Robert Epstein has invested years in conceiving and writing books, among them a series of impressive haiku anthologies. This National Poetry Month, I am delighted to post an interview with him that gets to the heart of how haiku connects us to … Continue reading →
Before embarking on a third revision of A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief, an intense book-length personal narrative, I worked with writer, photographer and shamanic practitioner Pam Hale Trachta for guidance in knowing what I … Continue reading →
This week we present the third place winner in our 2014 Writing It Real Essay Contest. Our guest judge Midge Raymond selected Lisa Hunter’s essay, “Twelve Random Cards: A Self-Portrait in Archetypes.” Midge wrote this about her selection: “This clever … Continue reading →
We are pleased to post the second place winning essay in this past winter’s Writing It Real essay contest. Our guidelines said the number 12 was to be somewhere in the essay in honor of Writing It Real’s 12th Anniversary. … Continue reading →
We are pleased to post the winning essay in this past winter’s Writing It Real essay contest. Our guidelines said the number 12 was to be somewhere in the essay in honor of Writing It Real’s 12th Anniversary. Our guest … Continue reading →
Not long ago, Writing It Real member Dorothy Ross wrote to me about her newest project — recording the narratives she’s written about her life for her family to have in the form of audio files. I listened to a … Continue reading →
Some of us write and don’t allow ourselves to even think we will publish because it seems out of our reach; others of us worry about publishing way too early, and, therefore, don’t write what we might. Writing comes first, of course, and … Continue reading →
When it comes to writing, we so often undermine our efforts by thinking that we are not disciplined enough, educated enough, smart enough, skilled enough, or wise enough to call ourselves writers. We must find ways to change that thinking if … Continue reading →
One of my favorite writing mantras is from author Ron Carlson: “Don’t think, write.” Another is my own sentence, “Intention kills the meaning-making.” What I’ve found is that coming to the page with a sense of anticipation about not knowing … Continue reading →
Costume Concepts Beginning With The Letter “T” Earlier than making your determination and even begin searching for a wig it is strongly recommended that you simply first think about the use and function you desire to it to serve in … Continue reading →
Esther Helfgott’s life-long writing habit helped her weather her husband Abe’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and the grief of slowly losing their thirty-year partnership. Using writing as a tool to handle this profound life change, she created the moving memoir, Dear … Continue reading →
The following essay by Susan Bono is the title essay from her new collection What Have We Here: Essays about Keeping House and Finding Home. We reprint it this week with her permission. To learn more about Susan’s writing and the place of … Continue reading →
For writer and small press publisher (Tiny Lights) Susan Bono, the last thirty years have mostly been about trying to stay ahead of a husband, growing kids, aging parents, and an eccentric old house, in spite of detours, deadlines, unexpected changes, … Continue reading →
Writing It Real members and students know my love of the epistolary (letter) form in literature and the many examples of it I offer as writing models. During the holiday season, a time of letters from those near and far, … Continue reading →
Dialog moves a narrative along in fiction, personal essay, memoir and poetry, too. Playing with ways to experiment with dialog will help you build your dexterity with this aspect of the writing craft. And playing with the prompts might have you … Continue reading →
When we write fiction, we need to get inside our characters’ beings. When we write memoir, we need to learn more about our own character as well as the character of people who have influenced our experience. But sometimes we need … Continue reading →
Keeping a notebook of short descriptions, thoughts, overheard conversations, quotes and even complaints and worries will keep us in the writing mode, even when our days are filled with other activities and concerns. I have been reading a wise and inspiring … Continue reading →
Writing is, to me, a friend with extraordinary benefits. This Thanksgiving, I offer a link to an interview for which I am grateful. Mark Matousek chose to interview me on writing as a healing activity. He asked me the kind of questions … Continue reading →
Last week, I wrote about doing a scene-writing exercise short story writer and teacher, Ron Carlson, invented. This week, I am posting 20 ideas I’ve put together for practice writing scenes that will help you develop dexterity in presenting your … Continue reading →
As writers, we are aware of the dictum “Show, don’t tell,” but sometimes what we think of as showing turns out to be only another way of telling and avoiding showing. On this subject, I often quote fiction writer Ron … Continue reading →
Years ago, Jennifer Wagley entered a vivid, funny account of her perceptions of her grandmother’s attitudes toward food — buying, keeping, and serving it. It turns out she did this in 12 paragraphs, and as you know, we are celebrating our 12 year … Continue reading →
Mark Matousek interviews Sheila about her teaching and the writing of her memoir.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with Adrienne Harun about her award winning novel, A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain, and her career as a fiction writer and instructor in the Rainier Writer’s Workshop.
Continue reading →In Conversation with Patty Cogen Sheila talks with Patty Cogen, author of nonfiction for parents of internationally adopted children, as well as poet and essayist.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with Massachusetts author and playwright Dennis Must about his recent novel, Hush Now, Don’t Explain, from Coffee House Press, Seattle.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with agent and novelist Andrea Hurst about the new aspects of agenting, publishing and writing.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with John Pierce, technical editor for companies such as Microsoft as well as editor of poetry for Copper Canyon and Floating Bridge Press.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with Susan Bono about her career as a writer, editor, publisher and teacher.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with poet Holly J. Hughes about her poetry and her teaching career as a writer.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with playwright Mara Lathrop about her writing and her career.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with award-winning memoirist Sue William Silverman about her career in writing and teaching and her newest memoir, The Pat Boone Fan Club.
Continue reading →Sheila speaks with poet Gayle Kaune.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with Barbara Stahura about her work as a novelist, translator, and creative nonfiction writer.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with Barbara Sjoholm about her work as a novelist, translator, and creative nonfiction writer.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with fiction writer Susan Wingate about writing and promoting one’s work.
Continue reading →Sheila speaks with writer David Reich about his memoir in progress.
Continue reading →Sheila speaks with journalist and online publisher Glenn Fleishman.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with the heads of The Rainier Writers’ Workshop about low-residency MFA programs.
Continue reading →Sheila speaks with Tina Tessina, who as a psychotherapist and author of 13 books, works and writes about couples and romance.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with Ruth Folit, creator of LifeJournal software (which includes an add on for writers) and founder of the International Association for Journal Writing.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with writer and editor Julie VanPelt.
Continue reading →Sheila speaks with journalist Carolyn Kortge about her nonfiction work, The Spirited Walker: Fitness Walking for Clarity, Balance, and Spiritual Connection.
Continue reading →Sheila speaks with poet Susan Rich about her collection Cloud Pharmacy and teaching poetry.
Continue reading →Sheila talks about writing and publishing with Terry Persun, author of over a dozen books of fiction and poetry.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with poet Judith Skillman about her new books of both poetry and lessons for poets.
Continue reading →Sheila speaks with fiction writer Pam Houston about her book Contents May Have Shifted, the Port Townsend, WA 2013 Community Read.
Continue reading →Sheila speaks with Centrum Foundation’s Port Townsend Writers’ Conference program manager Jordan Hartt about his writing and project of the heart Writing Across Borders.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with Cheryl Merrill about the writings in her memoir-in-progress about several trips to Africa to walk with elephants.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with author and poet Ellie Matthews and her husband Carl Youngman about their work with the Madrona Writers and how prompts facilitate writing.
Continue reading →In her book, Marry Your Muse, Jan Philips writes about a day at a mountain cabin when she and her partner were spending time writing. Jan’s cousins, ages 10 and 12, showed up at the door. When Jan told the … Continue reading →
Sheila talks with Jeannine Hall Gailey about her life in poetry.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with Michael D’Alessandro about his poetry and his small poetry press project, bedouin books.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with creative nonfiction writer Brenda Miller about her work and teaching.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with feminist fiction writer Kathryn Trueblood about her work and the publishing world.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with poet Elizabeth Austen about her work as a poet and her tenure as WA State Poet Laureate. Visit Elizabeth’s website here or find out more about her books.
Continue reading →Sheila speaks with writer Christi Killien Glover about her blog and novella.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with poets Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano about their work encouraging each other’s writing as well as creating their book, The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with author and publisher Midge Raymond about her fiction, non-fiction and Ashland Creek Press.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with chaplain Stephanie Tivona Reith about writing contemporary psalms.
Continue reading →Sheila talks with the late David Speck, co-founder of the JewelBox Theater in Poulsbo, WA and two poet guests about presenting poems to audiences.
Continue reading →The following is the 2013 foreword I was honored to write for the anthology Times They Were A’Changing: Women Remember the 60s and 70s, edited by Linda Joy Myers, Amber Lea Starfire and Kate Farrell. Paying tribute to the vibrant decades during … Continue reading →
What follows is Chapter Five from the forthcoming updated edition of Writing In A New Convertible with the Top Down: A Unique Guide for Writers. In 1992, Christi Killien Glover and I began an exchange of letters to explore and … Continue reading →
Glenn Fleishman’s expertly executed and moving personal essay about the his mother’s death and the last time he saw her will resonate with any of us who are striving to write the details of loss and our lives at the … Continue reading →
Betty Shafer asked me to read an essay about losing her adult son. It had been a year since she began the essay following an emotional author reading I gave at the Colorado Mountain Writer’s Conference she attended in June … Continue reading →
Flying home from Scandinavia in late August, a little uncomfortable in the cramped airline seat, I was remembering stretching my legs on a trip I’d made to Norway years before.
Continue reading →This week’s article is a reprint of one that first appeared in 2003. Time flies; when we look back, the lessons we have learned seem to shine brighter. My grandson Toby turned 17 months old this October 1. He has been … Continue reading →
As personal essayists, we sometimes worry whether people will be interested in what we have to say since our material is “just” personal experience. That worry exists alongside its cousins “Who am I to write about this or to tell my family’s secrets?” and “What if … Continue reading →
Before appointments, when a meeting hasn’t started, when a bus hasn’t come, when a friend is late, when you have finished something and still have time before the next thing in your day, when you arrive early to work — … Continue reading →
This, my second week in Denmark visiting my daughter and her family, I continued with my idea of writing more poetry in form. I flipped through the book my younger grandson, who had used it in third grade, had given … Continue reading →
I am in Denmark for the month of August visiting my daughter and her family. She and her husband are here working, and the international school my grandsons attended is out for the summer. My job is being nanny, but it’s more … Continue reading →
I was reading a magazine article recently in which authors wrote about pivotal books they’ve read. What book would I name, I wondered. Immediately, I saw myself at my fourth grade desk in the 1950’s at Franklin Elementary School in … Continue reading →
After reading that I’d mentioned an interview he did with Marion Woodman in a Writing It Real article, James Kullander contacted me. After reading the whole article, he offered permission to share another essay originally published in the December 2007 issue of The … Continue reading →
Often when I try to write about my mother the same details surface. In my childhood memories she is always busy either working or participating on different committees; when she is home she is tired and does not like to … Continue reading →
Originally published in in the summer of 2005, this article is filled with writing exercises inspired by the summer holidays. I think they will come in handy again to help you keep on writing, even though summer is loaded with traditional holiday social demands … Continue reading →
Here’s an ongoing list of places seeking submissions. Check back frequently for more listings and please add in any venues of which you are aware. We all appreciate learning of opportunities for sending our work out for consideration.
Continue reading →Last week we posted Part II of my interview with Tarn Wilson about her memoir The Slow Farm. We talked about different ways of bringing back memories and how to write from a child’s viewpoint as an adult. This week, … Continue reading →
Last week we posted the first part of my interview with Tarn Wilson about her memoir The Slow Farm. Tarn and I talked about how she used artifacts to reconstruct the past and how she structured her book. This week … Continue reading →
I am a person who saves things, from the obviously important letter my father wrote me right before he passed away to the “might need it someday” notes from middle school. I have shoeboxes of unorganized photographs, rocks and shells … Continue reading →
Bonnie Rough’s memoir, Carrier, which won the 2011 Minnesota Book Award, includes extensive research via family stories, interviews, pictures, legal records, letters, and more, but it is her compassionate portrayal of her grandfather, Earl, who passed away soon after her … Continue reading →
Christine Hemp offers us her thinking about how we may find our prose and poetry’s true subjects followed by a writing exercise for practice and two sample poems. [This article and exercise were originally published in Now Write! Nonfiction: Memoir, Journalism and Creative … Continue reading →
I am pleased to publish this interview with award winning memoirist Sue William Silverman about the writing of her newest memoir and her advice to those of us who write from personal experience. The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life … Continue reading →
This essay originally appeared in Writing It Real August 2006. The question I was exploring is still one many of us ask when we consider the world’s situation: Where is our writing in all this? How should it matter? Every time … Continue reading →
It’s spring — we’ll be getting busy with outdoor chores, vacations and other summer activities before long. Less time for writing, you might be thinking. But an effective way to keep up your writing is to commit to keeping a … Continue reading →
How To Retailer A Promenade Gown Wedding Day is a really special occasion, especially for the Bride as at the present time symbolizes the start of her new journey. Then you have the modest prom gown in Tony Bowls promenade … Continue reading →
As April and National Poetry Month come to an end, we finish our series of poets on their poems. Stan Rubin, Michael Spence, Nicole Persun and Nancy Levinson have each offered us a poem along with their thoughts about writing … Continue reading →
Human Hair Wigs Versus Artificial Hair Wigs Finding the right hairpieces or wigs can be a attempting and troublesome expertise for a lot of black ladies. If you are planning to get one for yourself, you have to determine first … Continue reading →
This week I am posting poems by three more poets whose work I have been following. Each has offered words about the creation of the particular poem included. And, as before, you’ll find writing ideas from me based on each … Continue reading →
We present three poets, offering one of their poems along with words about its creation. My writing ideas are each based on one of the poems and are useful whether you are writing poetry or prose.
Continue reading →Distinctive Prom Costume Evenings at sea are all the time an occasion to look ahead to. The gown code transforms the environment on board so that every evening is completely different. Formal wears will suit for the every day use … Continue reading →
How To Select Strapless Prom Dress And Accessories Ladies are very particular how they look each time they go out or go to somebody. It is time for you to start shopping on your Newest put on not expensive clothes … Continue reading →
It’s National Poetry Month and I am celebrating poets I know whose work I have been following both in their books and by attending readings in my town and surrounding areas. Each of the next weeks, I will publish a … Continue reading →
National Poetry Month started yesterday. This week’s article is an oldie but goodie, originally published in 2007 and updated for 2014. In Port Townsend, the daffodils have been up several weeks. As usual out here, it looks like we’ll get … Continue reading →
Our creativity is an eternal light. It burns even when we are not paying attention to it. It doesn’t need relighting so much as finding where it lights our path.
Continue reading →Creativity in one’s thinking and in one’s art is unsettling, both to the artist and to audiences. The courage to create must be born again and again.
Continue reading →You may think that being creative requires that you have an idea for a finished product. But an important attribute of creativity is that it produces what it will, not necessarily what you were thinking it ought to. You may … Continue reading →
Three accomplished writers have as editors acquired a collection of essays in The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Writing Across Borders in which poets explore the way their journeys to foreign lands helped them add to literature’s great conversation. Susan Rich, … Continue reading →
Last week, we posted Australian Writing It Real member Beth Spencer’s winning narrative poem “The Shipwreck Coast.” This week we are posting an essay she has written for Writing It Real members about what spurred her on in writing this … Continue reading →
In choosing Beth Spencer’s poem, “The Shipwreck Coast,” as the fall/winter Writing It Real contest third place winner, guest judge Molly Tinsley wrote: “Yes, poetry is memoir–at least in the case of this intriguing narrative poem. I loved the resolutely unpoetic, … Continue reading →
Our guest judge Molly Tinsley’s notes about choosing Michael Shurgot’s essay for our second-place winner are these: “Great propulsion. The building of tension, the sense of time running out, the hints of questions left unanswered — all are the strategies … Continue reading →
Our fall/winter writing contest judge, Molly Tinsley, chose “Why I Write,” a personal essay by Mary Kurtz, as our first-place winner. Molly said in her notes about this essay: “Emotional control of the narrative makes Mary’s experience all the more … Continue reading →
Our writing contest guest judge, Molly Tinsley, is now reading and making her selections of three contest winners in the recent Writing It Real contest. While we are waiting for the results, we are reprinting her article about writing memoir. … Continue reading →
Male Hair Loss Wigs and different hairpieces have been used for hundreds of years to realize the look that men and women most need. Financial synthetic lace entrance wigs, human hair lace wigs, it nonetheless is certainly not so putting … Continue reading →
This article first ran January 24, 2008, after a visit from my grandsons. Their visit over this past Martin Luther King three-day weekend had me thinking again about the way watching children’s reactions to our adult judgments and commands can … Continue reading →
Sandra Hurtes created a blog, felt she had a book there, and engaged in the process of selecting and shaping the entries and adding to the material to create a book-length account of herself as writer. The result is the … Continue reading →
Writing It Real member Betty Shafer met five of the Lost Boys of the Sudan during a time that she was mourning personal losses and considering a major life change. Entwining their story of tragedy and survival during an historic … Continue reading →
Go on! Brag a little or a lot. Include your blog url, literary journals, anthologies, books, plays produced–wherever we can find your writing. By learning where one another publishes as well as reading your work, we learn. Let us help … Continue reading →
Do you have a writing question your peers can answer? Do you have answers your peers might find useful? Books you are reading to tell us about, references and activities for writers? Interact here!
Continue reading →December 31, 2013 Dear Mini, Today marks our six-month anniversary of being together! Six months! And you, my love, remain ever fresh and surprising, ever so original! We haven’t parted for even a day since that July afternoon when I … Continue reading →
[This excerpt appear in slightly different form in the anthology Women Writing On Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing, edited by Carol Smallwood and Suzann Holland.] Even when life seems too busy to “really” write, you can work on gathering … Continue reading →
Writing depends on our willingness to observe closely and our ability to allow ourselves to engage emotionally with what we are observing. So often, though, we don’t remember to take time to look around rather than look only at our … Continue reading →
That Crazy Little Thing a debut novel by Kate Bracy has garnered wonderful reviews from readers and critics because of the author’s writing, the way she has developed her characters and how they explore issues of love — between friends, … Continue reading →
When you read the following excerpts from Rhonda Wiley-Jones’ memoir, At Home in the World: Travel Stories of Growing Up and Growing Away, you’ll likely remember incidents from your own youth when you learned important things about yourself, perceptions that … Continue reading →
Are you thinking of self-publishing and wondering what the process is like? It never hurts to hear from one who has successfully navigated the process. With humor and self-awareness, Rhonda Wiley-Jones takes us on her journey as writer turned self-publisher. … Continue reading →
When Writing It Real member Rhonda Wiley-Jones published her travel/coming-of-age memoir, parts of which she had worked on through Writing It Real contests and editorial help, I was eager to hear what she’d learned in her process of moving from … Continue reading →
It was an honor to be asked to write the foreword to the newly released anthology Times They Were A-Changing, edited by Linda Joy Myers, Amber Lea Starfire, and Kate Farrell, whose selection of forty-eight powerful stories and poems by … Continue reading →
When asked to write a eulogy for a family member you cared for, you may find that your memories and those of others who knew the person you are writing about might span a lifetime but with gaps. Thinking of … Continue reading →
When my daughter Emily Bender was writing a Valedictorian speech to be delivered at her UC Berkeley graduation, she was nervous about having something worth saying. With all of the demands of her life as a graduating senior, she had … Continue reading →
In writing a wedding speech, we reflect upon our lives, our hopes and dreams and the hard work of relationship.
Continue reading →As writers, we are frequently the ones asked to write eulogies for friends and family members. Even if we are not asked, we may feel moved to write eulogies to honor those we loved and then to share our writing … Continue reading →
As the writers among our circles of family, friends, colleagues and associates, we are often approached to write addresses and eulogies, toasts and speeches. On September 19, 2013, I presented the keynote address at Providence Hospice of Seattle’s annual Pediatric Luncheon. … Continue reading →
A few years ago, Kathy Lockwood, one of my distance learning students, was having trouble writing poems because she was moving. She had to clean out and reduce her belongings, pack things up and move on, though she and her … Continue reading →
On September 29, 2013, Midge Raymond is participating in the launch of Adventure by the Book’s Author Academy in San Diego. Adventures by the Book, founded by Susan McBeth, offers worldwide opportunities for readers to connect with authors’ travel and … Continue reading →
If you are preparing a manuscript for publication or creating a blog to build a platform for your work, you will find tips by fiction writer and publisher Midge Raymond extremely useful. This article is excerpted from her recent book … Continue reading →
Julaina Kleist-Corwin’s story is our third place winner in the spring/summer 2013 Writing It Real writing contest. Guest judge Terry Persun wrote to us that he chose the story because he liked the pacing and grew “to know the characters, … Continue reading →
Our guest judge Terry Persun chose Cyndi Lloyd’s story “Recess” as the second place winner in Writing It Real’s Spring/Summer 2013 Writing Contest. He commented: I like the way this writer was able to draw out several different personalities in … Continue reading →
This week we are proud to publish the first of three winning essays in our recent contest. In choosing Hildegard Hingle’s essay as the first place winner in Writing It Real’s 2013 spring and summer writing contest, guest judge Terry … Continue reading →
There is a pleasure in the thought that the particular tone of my mind at this moment may be new in the universe; that the emotions of this hour may be peculiar and unexampled in the whole of eternity of … Continue reading →
In an essay William Matthews wrote as a contribution to my anthology The Writer’s Journal: 40 Writers and Their JournaIs, later reprinted in Keeping a Journal You Love, the late poet suggested that a journal “encourages scrappiness. Things needn’t be finished, just stored, … Continue reading →
Our lives present us with births, deaths, marriages, anniversaries, and other beginnings and endings. The following prompts excerpted from A Year in the Life: Journaling For Self-Discovery can help us focus our attention on our joy or grief and keep us … Continue reading →
Applying her method of reading as a writer reads to Pam Houston’s Contents May Have Shifted, Judith Kitchen asks, “So is this memoir, masked as novel? Or novel, masked as memoir? That’s one of the first questions that a reader of this … Continue reading →
For our community read this past March 2013, the librarians in Port Townsend, where I live, chose Pam Houston’s novel Contents May Have Shifted, a story, they felt to be about love and freedom in middle age, something dear to … Continue reading →
This week, I am pleased to re-post an excerpt from writer Priscilla Long’s excellent text The Writer’s Portable Mentor: A Guide to Art, Craft, and the Writing Life. I heartily agree with the many readers who find the book one … Continue reading →
Barbara McNally’s memoir, Unbridled: A Memoir, is, among other delights, a moving and often often funny travel story. Her search to understand her beliefs and live an authentic life instead of keeping her personal desires (which often conflicted with her … Continue reading →
When otherwise good girl Barbara McNally is caught having an affair (for the second time), her marriage ends within weeks and with it, so does the image she created for her two teenaged girls and the man she married right … Continue reading →
I am pleased to post an excerpt from my new book, Sorrow’s Words: Writing Exercises to Heal Grief, now available on iTunes and Kindle. A year ago, when Beth Bacon of Zoyo Branding, asked if she could publish a digital book for me, I … Continue reading →
As adults, we are so used to summarizing and editorializing. We have learned that abstractions are considered “smart” in writing and having opinions makes us sound even smarter. That’s what our teachers wanted from us on papers and on essay … Continue reading →
My daughter Emily took a trip with her husband, children, and parents-in-law to India, where her husband has many relatives. During the three-week trip, I was very happy to be able to follow her travels through photos and writing she … Continue reading →
One way to help oneself heal from grief is to offer others honest lessons from experience. In this essay, included in the anthology On Our Own: Widowhood for Smarties, Nina Abnee has done so with generosity. “What I Learned When My Husband Died” is … Continue reading →
Thelma Zirkelbach describes her memoir as “a story of love and loss and unexpected courage.” In the following excerpt from Chapter 11 of Stumbling Through the Dark, Mazo Publishers, 2013 (posted here with permission of the author), Thelma’s husband Ralph … Continue reading →
Along with editors Barbara B. Rollins, Becky Haigler, and Robyn Conley, Thelma Zirkelbach edited the anthology On Our Own: Widowhood for Smarties. We posted an interview with Thelma last week about the process of finding contributors and publishing the anthology. … Continue reading →
Former romance writer Thelma Zirkelback has two books out now (and a blog) on the subject of widowhood, one an anthology she co-edited of writings by women who have coped with their new life situation (On Our Own: Widowhood for … Continue reading →
“Grandma, do you know what limericks are? I wrote one today. Do you want to hear it?” my 11-year-old grandson Toby asked after telling me about a guest poet’s visit to his fifth grade classroom. Of course, I wanted to … Continue reading →
Nancy Smiler Levinson set herself the goal of writing about what she was living through during her husband’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. The result was a powerful, filled with love, and ultimately affirming memoir, all in free verse, Moments of Dawn: a … Continue reading →
April is National Poetry Month. That means nationwide, the month of April is filled with even larger numbers of poetry related events than other months of the year. Hopefully, reading about them in your local newspapers and on websites will … Continue reading →
Announcing a fabulous book give away to celebrate National Poetry Month! Visit Susan Rich’s The Alchemist’s Kitchen blog here and you can enter to win a free book by an award winning poet or author. Keeping our work circulating is … Continue reading →
Robert Komishane is a Port Townsend, WA poet who turned in middle age to rap and hiphop for inspiration when he wanted to switch from writing free verse to writing in form. Four and a half year’s later, he’s still … Continue reading →
Sandra Hurtes is the author of the essay collection, On My Way To Someplace Else and the chapbook RESCUE. Her essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and Poets & Writers, among other publications. You … Continue reading →
Have you thought about writing for the stage or about reading plays as a way to understand the role of dialog in moving a story forward and keeping your writing “in scene”? If either is true for you, you will … Continue reading →
Tip #1 — Find An Occasion Poet Stanley Plumly says that poems must weigh more at the end than they do at the beginning. As with poetry, the personal essay and memoir supply a vehicle for writers to find out what … Continue reading →
After years of writing, editing, publishing authors and teaching, Jack Heffron knows why we get stuck and how to work around that and back into our material. He’ll be teaching with Meg Files and Sheila Bender at our Writing It … Continue reading →
Pam Robinson is our third place winner in the Writing It Real winter, 2012 writing contest. Our guest judge, Shanti Bannwart, sent these words along about Pamela’s essay: The piece begins with a quote that provides almost a summary of … Continue reading →
We are proud to post the second place winner in our Winter, 2012 Writing It Real contest. Kate Foley Cusumano is a former Navy officer and elementary school teacher. A Midwesterner at heart, she’s been influenced by years in Alaska, … Continue reading →
The contest results are in and we are proud to publish the first-place winning essay in our winter, 2012 contest. Guest judge Shanti Bannwart sent these words about Kate Allen’s “I Grew Up in That Place”: The essay is a touching example … Continue reading →
Creating stories to delight children and help them understand sophisticated social concepts is a primary objective of children’s book authors. But it is often hard to cut to the essence of situations in language children understand. Penny Claire Holland had … Continue reading →
This excerpt is from Chapter 15 of The Third Law of Motion by Meg Files, published by Anaphora Literary Press, 2011, reprinted here by permission of the author. Lonnie had already started work as an inventory clerk in a new discount … Continue reading →
This week’s interview is with my colleague Meg Files about her process for writing The Third Law of Motion, her newest novel and the book’s impact on its audience. You can study with Meg at our April Writing It Real conference … Continue reading →
“Talking Recklessly” is excerpted by permission of the author, Kim Stafford, from his memoir 100 Tricks Any Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared published 2012 by Trinity University Press, San Antonio, TX. When we were young, our father had … Continue reading →
Memoirs are high on my reading list. Memoirs that tell authors’ stories of grieving and healing are at the top. This week, I am posting an in-depth interview with writer Kim Stafford, whose brother committed suicide. As a writer, Kim … Continue reading →
After I began studying with poets at the University of Washington in the early 80’s, I had a closet in my bedroom under my house’s eaves converted into a writing nook with a skylight. Sitting there at night, I could … Continue reading →
You may have taken time away from writing while preparing for the holidays, but now’s the time to jump back in to reach your writing goals. This week’s article from the Writing It Real archives first appeared in 2006. If … Continue reading →
The following article about trusting our need to write was first published in Writing It Real on December 25, 2003. As this year draws to a close, it seems timely again to remember that as artists, we must overcome whatever lack … Continue reading →
Authornomics is an author interview series created by Andrea Hurst and Associates agency. The August 16, 2012 interview I did for the series was chosen as one of their year’s best. The many good questions the agents there asked gave … Continue reading →
I receive news headlines online from the Washington Post. It is unusual for one of their tech headlines to capture my interest, let alone to inspire a creative writing idea. But yesterday, a headline about a tech book review caught … Continue reading →
Once a month, we’ll post selections from an author’s work for the Writing It Real community to contemplate, consider and remark upon as writers. I’ll follow each month’s excerpt with questions to spark comments from Writing It Real readers. We’ll … Continue reading →
After a request from a Writing It Real member to write more on the topic of composing holiday letters, I decided first to write my holiday letter and see what lessons came. I started with the scene of a recent … Continue reading →
On a recent teaching trip to Southern, CA, I visited with my college friend Cynthia. Among the many things we talked about was her oldest son’s new self-published book, The Top 10 Jewish… . She handed me a copy and … Continue reading →
Former Writing It Real intern, Tarn Wilson, shares an exquisite, humble essay about the times we confront loss in the lives of those we don’t know well and the times others address our own losses. This essay first appeared in Harvard … Continue reading →
Author Nancy Lamb has published two books on writing fiction with Writer’s Digest Books, The Art and Craft of Storytelling: A Comprehenisve Guide to Classic Writing Techniques, from which we present an excerpt this week, as well as The Writer’s … Continue reading →
If you have been having difficulty finding topics or ways into the areas that you most want to explore in your writing, try the following exercise I developed from reading Rilke’s Letter to a Young Poet to refresh your approach … Continue reading →
The recent Writing It Real contest provided the opportunity for people to write about the world around them, send in a draft, receive my responses for help in revising, and then re-enter a revision for our final judge, Betsy Howell. … Continue reading →
Our judge Betsy Howell wrote about her selection of Helen Goehring’s essay: “We learn from people when we stop and really see them, when we know something of their lives, past and present, and all that has made them who they … Continue reading →
“Issues of productivity,” “sitting still with loneliness and boredom,” “compartments of time.” I mulled these phrases over. A close writing colleague was suffering from writer’s block and had written them to me in a letter. As I thought about what … Continue reading →
On a cool, partly sunny Port Townsend summer day, I met with a writer’s group whose members have continued to gather and respond to each other’s writing years after meeting each other in a five-week essay writing course. After a … Continue reading →
Last night I attended a late showing of Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon’s movie Moonlight Mile. An audience of young and old sat absorbed and silent as the drama of two parents and their deceased daughter’s ex-fiancé unfolded. Bearing witness … Continue reading →
Today as my co-instructor and I taught a course called “Teaching Poetry to Help Students Meet Literacy Standards,” something remarkable happened, something that often happens with poetry. I’d like to tell you about it because talking about what happened will … Continue reading →
What is Abantu? Years ago during a summer writing workshop at Centrum Foundation in Port Townsend, WA, poet Robert Hass (who went on to serve as a recent U.S. Poet Laureate) taught students a short couplet form that he had … Continue reading →
When an irate reader wrote the editors of Writer’s Digest Magazine because of “incorrect” grammar I used in a poem, I was concerned. I had written “my sister and I” after a verb: “the ones my father gave my sister … Continue reading →
Accepting the Personal in the Personal Essay In this week’s “Revision Diary,” I am offering an account of how writer Mary Ann Payne and I worked from a journal entry to a finished essay. Mary Ann told me that often … Continue reading →
In our spring/summer Writing It Real contest, writers and poets sent in writing inspired by the world around them. That’s a broad topic as we might be looking at the world close up and intimately or from afar. In selecting … Continue reading →
Have you ever come across a call for submissions for a themed anthology or special issue of a magazine and thought, “Oh, I have something I could write that would fit”? Combing the submissions-wanted section in Poets & Writer’s magazine … Continue reading →
Over the last years, it has become respectable and even desirable to publish online and in ebook format. Traditional publishers, now often called legacy publishers, are scrambling to figure out how to survive in the digital age. With the mushrooming of … Continue reading →
In 2007, I wrote about the way I judge essays in a contest. As Writing It Real members enter their work for our 2013 Fall contest, I am reposting my thoughts on the judging process. When I judge, I separate judging … Continue reading →
Suzan Huney used what she’d learned about taking and publishing oral history in her recent book, Women of Strength, by Betty Jane Cooper Johnson as told to Suzan Huney. The following excerpt from their work together illustrates the way oral … Continue reading →
On August 27, 2010, Suzan Huney began an oral history project with her Aunt Betty Jane Cooper Johnson, her mother’s sister. For many years, the tight knit clan of Cooper family women had celebrated during yearly reunions, but interviewing Aunt … Continue reading →
This spring, I lead my town’s 8th graders in discussions about Pete Hautman’s young adult novel Blank Confession, a story based on the novel Shane, which is about a mysterious cowboy who changes the lives of a family while working … Continue reading →
Last week, Pixelita Press published Behind Us the Way Grows Wider, a collection of my poems from 1980 to the present. To celebrate, I am sharing some of the poems and my commentary about them. As the title suggests, the … Continue reading →
Fantasy author Brian Rush’s article on writing for the fantasy fiction audience is filled with the history of the genre. He helps us see that even if we don’t think we like reading fantasy fiction or don’t ever write it, … Continue reading →
-1- I am reading Garth Stein’s novel Racing in the Rain. I am drawn in by the narrator, a dog named Enzo. As I read, I remember two other works in which dogs narrate–Billy Collins’ poem “The Revenant” and Eugene … Continue reading →
A good interview calls forth the best from an interviewee, and I am pleased that I have had such opportunities to articulate the thoughts and experiences that shaped me as a writer and writing teacher. Here are answers I’ve reread … Continue reading →
To Write is to Observe: Learning This Again on a Trip to Turkey In Mid-May, I took a trip to Turkey with 11 women writers. Susan Bono and I gathered participants who met together for four days of touring Istanbul. Our … Continue reading →
Susan Rich is a veteran of many writing retreats and served on the selection committee for Hedgebrook Writers’ Retreat. If you are interested in finding a writer’s retreat to spend some time away from home in an environment conducive to … Continue reading →
Have you wondered about the value of MFA programs or wanted to learn what the MFA candidates learn? Here’s an opportunity to receive enrichment from a recent MFA candidate’s experience–Anne has offered loads of links to journals and writers you … Continue reading →
This week author and publisher Midge Raymond, whose newest book is How to be an Everyday Writer: Tips and Prompts, offers us some of her quickie prompts and answers questions about her career and writing. Sheila Midge, you have succeeded in publishing … Continue reading →
The following is excerpted from Chapter 7 of
Continue reading →None of us know the full impact of our stories, only that we are compelled to write them. Shanti Elke Bannwart, author of Dancing On One Foot: Growing Up In Nazi Germany, says, “Creating art is dangerous. It strips you … Continue reading →
Dorothy Ross’s winning personal essay takes her readers to Africa and a photo safari involving more action than the writer had bargained for. The details the author chooses put us right into the situation with directness and good humor, attributes … Continue reading →
I admire Karin Goldberg’s recent Writing It Real contest winning description of an accident she suffered and her description of waiting for help. Though in shock, she did what she could to remain in control. In the days after the … Continue reading →
I admire Cecile Lusby’s first-place winning essay in our recent Writing It Real contest for its use of dialog to involve the reader in the author’s life-changing childhood experience and for the way the essay spans time, letting us know … Continue reading →
Tarn Wilson writes, “Then, in my newest piece of writing, my mother returned like a zombie, dominating in all her horror and glory. She was stubborn and unyielding and I had no powers against her. After I’d wallowed around in … Continue reading →
Recently, Samantha Smith, a middle school student from our town, placed as a Washington State champion in The Library of Congress’ national contest Letters About Literature. Each year, students are asked to write a letter to their favorite authors, living … Continue reading →
Don’t Think. Write! Many authors who write about writing say, “Don’t think. Write!” I am one of them. But I also think it is fair to say to those who write, “Don’t think. Play!” If you allow yourself to play … Continue reading →
Most of us find it hard sometimes to believe that the specifics of what we see, taste, touch, smell and hear relate our inner perceptions and feelings (or those of our characters) without explanation. We may be writing with specifics … Continue reading →
Just after she’d learned to walk, my 15-month-old daughter and I spent a cloudy afternoon at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo. Her favorite animals were the birds that wandered the grounds because she saw she could send them into flight by … Continue reading →
When Writing It Real member Jean Erler sent me the following essay as part of work she wanted to further develop, I knew that Writing It Real members would relate to what she was describing, a stance we writers take … Continue reading →
I was fortunate to meet Barbara Field when we both presented several years ago at the Whidbey Island Writers’ Conference in Washington State. When I heard from Barbara about recent developments in her writing life, I was eager to share … Continue reading →
In her blog on her writer’s life, the author of When the de la Cruz Family Danced shares her personal approach to dealing with what she calls “writer’s envy.” Whether you have published or are seeking to publish, it is … Continue reading →
There is a place for essays of every length in the world of creative nonfiction. Susan Bono, publisher and editor of Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative, offers us some thoughts on writing short personal essays as well as … Continue reading →
At every writer’s workshop and class I teach, participants ask about self-publishing and publishing with established presses. Here’s novelist and short fiction writer Donna Miscolta’s blog piece on being in the midst of learning what presses and agents are saying … Continue reading →
Christi Killien and her husband, who she refers to as the Bearded One, have been developing what they call a farmlet on their property in Washington State, learning about sustainable living. A fiction writer who suspended story projects for many … Continue reading →
Personal essayist Brenda Miller is keeping a blog entitled Spa of the Mind, a phrase she borrowed from a chapter in William Powers’ book Hamlet’s Blackberry. By keeping this blog, Brenda is dedicating herself to exploring “the ways we find respite for our … Continue reading →
Sometimes we need to be reminded that being a writer is about writing, first and foremost. As writers, we have to sit down and get our words on the page whether or not anyone has asked us to do so–and … Continue reading →
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, … Continue reading →
The guest judge for Writing It Real’s summer/fall 2011 writing contest was Susan Bono, who chose “Eucalyptus And Elm Trees And Fathers, Too” as our third place winner. Susan wrote about the work that it “flowed so naturally. The writer … Continue reading →
Susan Bono, our guest judge for the Summer/Fall Writing It Real contest, chose the following essay as our second place winner. She writes of the essay: “I felt like the writer touched all the bases as she ran home. I … Continue reading →
Dear Writers, It’s New Year’s time, time to reflect and encourage ourselves to set goals we long to achieve. For me, it’s also the time of year that marks the anniversary of the snowboarding accident that took my son’s life. … Continue reading →
Our Summer/Fall WIR guest contest judge Susan Bono awarded first place to Sher Laughlin’s essay. Susan enjoyed the essay’s “many layers of emotion and craft.” She wrote that the essay “employed great use of scene, dialog, imagery/symbolism and moved effortlessly … Continue reading →
Joni Cole, author of Another Bad-Dog Book: Tales of Life, Love, and Neurotic Human Behavior, offers valuable information for writers in her recent interview for Writing It Real members. If you haven’t yet, you will want to read an excerpt … Continue reading →
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 … Continue reading →
When Writing It Real contributor Joni Cole sent me a review copy of her new collection of essays Another Bad-Dog Book: Tales of Life, Love, and Neurotic Human Behavior, I was excited to get started reading. The book proved both funny, … Continue reading →
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 … Continue reading →
This week, Connie Leas offers us excerpts from her two recent nonfiction books. In last week’s article, you read about how the author decided to write on topics that interested her; now you get to read her approach to offering … Continue reading →
I enjoy exchanging information with those I meet, especially about books and writing. A summer day at the beach with my youngest grandson Rafe led to discovering an interesting writer and later to learning her writing and publishing story. My … Continue reading →
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 … Continue reading →
Learning what keeps other writers on task with particular pieces that are difficult to finish affirms for me that as a writer, I must obey the call of the initial inspiration, even if obeying that call means sitting down again … Continue reading →
Inspired by the “Why I Write” column in Poets and Writer’s magazine, essayist Sandra Hurtes examined her answer to that question, which is in the title of the following essay that appeared on October 9, 2011 in the Philadelphia Inquirer. … Continue reading →
Finished writing has to sound natural, but it isn’t “just like talking.” When we talk, our listeners are aware that what we are saying is our story. As authors, we send our words out into the world without our gestures … Continue reading →
I In the high reaches of the Bear River Mountains of Northern Utah the leaves of the big tooth maples are turning red, and the sky arches a rich blue over the campus of Utah State University. I think of … Continue reading →
In a local bookstore, I came across What Patients Taught Me: A Medical Student’s Journey, a memoir by Audrey Young, MD, about how her medical school training in a special University of Washington program facilitated her growth as a person-centered … Continue reading →
I’ve been teaching several classes this month that concentrate on moving writing forward by using details–specific images that come in through the senses–and by receiving first reader response to drafts. That made me think of posting Chapter Eight from Writing … Continue reading →
Several years ago, I wrote Perfect Phrases for College Application Essays, a book for high school students. No two application essays should be alike, so the “perfect phrases” refers to phrases useful for researching oneself for subjects to write about … Continue reading →
It wasn’t all that long ago that I finally developed the habit of not relying on context alone to understand a word new to me, but instead began looking it up and thinking about the dictionary definition. This way, I … Continue reading →
At this past April’s Writing It Real in Port Townsend Writer’s Conference, participant Janet Love read the following vignettes to the group. She had the idea of developing a piece about exploring her life since moving she from northern California … Continue reading →
Many of us who write from personal experience have ideas for columns and features appropriate, we think, for our local newspapers, but we may never have talked with a newspaper editor to find out what things look like from their … Continue reading →
At times of loss, those of us who write have a strong tool to use in working through our emotions. Whether our loss is a pregnancy, a child, a spouse, a parent, a marriage, our health, a job, an opportunity … Continue reading →
I belong to a book promotion group with fiction writer Midge Raymond, author of the short story collection Forgetting English. When she shared the link to a promotional video she and her husband, novelist John Yunker (The Tourist Trail), created, … Continue reading →
This week we are proud to post our second place winner in the recent WIR writing contest. Music of the Spheres By Charles Blondino He sits into the leather chair large enough for three of him. “I just learned to … Continue reading →
Here is our third place winner in the recent WIR essay and poetry contest. We posted our first place winner last week and we’ll be posting the second place winner — a poem — next week. When you read Hildegard’s … Continue reading →
[DAP userId=”10″]This is a Special Edition for Kate Bracy’s readers. We hope you enjoy it. Please consider trying Writing It Real for two weeks for only $.99.[/DAP] I admire the way Kate M. Bracy threads her essay with the words … Continue reading →
Personal essays can be effective arguments that lobby to persuade others to rethink behavior or at least understand a different point of view. As you read this week’s account of Kurt VanderSluis’ incident with a dog, note the way his … Continue reading →
Two years ago, Jack Heffron read this personal essay at our Writing It Real conference in Port Townsend. An exercise Jack offered this past conference involved writing a confession about something you haven’t confessed before. His assignment made me remember the entertaining … Continue reading →
Most of us regret having taken actions regarding life decisions because of fear or confusion or not wanting to disappoint others. How our lives would be different now if we had seized the opportunities life presented is something we can’t … Continue reading →
In classes and at writers’ workshops, people often want to know how they can make their lives writing lives. Many ask how they can begin to earn income from writing. The answers to both questions vary, depending on what kind … Continue reading →
The first time I taught a seminar in keeping a writer’s journal, I was stuck with the fact that everyone around the table said they enrolled partly to develop discipline as a writer. They came to class believing that learning … Continue reading →
We are pleased to post our third-place winning essay in the Writing It Real Winter 2011 contest. Inez Holger’s original entry into the contest sparked a few questions from me about where I wanted to know just a little bit … Continue reading →
Poet and fiction writer Paula Marie Coomer has written an essay about her road to becoming a writer and to publishing her work. Through her story, you will relate to the persistent internal voice (echoed by those who know your … Continue reading →
Terry Persun, author of numerous technical articles, poetry books and novels, has published a guidebook that will help any of us who are working with small presses, self-publishing or working to support our book even though it is with a … Continue reading →
When I was writing the fiction-writing chapter of Creative Writing Demystified, I called upon David Reich to review the chapters, helping me feel secure that I was sharing pertinent and useful information with the book’s readers. He took on the … Continue reading →
Contest judge Janice Eidus chose “Cheating Death” as a winner in our winter Writing It Real writing contest, saying, “I admire how in succinct fashion the writer authentically captures the painful process of grieving, including the step of moving on.” … Continue reading →
Our guest judge, Janice Eidus, wrote of Alice’s essay: “I admire how the writer uses food as a romantic metaphor in such an original way. Also, the ending is truly an ‘inevitable surprise.’” This week, we share Alice Lowe’s finished … Continue reading →
The Seattle7 group of writers has garnered national attention for their work contributing to literary and literacy communities. The attention has resulted not only in strengthening alliances among the writers working together but also in valuable promotion for their books … Continue reading →
“…poetry, like bread, is for everyone.” — Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton Many people say they don’t enjoy poetry or they don’t find it accessible. But they didn’t have Merna Ann Hecht for a teacher. She teaches her students how they … Continue reading →
The Work of Marc J. Sheehan, Jefferson Carter, Lana Hechtman Ayers and Marilyn Stablein As I wrote last week: I think of poetry as my “home page.” It is where I land when I want to deepen my appreciation, my … Continue reading →
The Work of Susan Rich, Janée Baugher, Peggy Shumaker and Ellaraine Lockie I think of poetry as my “home page.” It is where I land when I want to deepen my appreciation, my observation, my understanding and my memory of … Continue reading →
This first day of National Poetry Month, we share a letter from Milwaukee poet Margaret Rozga, whose son was deployed to Afghanistan and wounded there. The poems in her forthcoming poetry collection, Though I Haven’t Been to Baghdad, concern her … Continue reading →
After reading Nancy Rekow’s oral history works, I wrote to her with questions, hoping for an article that allowed Writing It Real subscribers access to the thought process and background that fed her desire to write oral history. In response, … Continue reading →
Last week we posted Nancy Rekow’s foreword to the oral history she wrote from interviews with Minnie Rose Lovgreen, her neighbor of many years. This week we post an excerpt so you can experience Minnie’s voice and the skill with … Continue reading →
Writing oral histories is a project of the heart. An author is struck with a strong desire to write the life of another in that other’s words because they find something colorful, endearing and valuable about that person’s experiences. This … Continue reading →
Twenty eleven is the Year of the Chicken around here. The chicken coop is finally finished. Just the fencing is left, and then we can bring some hens home. These will be free-range chickens, with both a fenced-in pasture and … Continue reading →
As well as life lessons, Janet offers writing lessons in this well-crafted essay — about extended metaphor and about writing from what is happening in one’s life to find insight and resolution. That resolution might be a small or a … Continue reading →
In 2007, we posted an interview with Allison Gilbert about her first book Always Too Soon: Voices of Support For Those Who Have Lost Both Parents, which is a collection of intimate interviews about the journey traveled by those whose … Continue reading →
Last month, I met journalist Lawrence W. Cheek, who is on the faculty of the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts low-residency MFA program on Whidbey Island. He is at work on a boat he has named Nil Desperandum (never despair) … Continue reading →
This week we are posting the third of our three winners in the fall 2010 Writing It Real contest. Rhonda Wiley-Jones has been a traveler since her teen years and, it seems from her essay, has learned to make good … Continue reading →
This week, we are very pleased to post the first place winning essay in Writing It Real’s Fall, 2010 contest. Our guest judge this time around was Ellie Mathews, who wrote about her choice this way, “In her essay, ‘Earning … Continue reading →
Brenda Miller and Holly J. Hughes, two skillful writers and past contributors to Writing It Real (be sure to click on their names to read their distinguished bios), have written a manuscript aimed at helping writers encourage and pay attention … Continue reading →
In 1992, my colleague Christi Killien and I published Writing in a Convertible with the Top Down with Warner Books. It is a book of correspondence between the two of us about writing, the craft tools we’d learned and the … Continue reading →
An interesting email arrived one day recently — a young man from Chicago was hoping I’d take a look at 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More, his new e-book of prompts for writers. Having written … Continue reading →
I often hear from people eager to share their experience as writers with Writing It Real subscribers. I write back to them all with interest in how their experience can clarify aspects of the writing life as well as inspire … Continue reading →
[Writing It Real subscriber Tina Traster used a time of great change in her personal life to build a bridge from her work as a newspaper journalist to making money with her passion for writing personal essays. This week we … Continue reading →
I was introduced to Diane Lockward’s poetry as a member of a Yahoo group dedicated to poets helping one another publicize their work. I read and very much enjoyed her collection What Feeds Us. A 2006 Quentin R. Howard Poetry … Continue reading →
This year, I was introduced to the Espresso Book Machine at a Northwest bookstore and learned there were three of these machines in Western, WA, all of them not too far from where I live. Not too long after that, … Continue reading →
Because we experience life chronologically, without a clear beginning, middle or end, memoirists tend to write in an episodic way — “this happened, then that happened, and after that… ” — and are often overwhelmed by a huge array of … Continue reading →
[We continue this week with more sage advice from a talented memoir author and psychotherapist who has guided many in writing their life stories. We think you will make good use of her idea for moving ahead even when your … Continue reading →
[Early in her newest book, The Power of Memoir: How to Write Your Healing Story, Linda Joy Myers describes well our feelings as memoir writers: This scenario is a common one with memoir writers — the struggle between the desire … Continue reading →
Creative nonfiction writer and novelist, Judith Kitchen shares with us a fruitful exercise she created for those of us searching for new ways to use photographs to inspire our writing. A photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of … Continue reading →
[This week we offer a second exercise from Dinty W. Moore, author of The Accidental Buddhist and Crafting the Personal Essay and editor of Brevity magazine. –ed.] Too often, we write about other people because we think we know something … Continue reading →
[This week we are proud to present the first of two exercises that Dinty W. Moore, author of The Accidental Buddhist and Crafting the Personal Essay and editor of Brevity magazine, uses to help his students work in creative nonfiction. … Continue reading →
[This week we are starting a series of postings with poetry and creative nonfiction writing exercises offered by writers who teach. No matter what genre you favor, try the exercises they describe, and you will most certainly surprise yourself with … Continue reading →
I am pleased to post this interview with author Jan Vallone, whose memoir excerpt “Perspective” appeared as our article last week. It is always a pleasure to correspond with authors about their experience, process, hopes, desires, disappointments and successes and … Continue reading →
[The following is a chapter from Jan Vallone’s memoir Pieces of Someday. The speaker is a lawyer and 44 -year-old mother of two who longs to become a writer and a teacher of writing. To make the career change, she … Continue reading →
[This essay appeared in The Summerset Review in 2005. The honesty of the author as she investigates her post-MFA-in-Creative-Writing life will resonate with many of us who dream of a life in which our writing is our main focus, a … Continue reading →
I recently came across notes I’d taken while working on The Writer’s Journal: 40 Writers and Their Journals. I’d long relished the journals of Emerson and Thoreau and liked reading about how the transcendentalists, including Louisa May Alcott, shared their … Continue reading →
It isn’t easy for us to write up to the standards we demand of ourselves when we are writing about those we love who are no longer with us. The more we wish to honor them and the life we … Continue reading →
This week we are proud to post “My Mother, the Queen,” our first place-winning essay in Writing It Real’s 2010 Spring Contest. I think you’ll find the author’s use of an extended metaphor to describe her mother both poignant and … Continue reading →
After I read Kristin Henry’s poem “Release,” I was drawn to reread it many times over the days I was reading contest entries. I admired its embedded rhymes (“back away./ Her airy body; delirium-like, but true. I’ve/heard them, too) and … Continue reading →
I am proud to present Martha Sarkissian’s place-winning essay. When I read this essay about making a trip to where the author’s mother had grown up, I was impressed with the way she organized her essay around her short stay, … Continue reading →
Recently, I met Beckie A. Miller online and learned that her writing career began with the need to write about loss. This week in our series on writing grief, I am sharing her first published essay, a recent humorous essay … Continue reading →
Writing one’s way through grief is a process that helps us integrate our loss into our interior life. Writing about loss, we face life without the physical presence of someone we loved dearly. Having written a memoir about the loss … Continue reading →
A few months ago, Writing it Real subscriber Leslie Wake suggested that she interview me about the writing of my memoir, A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief. We began an email correspondence that resulted in … Continue reading →
When guest judge Anna Quinn selected Sindee Ernst’s essay as our Winter No-Contest Contest winner, she wrote, “A wonderful piece. Writer uses specific sensory detail beautifully to evoke feelings of leaving one’s childhood home and discovering another. Strong ending.” Sindee … Continue reading →
So often as writers we know we have captured something in our drafts and have brought the work as far as we can at the moment, but sometimes we miss seeing what our writing is leading us toward. That’s when … Continue reading →
Meg Hannah House won third place in this winter’s Writing It Real No-Contest Contest for her personal essay “He Was Surprised And So Was I”. Our contest was designed so that entrants wrote in response to words they came across … Continue reading →
A saying goes: Readers pick your current novel if you impress them on the first page, and they’ll buy your next novel if you wow them on the last page. Though all readers enjoy an impressive beginning, the impact of … Continue reading →
Over the last few years, I have been getting to know retired Seattle Times journalist Ross Anderson and his wife, Mary Rothschild, a retired Seattle Times editor. Since moving from Seattle to Port Townsend, the couple has made many contributions … Continue reading →
Career journalist, Ross Anderson, worked for over 30 years at the Seattle Times, covering everything from the police beat and courts to commercial fishing, though most of his time was spent writing about politics, serving as chief political writer, congressional … Continue reading →
Last week we posted an interview with Harmoni McGlothlin, writer and writing enthusiast, whose website is connecting writers and offering publishing opportunities. This week, she adds her viewpoint on writing strong characters to our fiction article archive by looking into … Continue reading →
After being asked to be a judge for a creative nonfiction contest at Notes & Grace Notes, an online site for writers, I read the editor’s mission statement and was impressed with the venue for writers seeking peer response and … Continue reading →
As the publishing industry moves online, you may have ordered books on your computer or gone on your local library’s website to request books or an inter-library loan. But would you ever consider reading a book on a computer or … Continue reading →
All of us are in front of computers more than we ever imagined we’d be. Though we often talk about longing for time to curl up with a book, we still find ourselves instead in front of a screen. I’ve … Continue reading →
Melissa Hart’s memoir Gringa: A Contradictory Childhood is the story of growing up between the polarity of her parents’ worldviews and the harsh judgment of a dominant culture and surviving. As reader, I was engaged in this tale from the … Continue reading →
Writing poetry does take a certain frame of mind–one in which the poet realizes that small things hold great emotional meaning. We have to trust that whatever comes to mind and heart can help us begin poems. The following exercise … Continue reading →
William Wordsworth famously defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and Emily Dickinson explained the sensation of poetry this way, “If I read a book and it makes my body so cold no fire ever can warm me, … Continue reading →
This week during National Poetry Month, William Mawhinney offers us an account of the way sound is at the root of his poetry practice. His books, Songs in My Begging Bowl, which appeared in 2002, and Cairns Along the Road, … Continue reading →
Giving Attention to Sentence Construction and to Locution In this last installment of the series on paying attention to the sound your words make on the page, we will discuss the use of interesting (to the ear) sentence variety and … Continue reading →
This week we’ll examine more techniques of making meaningful sound on the page to carry emotion and momentum. Onomatopoeia The term onomatopoeia comes from the Greek for “word-making.” It means the employment of one or more words to imitate, echo, … Continue reading →
Remember Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven“? Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some … Continue reading →
An essential element for good writing is a good ear: one must listen to the sound of one’s prose. — Barbara Tuchman Sound itself… is surely a signifier of mood, and thus of message… –Mary Oliver Paying attention to the … Continue reading →
What is tone? It can seem a hard element to isolate, but we definitely know it when we read it. Compare these two descriptions of the same event: The protest erupted into violence today as police attempted to keep the … Continue reading →
What is a subplot? It is a smaller story inside a larger story and it illuminates the life, times, personalities, themes and issues of the main characters, often by introducing peripheral characters and events. In novels (and in films) subplots … Continue reading →
Francois Camoin writes in “The Textures of Fiction,” a contribution to Words Overflown by Stars, edited by David Jauss, that fiction is: little bits of action to keep us turning the page, to keep us moving through the landscape that … Continue reading →
In real life, spoken language together with body language carries mountains of information and, like many if not most writers, you may find it difficult to convey the richness of this in prose. But you have already started writing dialog … Continue reading →
As humans, we are wired for empathy and vicarious living, so we easily put ourselves into stories if we can identify with what the characters are going through in the emotional and physical situations they encounter. Whether we are reading … Continue reading →
Who is telling the story you are writing? It’s an important choice because it dictates what kind of information the narrator knows, and it reveals the window through which you must tell your story to your readers. Will your story … Continue reading →
Last week we worked on getting to know your protagonist and understanding the necessity of creating a fictional dream for readers. The week before we worked on narrative line and time frame. Now, we’ll turn to developing plot and arc … Continue reading →
Last week we explored story ideas and ways to develop them by establishing a narrative line and a time frame. This week we are going to think about the story’s protagonist, his or her nature, dilemmas and settings. In following … Continue reading →
Whether you are talking about short stories by Raymond Carver, novels by Barbara Kingsolver, or sudden fiction by Bruce Holland Rogers, you are reading stories that sprang from the imagination of the authors. Although the stories may in some way … Continue reading →
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Continue reading →These last few months, I’ve been researching for a book I’m writing for McGraw-Hill’s education department. It’s called Creative Writing Demystified and is meant for use in high school and college classrooms. Creative writing is a broad term that covers … Continue reading →
Author Joel M. Vance offers a tightly written essay on tips for writers — ones we shouldn’t forget when we are polishing our work and ones we should remember as we are focusing and developing it. Following the essay is … Continue reading →
“We are all already poets in the depths of ourselves — as our image-filled and wildly imaginative dreams show us!” David Richo in Being True to Life When I collected journal entries from contemporary writers for The Writer’s Journal: 40 … Continue reading →
This week, I am sharing my developmental editing responses to another Honorable Mention essay in our Summer 2009 No-Contest Contest. You’ll see Karen B. Call’s original contest entry, my written responses to her work and then her revised essay. You’ll … Continue reading →
Continuing in our revision diary category posts, this week we are sharing an essay by Jack Shea, one of two essays that our guest judge Brenda Miller chose as honorable mention in our recent contest. My developmental editing comments inserted … Continue reading →
Reading the draft Joyce sent to us for the Fall 2009 Writing It Real No-Contest Contest and the tweaked version, you’ll see an example of the importance of polish editing. Although an essay might be “all there” on the page, … Continue reading →
In this article, we present Lisa Kee’s winning essay from our Fall 2009 No-Contest Contest. Each entrant submitted an essay, which I read and responded to. All entrants had the opportunity to revise their essays after reading my comments and … Continue reading →
In this article, we present Julie Barker’s winning essay from our Fall 2009 No-Contest Contest. Each entrant submitted an essay, which I read and responded to. All entrants had the opportunity to revise their essays after reading my comments and … Continue reading →
With the traditional publishing world in flux as publishing houses balance the cost of printing and advertising books against their sales numbers, more and more book loving entrepreneurs are finding ways to stay abreast of readers’ changing habits and bring … Continue reading →
In Betsy Howell’s book Acoustic Shadows: Men at War and a Daughter Who Remembers Them, the author searches for an understanding of her family’s emotional legacy. After her parents’ deaths, she realizes that there is no one to tell her … Continue reading →
Betsy L. Howell, an only child, was 31 when both of her parents had died. She was drinking and upset with herself when she started to ask questions about her parents’ lives and read the family heirloom her father treasured … Continue reading →
The following is an excerpt from Acoustic Shadows: Men at War and a Daughter Who Remembers Them by Betsy Howell. At 31, after the death of both her parents, Betsy sought solace in a family heirloom–the diary of her great-great-grandfather … Continue reading →
Meg Waite Clayton’s novel, The Wednesday Sisters invites you in to the lives of five suburban young moms in the late sixties. Frankie, Linda, Brett, Ally, and Kath, want more from their lives than family and playgrounds can provide, yet … Continue reading →
Seven years ago this October, Kurt and I launched Writing It Real. It would have been Seth Bender’s 27th birthday, had he not died in December, 2000 in a snowboarding accident. The magazine’s first article was “A Special Birthday,” explaining … Continue reading →
Many of us have a connection to place and want to use research about that location’s founding, settlement, history, flora and fauna in our writing. Eileen Apperson’s essay about Los Tulares provides a good example of how love of place … Continue reading →
In graduate school, at California State University-Fresno, Eileen Apperson began what was to become a longer creative non-fiction project when she wrote one short essay about the eradication of Tulare Lake, which was once the largest fresh water lake west … Continue reading →
This essay, which won an American Jewish Press Award, originally appeared in the April 2004 Hadassah Magazine, April 2004. It is included in a collection of essays by Sandra Hurtes, On My Way To Someplace Else, that will be out … Continue reading →
The following conversation with essayist Sandra Hurtes helps us all realize that we have it in us to pursue the dream of publishing our essays. We need to stick with it, listen to others, and find the publications that are … Continue reading →
This week’s article by British author Jo Parfitt recounts the story of her early writing success and extracts the elements of that success for others to emulate. Getting a book published does not have to depend on who you know … Continue reading →
Barbara Graham’s essay about the birth of her granddaughter, Isabelle Eva, and the changes it made in her and her family are not only the subject of this wonderful essay but also the inspiration for a whole anthology of writings … Continue reading →
Earlier this year, Writing It Real contributor Steven Winn wrote me that Barbara Graham, a former San Francisco Chronicle colleague of his, was publishing a collection of essays by women writers on grandmothering. He wondered if I would be interested … Continue reading →
[This essay was adapted by the author from her book Naked, Drunk and Writing: Writing Essays and Memoirs for Love and for Money] For all its charm and sometimes apparent aimlessness, an essay has a skeleton, an underlying structure that … Continue reading →
I have recently completed one more semester of mentoring graduate student Kathy Lockwood in her Creative Writing program at Alaska Pacific University. Here is a third article from our series of exchanges about writing poetry. Just before Kathy sent this … Continue reading →
Last week we posted an interview with memoirist Sue William Silverman. This week’s article is an excerpt from her new book, Fearless Confessions: A Writers Guide to Memoir, and is reprinted here with the permission of the author and University … Continue reading →
Memoirist Sue William Silverman’s guide for memoir writing is hot off the press this month. Fearless Confessions is immensely useful and absorbing. Its tone is warm, patient, helpful and reassuring, and it is itself an example of its lessons — … Continue reading →
As I continue to mentor Kathy Lockwood, who attends Alaska Pacific College in Anchorage, I grow and learn by considering her poems and her readings of the published poems she studies. Just as I did in April of this year … Continue reading →
I’ve been to your web page and read: ABOUT INDEXES Sheila Before I met you this winter, Katherine, I had never spoken to an indexer, not even the ones some of my publishers employed to make the indexes for my … Continue reading →
This essay is excerpted from <em>Off-Kilter: A Woman’s Journey to Peace with Scoliosis, Her Mother and her Polish Heritage</em> with the author’s permission. It is my pleasure to offer you this sample of the book’s excellent essays — each one … Continue reading →
This week we present an interview with author Linda C. Wisniewski. Her book Off Kilter: A Woman’s Journey to Peace with Scoliosis, Her Mother & Her Polish Heritage accomplishes what many of us wish to accomplish when we are writing … Continue reading →
“Walking to School” is an essay that is very close to being completely satisfying. I want to share the essay and the comments I sent Nancy in our recent No-Contest Contest to provide the experience of workshopping an essay using … Continue reading →
I am pleased to present the second place winner in our spring 2009 Writing It Real No-Contest Contest. Mary Oak has woven her childhood longings and adult experience into a rich tapestry in the service of informing many through her … Continue reading →
Kathy Krause’s personal essay “The Hershey Bar Incident” entertains as well as reminds readers of something very important–how many times as adults we make promises to children and then don’t come through, thus eroding the admiration the children have for … Continue reading →
The first time I hold my daughter’s daughter I feel so sad. I don’t remember feeling this when her sons were born. It is a strange feeling, the wrong emotion for this happy time, but I can’t help it. I’m … Continue reading →
Ever since I started writing in earnest and working with other writers, I’ve been curious about why one chooses fiction for one story and non-fiction for another. Most of what I write is drawn from personal experience so for me … Continue reading →
Caroline Arnold has been a contributor to Writing It Real, and recently, she sent me an essay about how one of her early children’s books began as gardening observations with her children. We will be posting an excerpt from that … Continue reading →
In this slightly abbreviated excerpt from another of author Elaine Partnow’s introductions, we see an argument at work that informs as it asks us to consider the absence of women from lists of notable playwrights. Partnow has put her book … Continue reading →
Elaine Partnow wrote this introduction for The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Your True Age, which she co-authored with her sister Judith Hyman, Ph.D. You will see the work a book’s introduction can do for managing readers’ expectations of how a … Continue reading →
I started out in life as an actress. Around my 32nd year, I was depressed. I had been getting great reviews on my theater performances in LA, but I was not getting hired for films. I had little parts in … Continue reading →
Voice is one the most essential features of successful writing; if we fail to create an authentic, credible voice in our work, that work will fail — in spite of other virtues it may have. However, voice is often referred … Continue reading →
This school term, I have been mentoring Kathy Lockwood, a student enrolled at Alaska Pacific University, where she is doing independent study in writing poetry. Very recently, she sent me an email with a letter attached describing her lack of … Continue reading →
When I think about how I began cultivating my writer’s life, I realize had been doing so even before I knew what I was doing. But once it began a more conscious process, about a year later, I became overwhelmed. … Continue reading →
Chantelle Osman recently approached me about sharing information about her work as a screenwriter and producer with Writing It Real subscribers. Those of you interested in pursuing acceptance of screenplays for production will enjoy the hit of energy you’ll get … Continue reading →
It is with pleasure that we post our third place winner in Writing It Real’s 2008 No-Contest Contest. Nicki narrates a Christmas morning in a way that goes beyond Christmas memories. She does a fine job of helping us see … Continue reading →
I enjoy “White Bird Morning” by Mai Lon Gittelsohn for many reasons. The poem situates me in the familiarity of an early Sunday morning and then takes a turn into territory that is new to me. It isn’t long before … Continue reading →
Mardi Link’s essay is a wonderful example of how narrating a story about a time you found something important to you allows you to weave themes of sadness and joy together into a full experience for the reader. The details … Continue reading →
Jack Heffron is one of the most versatile writers I know. I’ve read his short fiction, creative nonfiction, books on writing, books that he has ghost written and books that he’s edited (including my own). Recently, I read some of … Continue reading →
Embarkation by Meg Files The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. –Marcel Proust We believe we are prepared for this trip: all-terrain shoes, tiny clotheslines, mesh-sided shirts, new underwear, Columbia shorts, … Continue reading →
How do writers decide what to write about? In “Death on a Quiet Street“, by Jack Heffron and John Boertlein, Cincinnati Magazine, April 2008, Jack Heffron writes: Last September, I was having dinner with my friend John Boertlein when the … Continue reading →
[This article first appeared in Lizard, Victoria University’s Professional Writing and editing program’s magazine. The University is in Melbourne, Australia where Meg Files did a Doris Leadbetter Teacher Exchange between Pima College and VU’s Diploma Professional Writing and Editing. –ed] … Continue reading →
Our new President is a writer, which focuses national attention on trusting in the power of words. It helps those of us who write from personal experience re-invest in the importance of what we do as we write, hoping to … Continue reading →
This week I got a note from a student who said she was looking forward to taking my advice about writing more this year if she could only figure out how to stop working 60 hours a week. I had … Continue reading →
Love And Hate On Night Watch By Katrina Hays Originally published in Sea Stories Journal, Winter 2008 Offshore sailors have ridiculous and sublime ways to spend their time. One of these exercises in necessity and boredom is the night watch. … Continue reading →
I met Katrina Hays this past summer at Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers’ Writing Workshop’s (RWW) graduation day discussions and ceremony. I was there to talk about how students in the graduate low-residency writing program could choose to work on … Continue reading →
Shortly after reading Margaret D. McGee’s gentle, focused book Sacred Attention: A Spiritual Practice for Finding God in the Moment, I emailed her with some questions about her writing and about publishing in the spiritual genre. She graciously wrote back, … Continue reading →
When author Margaret D. McGee moved with her husband David into a house in the woods on the Olympic Peninsula, she started keeping a nature journal. As she formed the practice of writing short entries a few times a week, … Continue reading →
This time of year we cope with a lot of activity. Social engagements and gift shopping, worrying about how to spread a gift buying budget around and the need to travel distances or entertain out-of-town family sweep away our writing … Continue reading →
[From What I Thought I Knew, Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing, Inc., 2008] Faint light is leaking through the bedroom mini-blinds, but there’s no good reason to get out of bed. It’s late winter in Southern Indiana. The sodden ground is blotched with … Continue reading →
What I Thought I Knew is a gorgeous collection of life-, love- and spirit-affirming personal essays. In the preface to her book, Barbara Stahura says it this way: Sometimes, I wake up early in my grown-up bed, windows open around … Continue reading →
In 1988, while I was living in Berkeley with my husband Kurt, who was on a computer network assignment, I came across a book: The Enneagram: An Ancient system for Understanding Yourself and Others in Your Life,by Helen Palmer. I … Continue reading →
In July, Nina Soifer sent three poems into the Writing It Real No-Contest Contest. I was very taken with “Buttons,” a poem that evokes specific childhood time the young poet spent with her grandmother: Buttons Sometimes when I look at … Continue reading →
[This week we present the second place winner in our first No-Contest Contest. The work Nicole Janeen Jones sent in moved me very much. Most of the essay was fluid and kept me engaged in the weightiness of Nicole’s subject … Continue reading →
This article appeared on May 26 2008 among the article archive on the valuable NAWW.org website. Having met Penny several years ago at the Whidbey Island Writer’s Conference, I already admired her energy and support for writers. Her information in … Continue reading →
Recently, I heard from author Linda Collison in response to a Writing It Real e-mailing. Linda and I had met years ago during a visit my husband and I made to the Big Island in Hawaii. She and her husband … Continue reading →
After Rodney Merrill received my answers to his questions about writing and my motivation to write, he sent me an interesting letter about his writing process and his knowledge of what those who study writers say. And he asked me … Continue reading →
Last fall, doctoral candidate Rodney Merrill sent me a questionnaire about my approach to writing. He was surveying many writers while researching for his dissertation in the area of social constructionist views on writing. I was very taken with his … Continue reading →
Earlier this year, I submitted a story to Glimmer Train, a fine literary magazine that boasts, “Each quarterly issue presents about 260 pages of literary fiction—eight to twelve brand new stories by luminaries and fresh new voices making their way … Continue reading →
When Judith Kitchen, who is Assistant Program Director of Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop, suggested I might want to read a paper by graduating MFA student Hilary Schaper on organizing a collection of personal essays, I was delighted. I … Continue reading →
According to a Japanese Shinto tale, Enchin, a priest from Nara, was told in a vision to look for the clear water origin of the Yodo River. After a long search, he stumbled upon a place deep in a forest … Continue reading →
Author Stuart Dybeck was the final judge for the 2006 G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction. I imagine his delight when he read Naomi Benaron’s original and moving collection Love Letters from a Fat Man. How could he not … Continue reading →
When writer Mimi Schwartz hears a story during a trip to Israel that corroborates the one her late father used to tell, she is compelled to conduct an ambitious research project about her father’s birthplace, a village where, he said, … Continue reading →
Built of timber over the years from 1601 to 1626 as a residence of the Tokugawa Shoguns, the Nijo Castle in Kyoto is preserved as a UNESCO World Heritage site. I walk in the July heat toward the building’s large … Continue reading →
In this exercise, we are going to build an essay, piece of fiction or a poem with inspiration from fiction writers Ron Carlson and Lisa Shea and poet Bill Matthews. You’ll start, without knowing where this might lead, by imitating … Continue reading →
One way to tackle subjects you may not feel up to handling is to learn from the strategies of writers who tell stories and/or evoke issues through the use of dialog alone. Their stories are often very short, striking the … Continue reading →
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant by Emily Dickinson Tell all the truth but tell it slant— Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With … Continue reading →
[This week’s article continues the interview Sheila did with writer Nahid Rachlin for the May, 2008 AWP Chronicle. Part one Sheila What advice do you have for those writing from painful political and family backgrounds? Nahid My advice is that … Continue reading →
This article originally appeared in the AWP Chronicle, May, 2008 Nahid Rachlin has published four novels, Jumping Over Fire, (City Lights), Foreigner (W.W. Norton), Married to a Stranger (E.P.Dutton), The Heart’s Desire (City Lights), and a collection of short stories, … Continue reading →
“In 1833, British anatomist Sir Charles Bell published a book whose premise was that the very existence of the human hand proved the existence of God.” So opens Arnold (Arnie) Arem’s book In Our Hands: A Hand Surgeon’s Tales of … Continue reading →
When my sister came to visit me this spring, she brought along her boss, Rob Roy, a former Olympic ski coach who lives in Bend, Oregon where he hikes, skis, and develops green building and affordable housing for seniors. I … Continue reading →
In Lucy Rector Filppu’s journaling classes for parents, men and women gather together to write, cry, laugh, listen, discover, and to learn about themselves and support one another. They arrive in class hoping to find themselves as parents — but … Continue reading →
“After Marisa’s first seizure, when the two of us were in the hospital, the nurse told me I was doing a great job, and that I was a wonderful mother.” I read the opening of Betsy MacWhinney’s essay and immediately … Continue reading →
Mary Zelinka opens her essay “Grooming” with a statement that lets us know up front that she is going to tell us an emotional story: “I wanted to hate Papa Burke, but by then I loved him too much.” I … Continue reading →
“Becoming a Woman of Color” by Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor offers a satisfying and moving read. A lyric essay in structure, it is built in sections that each begin with a command: Imagine, Remember, Picture. The symmetry between beginning and ending the … Continue reading →
Those of us committed to seeing personal experience in print often consider our journal entries a valuable source and form for literature. Usually, we are thinking of mining our own journals and compiling selected entries, but the three books I … Continue reading →
This week we are posting an excerpt from Ellie Mathews’ memoir The Ungarnished Truth. The excerpt is a kind of a how-to essay. Ellie details the winning recipe she entered into the 1998 Pillsbury Bake Off Contest, telling us how … Continue reading →
This year, I have had the delightful experience of working with Tarn Wilson, who is finishing up her MFA this spring from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainer Writing Workshop. Writing It Real subscribers have already benefited from her article on keeping … Continue reading →
The following exercise presented by Writing It Real in Port Townsend Writer’s Conference faculty member Susan Rich is from a poetry-writing workshop she presented at our 2007 writers’ conference. We publish it this week as a finale to our celebration … Continue reading →
Last year, poet Susan Rich, a Writing It Real in Port Townsend Writers’ Conference faculty member, told conference goers that she was asked to become a Board member for Whit Press in Seattle. She was pleased about helping a press … Continue reading →
This week, in honor of National Poetry Month, we are proud to share an article by Writing It Real in Port Townsend Writers’ Conference faculty member Meg Files I have lived in three countries, in eight states, in fifteen cities, … Continue reading →
With poetry, we mourn the passage of time, celebrate connections, yell out at injustice, cry from the pain of unrequited love and exclaim our joy in love and gratitude. Over the years, I have known I would start poems because … Continue reading →
If you’ve been identified as the one in your family, neighborhood or group of colleagues who writes, you may find yourself called upon to create writing for projects you hadn’t imagined setting out to do. One such request could be … Continue reading →
Although trained as a clinical social worker and as a Certified Public Accountant, Kate Kelsall is currently writing and speaking and inspiring many with her twice weekly blog. Kate has Parkinson’s disease (PD) and through her efforts, many others with … Continue reading →
This week, Jack Heffron, writer, editor and faculty member for Writing It Real In Port Townsend’s annual late June writer’s conference, shares “Dot the Dragon’s Eye,” Chapter Seventeen in his instructional book The Writer’s Idea Workshop: How to make your … Continue reading →
Winter is one of the birthday seasons in my family. Among those birthdays, my late father’s comes February 20 and then mine, March 6th. Growing up, I marveled about how both he and I were Pisces, when we seemed so … Continue reading →
People have told me that fear of public speaking ranks high among the biggest fears we have. I know from my experience as a poet and writer who has given and attended readers for almost 30 years, that reading our … Continue reading →
Thelma Zirkelbach, who won an honorable mention in a previous Writing It Real personal essay contest, has a talent for evoking those she is close to. In this winning essay, she writes about her mother as she is today and … Continue reading →
Our second place winner this time around is from Lebanon. Her teacher at the Beirut Evangelical School for Girls & Boys submitted several of her students’ essays. I was delighted to have chosen Nour’s essay as a winner and especially … Continue reading →
Our winning essay this winter is an account of events the year the author was 15. Her use of simple short sentences is especially effective for writing about childhood trauma and for reminding us about children’s disenfranchisement. More of my … Continue reading →
Writing It Real contributor Janice Eidus’ newest novel, The War of the Rosens, is the story of 10-year-old Emma Rosen, a thoughtful girl who is writing poetry amidst the anger, confusion and angst of her leftist and atheist father Leo, … Continue reading →
You may have read that since 1976, Lake Superior State University in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has published a yearly list of words/phrases to ban from the Queen’s English. This week, the school released words chosen from over 2000 nominations on … Continue reading →
After all the gift giving, charitable donations and holiday trips away this time of year, you’ll find the free resources listed below particularly attractive. Each link has inspiration and information to help you fill the well of your creativity. Stock … Continue reading →
In How I Learned to Drive, Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, the main character enters, stands center stage and addresses the audience. “Sometimes to tell a secret, you first have to teach a lesson,” she announces. The lesson the play … Continue reading →
This past spring, writer Jody Bower created a testament to the close circle of friends she has shared her adult life with. In writing about them, for them and for herself, she evokes a kind of organism made of lives … Continue reading →
Do you have a memory of an early piece of writing you did? A memory that has with it the feeling of enjoyment–that you really liked being able to articulate your experience and thoughts in words? I remember sitting down … Continue reading →
On November 1-4, I attended the Bedell Nonfiction Now Conference at the University of Iowa. The conference’s mission is to explore the history, present, and future of nonfiction in its myriad forms, and, as you might expect, the conference was … Continue reading →
I thought Ma was my own birth mother until I was about twelve years old. And why wouldn’t I? When in one of her buoyant moods, she boasted that my good looks, smarts, generosity, even my willfulness were owing to … Continue reading →
Rodney L. Merrill contacted me for an interview about writing from personal experience. He explained that for his doctoral thesis, he is conducting a “research study on how skilled personal essay writers go about writing personal essays and how this … Continue reading →
Writing that rivets its readers requires evocation of place, situation, and at least one person to inhabit the place and deal with the situation. This is true for all writing, even the most lyrical, imagistic or self-reflective. In her novel … Continue reading →
Each year, I spend the month of February teaching writing in Tucson, AZ, and each year I learn about authors fostered by the ongoing program at Pima Community College. The following interview is with an author who credits the Wednesday … Continue reading →
Years ago, I read Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom, a man who was Morrie Schwartz’ college student at Brandeis University. The narrative is about weekly visits to see his former professor, who is dying. What is so inspiring in … Continue reading →
For many of us, fall brings leaves to rake and sometimes to burn. It brings memories of visiting cider mills and eating sweet doughnuts as we sipped fresh apple cider. This week, take a moment to describe fall days either … Continue reading →
I’ve been talking with parents these past few weeks about how their kids are doing with their return to school and all the newness: new teachers, new classrooms, new classmates, new textbooks, new notebooks, and new clubs to join. I … Continue reading →
I spent a lovely day this week reading three books of poems I’ve wanted to sit down with for some time: The Love Hunter and Other Poems by Meg Files, Boxing the Compass by Holly J. Hughes, and Small Knots, … Continue reading →
I spent my summer writing a book called Perfect Phrases for Writing the College Application Essay. My effort was to come up with sentences (sometimes questions, sometimes statements) to help those who have to write the application essay focus and … Continue reading →
This summer, Writing It Real in Port Townsend Writer’s Conference faculty member, Susan Rich suggested we do an article on Floating Bridge Press, a community-based nonprofit, of which she is a member, that has published 17 books of poetry and … Continue reading →
Barbara Sjoholm‘s memoir in essays, Incognito Street: How Travel Made Me a Writer, Seal Press, 2006, evokes a 1970s-style Bohemian travel life and will arouse memories in many readers. Those who knew they wanted to write when they were young … Continue reading →
This week, Writing It Real presents the first place winner in our Spring Personal Essay Contest. Following the essay, Sheila has posted comments on what she admires in the way the essay works. Out of the Trenches and Chasing Butterflies … Continue reading →
We present “In Debt” by Marcia Wall, which took second place in Writing It Real’s Spring 2007 Personal Essay contest. Sheila’s comments about how and why the essay succeeds are printed following the essay. In Debt by Marcia Wall The … Continue reading →
We present here the 3rd place essay from the Writing It Real Spring 07 Personal Essay contest. I have included some comments following Jan Henrikson’s winning essay. Head Size 8 by Jan Henrikson “Head, Size 8,” Tony said gravely as … Continue reading →
I have been reading Sebastian Matthews’ book, In My Father’s Footsteps: A Memoir, about growing up the son of the late poet William Matthews. I was fortunate to have William Matthews as my thesis advisor at the University of Washington. … Continue reading →
I spent my summer writing a book called Perfect Phrases for Writing the College Application Essay. My effort was to come up with sentences (sometimes questions, sometimes statements) to help those who have to write the application essay focus and … Continue reading →
This week, as we continue our series of interviews with authors who have self-published, I had the pleasure of interviewing Sam Turner about This Might Help, the book he and his wife Phyllis put together. Like author Janice Urie, who … Continue reading →
There are a lot of small-world stories in the writing world. Here’s one of mine: In 2000, I was asked by Writer’s Digest Books to judge personal essays. From over 3500 essays, for first place, I chose an essay by … Continue reading →
This week, we have the second in our series of interviews with writers who have self-published. Each of these writers reports on the successful experience they have had. Adina Sara published her collection of poems and personal essays about being … Continue reading →
This week we begin a series on self-publishing, the outgrowth of interviews I’ve been doing with authors who have taken a variety of routes toward self-publishing. Cindy La Ferle and other authors have shared details from their publishing experiences in … Continue reading →
Following my reading of and writing in response to Impassio Press’s anthology In Pieces, An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing, I began a book American philosopher Ken Wilber’s A Brief History of Everything. The rich effects of reading each continue to … Continue reading →
What definitions, thoughts and dreams I’ve snagged from In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing, edited by Olivia Dresher for Impassio Press. In her introduction, Dresher, a fragmentary writing enthusiast, introduces fragmentary writing this way: “lack of a traditional beginning … Continue reading →
Sheila Olivia, I was introduced to your press when one of your authors, Sandi Sonnenfeld, asked me to write a blurb about her book, This Is How I Speak, which is a memoir in diary form. I have been … Continue reading →
Art is a lie that tells the truth. — Picasso A fantasy: I want to write A Diary of Lies. Actually, it’s already in my head, written in invisible ink. But I could just as easily call it A Diary … Continue reading →
In this week’s article, we interview John Nemerovski, who writes about technological subjects for a non-technical audience. His online articles, and now podcasts, are filled with personal anecdotes, quirky observations and bits of his own life including activities with friends, … Continue reading →
Lifetime journal keeper Ruth Folit combined her passion for journal keeping with her technological experience to create LifeJournal, a software program to help those who journal using their keyboards and computers. It wasn’t too long before she decided to create … Continue reading →
Writing about a significant experience or ethical dilemma: A part of our mind, the part that was trained in school, feels we should know what we have to say before we write it down. However, in writing the personal essay … Continue reading →
Most of us writers collect quotes from writers on writing. Whether we hang them above our desks, write them in journals, put them in our email signatures, or use them as epigraphs for our own writing, they remind us of … Continue reading →
Last week we discussed poems in Rebecca McClanahan’s impressive collection, Deep Light. This week, we hear from her as a skillful user of figurative language and enjoy the exceptional opportunity to learn how to stretch our metaphor making muscles. The … Continue reading →
Reprinted with permission of Writer’s Digest Books from Writing Personal Essays: How to Shape Your Life Experiences for the Page by Sheila Bender, Writer’s Digest Books, 1995 About The Three-Step Response To help the writer understand what kind of contact … Continue reading →
Editor’s Note — to learn more about Tanka poetry, click here to read Michael Dylan Welch’s accompanying article. Missing Poems this is but a moonless night, and my pillow has no tear stains— it is in the grocery aisle amid … Continue reading →
Editor’s Note — To read some of Michael Dylan Welch’s Tanka poetry, click here You’ve heard of haiku, but did you know that it’s a spring chicken compared with another genre of short Japanese poetry? The rich heritage of this … Continue reading →
Being tall is not all bad. Sure your hit your head a lot, and people are always asking you to get something breakable down from high places or rescue a cat. But my height has served me well a time … Continue reading →
I met Martha Grace Duncan and became aware of her work when she made a research trip to Seattle for a personal essay she was writing about her stepmother. When I first learned she’d come to research for a personal … Continue reading →
This week, we begin a series about the work of writer and Emory University law professor Martha Grace Duncan. In her essay and book writing, Martha combines her passions for law, teaching, and memoir. This memoir originally appeared in The … Continue reading →
“Partners” by B. Lynn Goodwin was one of ten honorable mentions in this year’s inaugural Writing It Real Personal Essay Contest. The essay is followed by response comments Sheila sent to the essay’s author, as promised for all ten honorable … Continue reading →
This excerpt from Allison Gilbert’s Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents (Seal Press, 2006) is reprinted with the permission of the author. Please click here to read Sheila’s interview with her. In this … Continue reading →
Always Too Soon: Voices of Support For Those Who Have Lost Both Parents is a collection of intimate interviews about the journey traveled by those whose parents have both died. Some of the book’s contributors are famous (Rosanne Cash, Ice-T, … Continue reading →
Following this prize-winning essay, Sheila discusses the author’s way of putting description, metaphor making, example, comparison and contrast and cause and effect to good use in developing a humorous essay that clearly defines the experience of menopause and the mental … Continue reading →
Following this prize-winning essay, Sheila discusses the author’s craft and technique for creating an essay that uses imagery and details to work toward a felt understanding. A Dime in My Pocket By Kelly Sievers I scooted a chair close to … Continue reading →
Following this prize-winning essay, Sheila discusses the author’s craft and technique for creating a successful personal opinion essay. I Do, Undone by Catha J. Loomis Shocked by a message on the answering machine, I dashed upstairs and turned on the … Continue reading →
Writers are tuned into the language that people use. Most of us feel that the everyday language of the people we listen to is rich and colorful and important, even if it doesn’t stick to what our teachers taught us. … Continue reading →
I’m reading over 70 personal essays about rich human experience. The essays that came to us as entries in our contest are having a great impact on me. As I read, I move among countries, among ages, among decades and … Continue reading →
In October, my publisher’s essay spoke about the way I wrote and read poetry to help me after losing my 25-year-old son Seth in a snowboarding accident on December 27, 2000: When I finished one particular poem, I saw that … Continue reading →
Stan Sanvel Rubin’s third collection of poems, Hidden Sequel, the winner of the 2006 Barrow Street Poetry Prize, contains this opening epigraph: No, my heart is not sleeping, It is awake. Awake.” –Machado Right from the start, in the beat … Continue reading →
My daughter Emily is a Computational Linguistics Professor. One thing this means is that she spends a lot of time on the computer. She has found a way to keep a diary about her two little boys and the life … Continue reading →
Caroline Arnold graduated from Grinnell College in Iowa where she majored in art. After graduate school at the University of Iowa, she worked as an artist and art teacher for a number of years. Her writing career began in the … Continue reading →
At this past summer’s Writing It Real in Port Townsend writer’s conference, Susan Rich spoke to the conference group about building a writer’s community and finding a place in the world based on one’s passion for poetry. This week, I’ve … Continue reading →
Susan Rich taught for the Writing It Real in Port Townsend’s summer writing conference last June. At the conference, she read from the poems that were soon to be published by White Pine Press in the volume entitled Cures Include … Continue reading →
Everyone wants to help. Everyone has advice. My audiences split along the divide of wanting to know more about Louisa May Alcott, wanting to know more about me or wanting to know more about the genesis of the book (that’s … Continue reading →
From Miss Alcott’s E-mail: Yours for Reforms of All Kinds by Kit Bakke. Reprinted by permission of David R. Godine, Publisher Copyright 2006 by Kit Bakke It was a wild, windy day, very like me in its fitful changes of … Continue reading →
Miss Alcott’s Email: Yours for Reforms of All Kinds is a remarkable memoir by Kit Bakke about a political activist, mother, nurse and management consultant’s midlife review interwoven with a biography of her political and literary soul mate Louisa May … Continue reading →
Last week, we shared a chapter from Joni Cole’s book, Toxic Feedback: Helping Writers Survive and Thrive, published in 2006 by University Press of New England, Hanover, New Hampshire. This week, I talk with Joni about writing the book. Sheila … Continue reading →
Reprinted with permission of the author from Toxic Feedback: Helping Writers Survive and Thrive, University of New England, 2006 Chapter Two: Getting Feedback — Twenty-Two Years By Joni Cole One time I went with a friend of a friend to … Continue reading →
Last March, I attended the annual National Association of Poetry Therapists conference in Boston. Browsing the vendor tables, I discovered Jennifer Bosveld’s offering, The Pocket Poetry Parenting Guide. It presents a short but impressive collection of poetry for use in … Continue reading →
My son Seth Bender, to whom Writing It Real is dedicated, would have turned 31 this October 1. He died in a snowboarding accident December 27, 2000, the year he was 25. In the months following the tragedy, the only … Continue reading →
Writing from our experience gives us the opportunity to know more after the writing than we knew in the experiencing alone. When we can combine our experiencing of outer events with our experiencing of inner events, using the outer as … Continue reading →
This week, we offer a third essay by Brenda Miller, in which she skillfully uses an chance meeting to draw a metaphor that allows her to more deeply reflect upon herself as a writer. Again, the weaving of the outer … Continue reading →
Last week, we posted Brenda Miller’s essay about how making metaphor both removes us from the moment we are in and sets us more deeply into meditation, helping us know ourselves and our inner worlds. In “On Thermostats,” she once … Continue reading →
“Writing it all down,” is the phrase that ends Brenda Miller’s essay. That’s what we strive to do as writers. It is an ambitious striving, a striving that forces us to question our experiences and ourselves–can we possibly write it … Continue reading →
A few months ago, I received an email request to help spread the word about Scrap Paper Press’s worldwide call for creative writing submissions from teens. I went to the project’s website, was impressed with the effort, and posted the … Continue reading →
In a journal, writers write without knowing where their writing is going. They unload thoughts, explore obsessions, record insights and observations, and sometimes imitate other writers, noticing how their perceptions come across in the voice and sentence structures of those … Continue reading →
As a writer, I use my journal to both play with strategies I pick up from other writers’ work and test strategies I invent. In combination with observing the “show don’t tell rule” (use imagery and detail that appeal to … Continue reading →
Every time I open Yahoo on my computer, I look at the upper right-hand corner of the screen to type in what I am searching for and avoid looking at the left-hand area with its news images of death and … Continue reading →
A month ago, when I asked Writing It Real subscribers if they would like an article on technical computer issues writers face, there was a big response. Almost all the comments were about hard drive organization: Any tips you can … Continue reading →
describes a time of not writing but enjoying the garden of a rented London apartment. Her husband thinks she is avoiding her writing, but actually she is cultivating it. Sometimes writing is allowing the senses in without direction. In the … Continue reading →
Joan Weimer’s second memoir, Awestruck: A Skeptic’s Pilgrimage, just out this year, opens with a dramatic prologue: The plane is so near the ground I can make out individual palm trees, their fronds whipped into a frenzy by a tremendous … Continue reading →
I am fortunate to have the opportunity to work with people in developing their essays. Writing It Real subscriber Beth Einstein entered our spring essay contest and recently took me up on my offer to work with her essay for … Continue reading →
Recently, I read Writing Brave & Free: Encouraging Words for People Who Want to Start Writing by Steve Cox and Ted Kooser to learn how they encourage others who want to write. As always with books on writing, I am … Continue reading →
It isn’t an easy path to write from personal experience. There are no guarantees that editors will want to publish what we have to say and no guarantees that we will successfully find a way to say it, publication or … Continue reading →
A lot of books claim they can help authors who are in a hurry to get paid for their writing. This one is enthusiastically subtitled Your Guide to a Profitable Writing Career Within One Year, and it certainly does include … Continue reading →
Maria Moustakas began writing poetry and stories while in the third grade. She did not reach college until her late 30s, earning a scholarship to Vassar College, where she graduated with an English degree in 1979. While at Vassar, participated … Continue reading →
In their book, Writing True: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction, writers and writing professors Sondra Perl and Mimi Schwartz offer a straightforward, encouraging look at how any of us can write our own moving and insightful accounts of … Continue reading →
Most of the time, I am one of the most annoyingly politically correct people I know. I am so PC that even the word “tolerance” strikes me as a tad intolerant. But there is one minority group I can’t stand, … Continue reading →
When I judged Mary Ann Payne’s essay submitted for Writing It Real’s first 2006 personal essay contest as our runner up, I wrote to her with comments about her ending and ideas for strengthening it. Here is the essay she … Continue reading →
This essay is reprinted here from Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed by Mimi Schwartz by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright 2002 by Mimi Schwartz. Available wherever books are sold or from the University of Nebraska Press, 800.526.2617 … Continue reading →
This article originally appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle, October/November 2001 I made up my mind at the beginning of my writing life not to write about my family and friends, since I want them to remain my family and friends. … Continue reading →
This week’s article begins with an excerpt from Mimi Schwartz’s memoir, Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed. Entitled “Jimmy and June, ” this second essay in the collection illustrates the way Mimi Schwartz writes about ordinary life to “get it just … Continue reading →
Sheila Last week, in Writing It Real, I shared a section of your memoir, On Austrian Soil: Teaching Those I Was Taught to Hate with readers. I think the section we posted demonstrates the way your memoir developed from a … Continue reading →
The following is excerpted with Sondra Perl’s permission from Chapter 2, “History Becomes Real”, of her memoir, On Austrian Soil: Teaching Those I Was Taught to Hate, published in 2005 by State University of New York Press, Albany, NY. Writing … Continue reading →
I’ve been teaching poetry writing since 1981, when I began working on my Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Washington. As a teacher, I have continually applied all that I learned through trial and error creating and revising … Continue reading →
Already familiar with Rebecca McClanahan’s essays about her family from her book Riddle Song (as well as her other Writing It Real articles), I was delighted when I found that a new and selected volume of her poems was coming … Continue reading →
Last week, you read Michael Welch’s instruction on writing haiku. This week you’ll learn more about haiku and publishing from a transcript of my email interview with him. It includes the treat of some of Michael’s poems at the end … Continue reading →
Which of us has not looked intently at the markings of age in others and then looked for those markings in ourselves? Which of us doesn’t hope for some wisdom to come along with the signs of aging? Which of … Continue reading →
Writers write. A journal is way to do that, without knowing where you are going with the writing, to unload thoughts, obsessions, insights and observations, and sometimes to imitate other writers, seeing how your perceptions might come across in the … Continue reading →
If you don’t know how to start a piece of writing about a person, try remembering something that person believed. Write that belief out and attribute it to the person. What can you write that bounces off of those words? … Continue reading →
This week’s article is an essay by one of our treasured correspondents with a contest announcement for Writing It Real subscribers inspired by the essay. Janice Eidus’ essay was to have appeared in an anthology that explored the theme and … Continue reading →
We pick up where the email thread left off last week. Sheila starts: I wanted to respond to what Lisa said: “And I wanted to raise this idea about how writing has repercussions that go far beyond whether you are … Continue reading →
In the fall, I consulted with freelance, technical and creative writer, Michelle Goodman about publishing with regional presses. By way of thank you, she arranged for two other writers to join her in an email conversation with me about themselves, … Continue reading →
Here in the Northwest, despite the unusually cold temperatures we recently experienced, daffodils, crocuses and blossoming fruit trees add yellow, purple and pink to our current landscape. And under a week of consistently sunny skies, we find ourselves anticipating spring. … Continue reading →
Always take some time to read what you are writing aloud after you have finished a draft. Note the places that are hard to say or seem to go flat or inspire you. Try taking out the flat spots, extending … Continue reading →
Hannah Goodman is the author of My Sister’s Wedding, a young adult novel that addresses the effects of alcoholism on individuals, friends and families. She self-published it in 2004 (a sample chapter appears in the WIR Gallery) and now often … Continue reading →
After reading Jack’s instruction last week about narrating a day in your life to find material, you will be interested in looking into this story to find the quantity of details that come from such close observation, from the way … Continue reading →
Jack Heffron’s simple, masterful writing prompt will have you realizing how much content you have to write about in no time–well, in the time it takes to live a day and read the notes you put on paper. Taking notes … Continue reading →
On July 8, 2004, I posted an instructional exercise article, “Put Summer on the Page,” encouraging writers to use the opening of Ray Bradbury’s novel Dandelion Wine for inspiration in writing their own memories. Recently, I worked with Michelle Vanstrom … Continue reading →
Why connect the writing of poetry with an appreciation of good food? On first consideration, the juxtaposition of poems and pastries might seem frivolous. Isn’t poetry sustenance for something more than the physical body? Recently, I taught a workshop at … Continue reading →
Long time professional editor, Jerry Gross developed a widely used code of ethics for editors and book doctors. Here are his 10 points to consider when evaluating someone to work with you on your manuscript. Ten Signs Of A Scam … Continue reading →
The following essay is one of a collection of 39 essays by distinguished editors about the practical and theoretical aspects of publishing that appear in Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know About What Editors Do, edited by Jerry … Continue reading →
We’ve seen movie versions, television versions, and stage adaptations of Dickens’s famous story. We have had the story read to us and in turn have read it to others. Like people all over the world, we have been haunted by … Continue reading →
During the winter holidays and New Year’s season, I usually search my files for writing I’ve done on previous holiday seasons, just to see what I was thinking in other years. Looking through my files this past week, I became … Continue reading →
Last March, I met Sondra Perl at the National Council of Teachers of English‘s Conference on College Composition and Communication in San Francisco. We talked about her book Felt Sense: Writing with the Body and I recognized the aspects of … Continue reading →
Writing in BOOK PROMOTION newsletter, Francine shares the following quotes and biographical information about four dynamic motivational speakers and book authors: “Whatever your mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.” Napoleon Hill (1883-1970) “You become what you think about.” … Continue reading →
About seven years ago, Sheila agreed to judge a personal essay contest for a writing magazine. Her task was to choose and rank the ten top essays among the submissions. Told to expect about 1,000 essays, she was surprised when … Continue reading →
As you read this short story by magical realism enthusiast Tamara Sellman, pay attention to the ways in which the omniscient third person narrator reports the main character’s thoughts and ideas. Techniques of magical realism allow readers to understand and … Continue reading →
We come to journaling to record what we are doing and what we are thinking. As a writing teacher, I spend a lot of time onsite teaching and even more off-site creating lessons. When I was journaling about my son’s … Continue reading →
When he was a boy she was always painting the ceiling of his room. Once she painted it blue for a sky with lazy white clouds and faint daytime stars. And in one corner, as if just disappearing into his … Continue reading →
Viewing poetry as a gift, Edward Hirsch writes in his book “How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry: “The question poses itself as how to keep alive an interior life in the face of our own … Continue reading →
Yesterday, I saw a sign in a shop announcing Halloween items were now half off. I was shocked to realize that Halloween was now close enough for merchants to start reducing their inventory. They’d started selling Halloween goodies in August, … Continue reading →
This article was originally published by Writer’s Digest Magazine. Reprinted here with the permission of the author. I’m willing to bet my favorite pen that most people who are reading this have no idea what a book packager is. Until … Continue reading →
I am a young schoolgirl watching the early dark fill my bedroom windows. I sit at a small drop leaf desk doing vocabulary homework, folding paper long ways in half and writing the date in whichever upper corner the teacher … Continue reading →
Before I started studying poetry writing, I littered my work with the word soul. What was poetry but the soul making itself known? How else to talk when making an exploration of emotions but to use the word? John Donne, … Continue reading →
In the conversation we posted last week between Kaylie Jones and Beverly Donofrio, you read about what these two authors think about the similarities and differences between memoir and fiction. Kaylie Jones states: “…memoir becomes an exploration of the author’s … Continue reading →
In February 2005, old friends, novelist Kaylie Jones and memoirist Beverly Donofrio reunited to teach together in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. In the months before the workshops, they conversed with one another about their respective genres and the experience … Continue reading →
I once created a daily writing exercise for myself by opening the dictionary to random pages and, eyes closed, circling my finger until it landed on a word. “This is something like throwing the I Ching,” I thought. I read … Continue reading →
In 2002, Grace Jackson wanted to start a community-based literary magazine filled with the voices of her women neighbors on Bainbridge Island, WA. To find her contributors, she distributed a flier at coffee houses, bookstores and libraries near her home. … Continue reading →
Earlier this year, Hannah R. Goodman emailed me about her book, My Sister’s Wedding, a young adult novel she published in 2004 that addresses the effects of alcoholism on individuals, friends and families and asked me if I would like … Continue reading →
To write a good character, you have to imagine that you live in the character’s body and listen for his or her inner voice. Ask the character you are inventing what secret he or she most wants to keep. Decide … Continue reading →
My Sister’s Wedding by Hannah Goodman (iUniverse, 2004) is a young adult novel that addresses alcoholism among family members and high school students from the point of view of a younger sibling who realizes her family is denying her older … Continue reading →
At every conference I teach, participants commiserate about rejection notices– not only about getting them but about the insulting nature of their standardized messages. Occasionally, someone has a story of a personalized rejection or of actually having received suggestions from … Continue reading →
We benefit from writing about how something important to us became a passion. Reliving the decisions leading up to reshaping our lives around our passions and reflecting on how our efforts changed us, we learn more about our journeys. When … Continue reading →
Steven Winn, columnist and critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and past contributor to Writing It Real, tells a good story about a series of articles he wrote that were extremely popular. He was eating lunch with one of his … Continue reading →
Joanne Rocklin’s young adult novel, For YOUR Eyes Only is in the form of a young teen’s notebook. You can read an excerpt at Amazon.com to see how effectively the writing strategy evokes the main character and the world in … Continue reading →
In March, 2005, Sarah Dickerson and I were on a panel along with Boise State University’s Karen Uehling and San Francisco writer Steven Winn in which we addressed attendees at the National Council of Teachers of English’s Conference on College … Continue reading →
Beggar Woman of Naples by Max Jacob When I lived in Naples there was always a beggar woman at the gate of my palace, to whom I would toss some coins before climbing into my carriage. One day, surprised at … Continue reading →
Lucy Grealy, author of Autobiography of a Face, and five-time novelist Ann Patchett were acquaintances at Sarah Lawrence, where Lucy was legendary as a poet and inspired her classmates with her courage in facing and healing from constant surgeries to … Continue reading →
We come to journaling to record what we are doing and what we are thinking. As a writing teacher, I spend a lot of time onsite teaching and even more off-site creating lessons. When I was journaling about my son’s … Continue reading →
School is almost out and the lazy days of summer are right around the corner. Well, the days we experienced as lazy when we were kids, anyway, because for a few months our schedules were more open. Some of us … Continue reading →
Jack Heffron was my editor at Writer’s Digest Books for almost a decade, and we have been teaching colleagues for going on six years now.I still have the editorial letter he wrote to me after he’d read Writing Personal Essays:How … Continue reading →
Writing It Real is happy to post an article this week by editor and creative fiction writer Jack Heffron. “The Flowering of Rabbit Hash” originally appeared this fall in Cincinnati Magazine. Jack lives in Cincinnati where he works with Emmis … Continue reading →
From The Cartographer’s Tongue: Poems of the World Leaving Sarajevo by Susan Rich The bus driver stops to pick plums from an abandoned late summer garden, the pale blue carrier bags pulled from his bed where he sleeps underneath the … Continue reading →
This week we are very lucky to have an article about revision by poet Susan Rich, described by Naomi Shihab Nye on the back cover of her first prize-winning collection The Cartographer’sTongue as “a caring citizen of every heart-land.” Not … Continue reading →
A few years back, I received an email from Christopher Buckley requesting permission to reprint a review I’d written in an anthology of work by and about the late poet Larry Levis. I was thrilled to share what I’d written … Continue reading →
…if you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself. Also you will have betrayed our community in failing to make your contribution to the whole. — … Continue reading →
This material was originally published in the Making the Perfect Pitch: How to Catch a Literary Agent’s Eye, edited by Katharine Sands Pitch Perfect by Jandy Nelson Years ago, I received a query letter that began: “I am a Vietnamese … Continue reading →
This year Marlee Millman wrote an essay to read to her family and friends who were gathering to celebrate her 65th birthday in her hometown of Chicago. She was excited and wanted to have a speech prepared. She emailed me: … Continue reading →
So often, we believe we have to put our daytime work aside in order to write and in order to reach the place inside ourselves where writing comes from. But I believe we will be more successful at tapping into … Continue reading →
After creating an exercise from which her fiction writing students wrote stories, Meg did the exercise herself. She says, “In my story, a woman is suddenly afraid to leave a grocery store. Why? As I began the story, I didn’t … Continue reading →
“Our most promising fictional characters are obsessed,” says Meg Files, Writing It Real correspondent and author of Write From Life: Turning Your Personal Experiences into Compelling Stories. “They’re looking desperately for love or passion or parents or fame. They’re searching … Continue reading →
When I walked into an independent bookstore recently and saw Apprentice of the Flower Poet Z. on a table of new fiction paperbacks, I picked it up because of its title and then read the first of the back cover … Continue reading →
Three days ago, the weather grew suddenly cold where I live in Port Townsend, WA, and for the last two mornings there has been light snow and frost on our roofs and on the ground. This is not typical weather … Continue reading →
Last Valentine’s Day, I read an essay in The Seattle Weekly by Marilyn Meyer, a friend of mine who had raised a family in Seattle the same years I had and who, having survived remarriage and divorce a time more … Continue reading →
I am currently teaching an online course entitled Journal Like the Pros for Writers.com. Each week, participants use prompts and examples I send to them to comb their memories and observations and put words on the page that surprise them … Continue reading →
Janice Eidus, author and Writing It Real correspondent, currently teaches creative nonfiction for the University of New Orleans and uses writing prompts with her students based on the essay anthology In Brief, a book I discussed in my December 16, … Continue reading →
I have been enjoying humor writer Judy Gruen’s essays since she published her first collection of them, Carpool Tunnel Syndrome: Motherhood as Shuttle Diplomacy, and began an Internet newsletter to deliver her humorous column, Off My Noodle, to a wide … Continue reading →
These essays first appeared in “Off My Noodle“. Revenge of the Chihuahua by Judy Gruen I have always had a secret hankering to take bold and dramatic action to further the cause of liberty. Sadly, I have had few opportunities … Continue reading →
After reading In Short and In Brief, two anthologies of short personal essays co-edited by author Judith Kitchen, I re-read her collected essays in Only the Dance and Distance and Direction, and then her novel The House on Eccles Road. … Continue reading →
Yellow by Judith Kitchen (Reprinted by permission of the author from Distance and Direction, Coffee House Press, 2001, this essay first appeared in the Great River Review.) Lately the rush hour traffic begins before you have to put your headlights … Continue reading →
After reading essayist and editor Judith Kitchen’s observations about effective essay endings for last week’s article, I turned to In Brief, the second of two creative nonfiction anthologies Kitchen co-edited with Mary Paumier Jones and published with W.W. Norton. In … Continue reading →
In “Endings,” an instructional essay for the literary journal Fourth Genre, Fall, 2001, Judith Kitchen asserts that in a piece of creative nonfiction, “the building of thought is what interests the reader.” “We look as much for how an author … Continue reading →
“It is a matter of proportion,” Judith Kitchen and Mary Paumier Jones say about the criteria they used for selecting essays for an anthology entitled In Short and published by W. W. Norton in 1996. Noticing that nonfiction writers they … Continue reading →
In last week’s article I reviewed Natalie Goldberg’s The Great Failure: A Bartender, a Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth. Near the end of the book, when Goldberg’s elderly father, who’d been operated on for colon cancer, sits down … Continue reading →
Reading popular writing guru Natalie Goldberg’s newly published memoir, The Great Failure: A Bartender, a Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth, Harper San Francisco, 2004, I am drawn to the speaker’s many descriptions of the two influential male figures … Continue reading →
This week I am sharing an excerpt from my new book Writing and Publishing Personal Essays, just out from Silver Threads in San Diego. The excerpt demonstrates the power of extended metaphor for writing the essay. **** Telling It How … Continue reading →
This week, in the last of four articles presenting writing generated from Writing It Real exercises, I have included the work of three subscribers who sent me results from the exercise I proposed in Remembering Your Birthdays, August 19, 2004. … Continue reading →
Just before most of us turn our clocks back, and we are well into fall, I’d like to share two subscribers’ results from the exercise I proposed in “Put Summer on the Page,” July 8, 2004. In that article, I … Continue reading →
It seemed to me that if we copied Thomas’ technique of speaking in paired commands, we might write well. Although I didn’t expect readers to necessarily write tight villanelles as a result of the exercise (I actually suggested repeating the … Continue reading →
In May, I posted an article called “Coaxing Imaginative Awareness,” in which I reviewed Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser. After reading the review, some Writing It Real subscribers teamed up to work on … Continue reading →
Excerpted by permission of the author from Helen’s Garden: What we learned about life and love in a small country school, by Helen Mitchell, Niche Press, 2003. One of many stories in Helen’s Garden, “Jiggs” reminds us that we are … Continue reading →
On a sunny day in mid-July, I visited a lavender farm in Sequim, WA with my friend Judy from Northern California. She was beginning to grow lavender herself, and as a merchant at her local farmers’ market, she was eager … Continue reading →
Most teachers who understand writing as a process say that the first step is to play with words. They provide exercises for helping students jump and run and climb on the word playground. But what if your teacher is a … Continue reading →
Having been a student of Jack Grapes, I am privileged to be on his email list and receive messages about reading and activities that inspire thoughts about the nature of writing. In a recent email from Jack about authenticity in … Continue reading →
In the latter half of Chapter III of Barbara Sjoholm’s The Pirate Queen: In Search of Grace O’Malley and Other Legendary Women of the Sea, the author finds a woman who tells her the truth about women’s fishing history in … Continue reading →
The Lonely Voyage of Betty Mouat We are pleased to present Chapter VIII of Barbara Sjoholm’s new book in two parts. In this chapter, the author tracks down information on a woman who at age 59 was the sole survivor … Continue reading →
This past spring, The Seattle Times ran a review of Barbara Sjoholm”s new book The Pirate Queen: In Search of Grace O”Malley and Other Legendary Women of the Sea. The review opens: If Janet Forsyth lived in the here and … Continue reading →
In Mitch Albom’s tale, 83-year-old Eddie Maintenance, as children call him because of the stitching on his work shirt, dies in an amusement park accident at Ruby Pier, where he has spent decades making sure that all the rides are … Continue reading →
This March, I attended the first annual Burning Word Festival on Whidbey Island, a 30-minute ferry ride from my home, for a day devoted to listening to poetry and instruction by Washington State practitioners. On the way over to the … Continue reading →
In the few days he had between meeting his deadlines and leaving for a month at a remote fire lookout in the North Cascades National Park, naturalist, author and poet Tim McNulty took the time to answer some questions that … Continue reading →
Summers in Port Townsend, WA, an arts organization called Centrum hosts a ten-day writers conference. It is a sensational time, with nationally known poets and writers teaching participants who are serious about writing. Highlights include craft lectures and readings in … Continue reading →
In Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer: How to Win Top Writing Assignments (Nomad Press, 2004), writer Jenna Glatzer, who is Editor-in-Chief of absolutewrite.com, may insult some of us in her early chapters as she offers tips on … Continue reading →
What does it take to write persuasively and to move others to read and stay interested in your point-of-view? What does it take to write to change their thinking and behavior? Eda La Shan, the early childhood specialist, once said … Continue reading →
Ray Bradbury’s novel Dandelion Wine has long been a favorite of mine. In one summer, the novel’s protagonist, twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding, encounters the richness of life. The book opens with the announcement that he is allowed to sleep in his … Continue reading →
Copyright ©2003 by Nancy Pearl. Reprinted from Book Lust by Nancy Pearl with permission of Sasquatch Books. I love to read. And while I might not absolutely agree with the Anglo-American man of letters Logan Pearsall Smith, who said, “People … Continue reading →
After years of spreading the word far and wide about reading and drumming up interest in books and literature, Nancy Pearl, the Seattle Library’s Director of Programming and Director for the Washington Center for the Book, has a new book … 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 … Continue reading →
This essay first appeared in Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Essay, Volume 9, Number 2. Feldman Brothers’ mortuary of Denver called two days after Seth’s death to say we could come to get his ashes. My husband Kurt and … Continue reading →
This spring, I met publisher and poet David D. Horowitz, who was selling books from his Rose Alley Press, at the Redmond, Washington Poets in the Park Conference. As I browsed the press’s well-designed, handsome books, David asked if he … Continue reading →
Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser (Copper Canyon Press) offers wisdom, sensitive observation and love of essence. On the book’s back cover, the editors have written that one of the poets said, “This book … Continue reading →
Writers often use prompts to help them come up with original ways of opening and organizing their work. Whenever I dip into The Writer’s Idea Book and The Writer’s Idea Workshop by Jack Heffron, I find help for inventing and … Continue reading →
It’s spring-cleaning time, and I’ve gone through my files and bookshelves to update resources for those who write from personal experience. Here is Part I of my annotated list of resources, including books, journals and websites: Books on How to … Continue reading →
With Mother’s Day approaching, I once again reread two poems by Stanley Plumly that I admire. In “Say Summer/For My Mother,” Plumly writes: I could give it back to you, perhaps in a season, say summer. I could give you … Continue reading →
When I was a girl of 10 and already a writer in my own mind, I was frustrated that no one took my writing seriously. I nevertheless decided that I would be a Rhodes Scholar and a winner of a … Continue reading →
In The Heart Aroused: Poetry and Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, poet David Whyte writes: The core of difficulty at the heart of modern work life is its abstraction from many of the ancient cycles of life that … Continue reading →
Editor’s Note: All the poems printed in this article are a collaboration of the two authors, James Bertolino and Anita K. Boyle. “Hard Candy” first appeared in the print journal Cranky, No. 1, 2004 as did James Bertolino’s instructional essay … Continue reading →
My great fantasy when I was in my early teens was that my dad and I would go bowling on a Saturday morning, then go out to breakfast together. Maybe to one of those broken down waterfront joints next to … Continue reading →
Feeling overwhelmed by data, random information, the flotsam and jetsam of mass culture, we relish the spectacle of a single consciousness making sense of a portion of the chaos…” — Scott Russell Sanders As readers of essays and poems, we … Continue reading →
Meg Files is a novelist, short fiction writer, creative nonfiction writer, poet and writing instructor extraordinaire. She has helped hundreds of students write and publish their writing, and she always takes their concerns seriously. Recently, when one student’s problem with … Continue reading →
Two professors from the Creative Writing Program at Western Washington State University in Bellingham, Washington have put together Tell It Slant, an enlightening, comprehensive and very satisfying text on writing and shaping creative nonfiction. The book includes a 237-page bonus … Continue reading →
Meg Files is a novelist, short fiction writer, creative nonfiction writer, poet and writing instructor extraordinaire. She has helped hundreds of students write and publish their writing, and she always takes their concerns seriously. Recently, when one student’s problem with … Continue reading →
When essayists learn to listen closely to the music they are making on the page and examine what the changes in the music mean, they learn to make the sounds of exactly what they have experienced and of exactly what … Continue reading →
In Daughter’s Keeper, a novel by Ayelet Waldman, the main characters are Elaine and her daughter Olivia. The novel succeeds as a portrayal of love redeemed between a mother and daughter against the backdrop of the United States’ drug enforcement … Continue reading →
When Betty Shafer sent me the following poem for help in revising it, I read it and found something haunting stayed with me after I read the lines. Look Again We return to find our land barren Weeds choking walls … Continue reading →
This week’s article is an interview with author Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. Her latest book is Loving in Flow: How the Happiest Couples Get & Stay That Way. Susan makes good use of her personal experience in a second marriage … Continue reading →
While I was living in Los Angeles these past several years, I was lucky enough to meet Barbara Caplan-Bennett, a fellow member of the Independent Writers of Southern California. A novelist and trained action coach, Barbara is a person who … Continue reading →
About 10 years ago, I wrote this poem, which was distributed on a lovely poster illustrated with a picture of a rocking chair with wings on its back and a moon on its seat. The chair was poised on the … Continue reading →
Continuing from last week’s article, which included resources for publishing markets as well as six stories from writers on how they got into print, this week we share six more stories by writers of essays, children’s books, short fiction, nonfiction … Continue reading →
To publish your work, you must consider many markets and match your material to them: literary small press publications, national large circulation publications, local newspapers, regional and national newspapers, radio, industry publications and online sites and publications. It is rare … Continue reading →
I recently came across the following quote from German philosopher Karl Jaspers whose work influenced theology and psychology: Truth, he wrote, “only appears in time as a reality-through-communication. Abstracted from communication, truth hardens into an unreality.” For those of us … Continue reading →
This week’s article is an excerpt from Rebecca McClanahan’s instructional book Write Your Heart Out: Exploring & Expressing What Matters To You, published by Walking Stick Press. This season, as we watch children in an environment where everything seems transformed, … Continue reading →
I enjoy dipping into a collection of short fiction entitled You’ve Got To Read This as much for the pleasure of the fiction itself as for gathering new ideas about how to organize writing. There is something about the way … Continue reading →
Shortly after I posted the September 11, 2003 instructional exercise for Writing It Real, subscriber Christine Robinson sent me some writing of hers that resulted from using the exercise. In this week’s article, I want to show you what she … Continue reading →
Here is a sample scene from the novel-in-progress that David Beckman refers to in last week’s interview about being mentored in his writing. You will notice that he has made stylistic decisions in using sentence fragments to evoke the little … Continue reading →
As a writing instructor, it is always interesting to me to talk with other writers who teach. I enjoy hearing about the parts of the teaching process that excite them. This past June, I had the opportunity to talk over … Continue reading →
Not scheduled for release until January 2004, The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters, an epistolary novel by Elisabeth Robinson, has already received excellent reviews. If you are developing a wish list for holiday gifts, I recommend putting … Continue reading →
At the May 2003 Book Expo America in Los Angeles, Joni Cole handed out advance copies of an exciting book, eventually released this September. Joni is a freelance writer with a Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies from Dartmouth College … Continue reading →
Although it might not be obvious, those of us who write personal essays can benefit greatly from not knowing what we have to write about. That is surprising to people who think of the essay as researched knowledge with a … Continue reading →
Every Labor Day Weekend at the Bumbershoot Arts Festival held at Seattle Center, Jerome (Jerry to his friends) Gold mans a Black Heron Press booth at the festival’s book fair. In April of each year, he mans the booth at … Continue reading →
Lately, I’ve read a book of Buddhist wisdom by Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, poetry by the Northwest’s James Bertolino, essays by the Northeast’s Philip Simmons and memoirs by the Southwest’s Laurence Shames and by Timothy Doyle, who has lived … Continue reading →
I met Joelle Fraser at the 2003 Whidbey Island Writer’s Conference, where we both presented. Her book The Territory of Men intrigued me. Sherman Alexie (author of The Toughest Indian in the World), and Beverly Donofrio (author of Riding in … Continue reading →
Robyn Conley and I met at a time when we both had books on journaling newly out from Walking Stick Press. Robyn’s role at the Society of Southwestern Authors‘ conference we taught at involved individual editing sessions with conference participants. … Continue reading →
On this September 11, two years after the tragedy at the World Trade Centers in NY, many of us who write believe more whole heartedly than ever that getting our words on the page makes a difference in our lives … Continue reading →
Those of us who write from personal experience often think that we’d like to share life lessons and delights in the form of literature for children. Excited by our desire to write, we also feel in touch with the child … Continue reading →
I have been in correspondence with a grand dame of Australian Poetry. I met Doris Leadbetter in 2002, when she and her husband Richard spent their winter holiday (our summertime) away from Melbourne attending writers’ conferences in the US and … Continue reading →
“Poetry is a form of necessary speech,” Edward Hirsch writes in How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, and “poems strike something deeper than thought itself…experience that takes us to the very heart of being.” Over … Continue reading →
After posting last week’s interview about Steven Winn’s ideas for finding contacts on the publishing scene, I am pleased to reprint his wonderful essay about a spring day during a most difficult passage in his life. The essay originally appeared … Continue reading →
The Sunday July 20, 2003 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle was proud to report that its journalists are serving the Bay Area community well. Arts and culture critic Steven Winn was among four Chronicle writers who placed in the … Continue reading →
At Yourdictionary.com, linguists maintain a page about word definitions and histories. I signed up on the web to have these words and stories about their usage emailed to me each day. Some of the words are ones that I’ve never … Continue reading →
As the creator and director of Poets & Writers’ Publishing Seminars Program, Amy Holman addresses the needs of writers (including herself). She teaches writers what they need to know about matching their work with the right editors and agents. In … Continue reading →
Caroline Arnold, who has published over 100 nonfiction books for children, is a pro at finding information on sophisticated topics and making it fit the page limits set by her publishers. To do this she uses captions, sidebars, glossaries, charts … Continue reading →
On my vacation this year along the shores of Lake Michigan, I was reading the last chapters of an advance reading copy of The Dogs of Babel on the day it appeared in bookstores across America. Little, Brown and Company … Continue reading →
Meg Files enjoys researching and uses what she learns to set her stories and to inform her characters. In the excerpt below, 19-year-old Hanna accompanies her father, who is researching for a magazine feature article, on a car trip to … Continue reading →
Last week you read an article by Susan Bono on the personal essay–writing them, teaching them, and starting a magazine for publishing them. This week’s article is a personal essay by Susan Bono, which appears in the anthology Saltwater, Sweetwater–Women … Continue reading →
A couple of years ago, I began receiving Tiny Lights, a publication out of Northern California that is dedicated to the personal essay. I was struck by the caliber of the essays in each issue and contacted the publisher of … Continue reading →
When I was writing monthly poetry writing columns for Writer’s Digest Magazine, I created strategies for writing poetry that utilized as a jumping off place the topical thoughts our culture promotes each month. I wanted to help those who wanted … Continue reading →
This essay first appeared in slightly different form in The Diarist’s Journal, Volume II, Issue #2 The first week of my first graduate poetry-writing workshop at the University of Washington, our teacher William Matthews came to class in paint-stained clothes. … Continue reading →
When my daughter told me to read a personal essay in her school’s alumni magazine, I did. I enjoy finding the many places personal essays inhabit and I appreciate their great value. In this case, Stanford sophomore Sheena Chestnut wrote … Continue reading →
I had lunch recently with novelist and screenwriter Robert Morgan Fisher, who supervises the online screenwriting program at Writer’s Boot Camp (WBC) in Santa Monica, CA. His first novel, called Set the Poem Free, won 2nd place in the 2000 … Continue reading →
The Diarist’s Journal is published three times a year in February, June and October by Hollie Rose. The publication is a rich and lively discussion of journaling, diary keeping, and the community surrounding it. The journal is calling for submissions … Continue reading →
Novelist and poet Meg Files recently spoke on a panel at the Associated Writing Program’s annual meeting. She talked about researching for writing her novels. After her talk, Meg and I conducted an email interview about how her research affects … Continue reading →
When Karen Rippstein wrote to me that she wanted my help in shaping a poem from a prose piece she had written about a specific Christmas with her daughter, I was intrigued. Most of the people I’ve worked with bring … Continue reading →
As I prepare the following interview with Sebastian Matthews, I’m thinking of an encounter I had at a workshop I co-taught for teachers early this spring at the headquarters of the Los Angeles Unified School District. An administrator for the … Continue reading →
Poet Stanley Plumly, a teacher of mine, used to say that poems must weigh more at the end than at the beginning. What matters to us has emotional weight, and as with poetry, the personal essay supplies a vehicle for … Continue reading →
Personal essayists, poets and memoir writers face many questions about making personal truths public. In the following essay, author Migael Scherer evokes the effects on her readers as well as on herself of her writing about painful truth. Even as … Continue reading →
When writing moves us to struggle against a taboo, especially one that demands silence, we can expect powerful resistance. It is natural to feel alone, even besieged. The resistance to our words comes both from ourselves and from others. If … Continue reading →
If March comes in like a lion, they say, it’ll go out like a lamb and vise versa. I’d like to combine this notion with an idea that Keats termed “negative capability.” He said that a good poem holds within … Continue reading →
After our initial correspondence, posted on 12/12/02, author Janice Eidus answered some more questions I posed based on what she’d written to me. I am delighted to share the continuation of our correspondence this week: When you do decide to … Continue reading →
In our interview with her on 12/12/02, Janice Eidus says, “But there I was, years later, writing about a tough-cookie, teased-hair girl from the Bronx, modeled on the older Italian girls in my neighborhood who had seemed so exotic and … Continue reading →
Ok, you asked what I’ve learned that I might want to pass on to those who Meg Leder was the Writer’s Digest editor who worked with me on Keeping a Journal You Love and A Year in the Life: Journaling … Continue reading →
About 1020 words In these days just before Valentine’s Day, it seems as if every shop window, radio and TV commercial has turned the volume up on love. “Don’t forget, don’t forget, don’t forget,” whether the one you love is … Continue reading →
When fiction writer Janice Eidus (see the From Our Correspondents article of 12/12/02) introduced me to the work of nonfiction writer Sue William Silverman, I knew I wanted to find out what she had to say on memoir writing. After … Continue reading →
Sheila Bender, July Poetry Column, 1295 words When an author repeats the same word or words at the beginning of a series of sentences the technique is called “anaphora.” In Greek, it means “a carrying up or back.” With repetitions, … Continue reading →
Category: Instructional Exercises So many times we find that what we are writing sounds dry and dull compared to what we wish to be writing or what we admire in other’s writing. “How can we make our work matter?” we … Continue reading →
When my daughter was 14 months old, we lived in Seattle, and she and I spent a cold, cloudy winter afternoon at the Woodland Park Zoo. Her favorite animals were the uncaged pigeons she realized she could send into flight … Continue reading →
Writing Poetry Through Storms and Showers “You have helped me learn how to write a poem. You have taught me how to shape an essay. But I’m not sure about how to get something published. How do I publish my … Continue reading →
This article originally appeared in the 1999 issue of The Sampler, the newsletter of the Southern California Children’s Literature Council (formerly the Southern California Council on Literature for Children and Young People (SCCLCYP). When I was seven years old, I … Continue reading →
Recently I interviewed poet and essayist Rebecca McClanahan for a book on essay writing that I am finishing for Writer’s Digest Books. When I told her that I had reviewed her essay “Book Marks,” which I’d found in Best American … Continue reading →
This fall I corresponded with novelist and short fiction writer Janice Eidus to investigate how fiction writers use personal experience in their writing. I have admired Eidus’ fiction and her teaching for many years now and in 1997, I invited … Continue reading →
At a writing conference workshop on developing the personal essay, Suzan Huney read the draft of an essay spawned by thumbing through her address book. Her musings on the people she found in her book led to memories of her … Continue reading →
I like to keep quotes in an 8 by 5 inch blue-cloth covered three-ring binder. I write down or tear out quotes that strike my fancy. They come from books and magazines, affirmations I wish to repeat to myself, fortunes … Continue reading →
I’ve been editing essays this fall for professionals who are applying to graduate school programs. As always, I am pointing out passive voice constructions and instructing the applicants on how to make them active constructions, and I’m also pointing out … Continue reading →
When her mother’s Parkinson’s had progressed, Patricia Hassler quit her job and became her mother’s caretaker. Realizing she needed a creative outlet, she answered an ad in a local paper for a columnist to write about a nearby suburb where … Continue reading →
I’d like to examine how three essays from The Best American Essays 2001 satisfy me as a reader and inspire me as a writer. I offer my thoughts and some writing ideas based on the essays in the hope that … Continue reading →
I am delighted to offer readers of Writing It Real this personal essay by writer, editor, and publicist Bob Yehling. In his essay, we get a glimpse of a passionate writer at work, writing from life experience, appreciating the work … Continue reading →
The only thing that distinguished this particular examining room from dozens like it was the huge wall chart of hearts in all manner of disease and disarray. The rest of the room was familiar and predictable – high narrow table … Continue reading →
A few years ago, I invented a way of coming to writing during times when I felt overwhelmed by my need to write, yet stuck in my ability to get anything of value on the page. The exercise I invented … Continue reading →
Poetry is a kind of food, shelter, and clothing for which I am thankful. It nourishes my being, builds a dwelling for my ecstasy and my awe, and keeps me warm when I grieve. Books on my shelves and on … Continue reading →
“Learning to Drive” by Katha Pollitt in The New Yorker Magazine, July 22, 2002: Click for more information on the columnist “Learning to Drive” is an engrossing and humble piece of writing from a leftist writer of renown, who refused … Continue reading →