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 many, many prompts myself, I was eager to see what he’d put together, and I … 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, I met an author publishing his books locally by using one of them and giving … 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 the interview we are posting this week. I was honored to be asked to talk … 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 correspondent and political columnist. Among other awards, he won a 1990 Pulitzer Prize for national … 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 an audience: Our mission is to nourish new talent, reward excellence, and help writers achieve … 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 Contemporary Writers and their Journals, I learned how significant dreams can be for writers. Several … 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 the words of authors they admire to the public’s attention. To publish means, in its … 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 — the diary of his great grandfather’s Civil War experience. Drawn in by the journals … 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 they don’t even know what they are yearning for when they first bond over the … 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 in contacting her. Writing from the life experiences of becoming a grandparent, moving into a … 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 letter, she called me. She was frantic about getting back to writing poetry on time … 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 books. All I knew was that libraries are more likely to purchase nonfiction books with … 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 personal essays. Reviewer Marc Schuster of Small Press Reviews explains it this way: Wisniewski conjures … 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 book, Wiggle and Waggle, after our current exchange and refresher on the issues involved in … 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] Writing is a lonely business, Ernest Hemingway said in his 1954 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. … 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 Writing It Real articles to meet a required “outside experience.” Last year, Tarn Wilson from … 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 inquiry and ideas and answered the questions. Soon, I interviewed Rodney so Writing It Real … 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 enjoyed reading the account of how Hilary studied the structure of such a collection. Believing … 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 they should give themselves time to understand it all and not be in the state … 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 a travel journal; this week, we benefit from her program’s network as she interviews classmate … 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 almost a decade’s worth of the annual poetry anthology Pontoon. I am pleased this week … Continue reading →