Category Archives: Sheila Bender On Writing

What’s the Writer’s Job? Getting Going and Keeping on Going

Posted on by May 4, 2017
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 to include exercises from that book during our class time together. This week, I’d like to … Continue reading →
To access this material you must be a member. Read about our Lifetime Membership benefits and discounts when you purchase Writing It Real services.

Sheila Reads Her Poems for National Poetry Month

Posted on by April 6, 2017
For National Poetry Month, tonight I am reading from my own poetry at the link below. For me poetry is an everyday experience and so there aren’t any huge production values or perfect lighting in this video. Just me sharing my poems and talking to you about what I hope poetry accomplishes for humanity. You can … Continue reading →
To access this material you must be a member. Read about our Lifetime Membership benefits and discounts when you purchase Writing It Real services.

Finding Starts in Personal Essay Writing: Part 3

Posted on by April 5, 2017
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 you might write by combing through them and jotting down images and phrases that interest … Continue reading →
To access this material you must be a member. Read about our Lifetime Membership benefits and discounts when you purchase Writing It Real services.

Finding Starts in Personal Essay Writing: Part 2

Posted on by March 23, 2017
[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 of writing in a way that is new to you. If you haven’t done freewrite … Continue reading →
To access this material you must be a member. Read about our Lifetime Membership benefits and discounts when you purchase Writing It Real services.

Finding Starts in Personal Essay Writing: Part 1

Posted on by March 23, 2017
[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 is surprising to people who think of the essay as researched knowledge with a professorial, … Continue reading →
To access this material you must be a member. Read about our Lifetime Membership benefits and discounts when you purchase Writing It Real services.

The Way I See It

Posted on by March 9, 2017
“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 essay for the 1995 edition of my book. Everything I realized then remains important to … Continue reading →
To access this material you must be a member. Read about our Lifetime Membership benefits and discounts when you purchase Writing It Real services.

Acknowledging the Value of Your Writing: Exercises for Week One and Two of Four

Posted on by February 11, 2017
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 by writing from certain models the writers have reaffirmed their belief in the value of writing. After … Continue reading →
To access this material you must be a member. Read about our Lifetime Membership benefits and discounts when you purchase Writing It Real services.

A Writer’s Role Models: Canadian Author Miriam Towes and Her 15-Year-Old Character Elfrieda

Posted on by January 19, 2017
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 the unwelcome authoritarianism of the Mennonite elders, who “willy nilly” as the girl’s mother says, … Continue reading →
To access this material you must be a member. Read about our Lifetime Membership benefits and discounts when you purchase Writing It Real services.

Toward Beginning A Year of Writing Poetry (Or Improving Your Prose Through Poetry)

Posted on by January 5, 2017
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 the words of Dr. King, Thomas Jefferson and Barack Obama, we can experience the power … Continue reading →
To access this material you must be a member. Read about our Lifetime Membership benefits and discounts when you purchase Writing It Real services.

Understanding Your Writing and Your Need to Write

Posted on by December 29, 2016
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 Fear that when he started out as a writer, he had no idea that courage … Continue reading →
To access this material you must be a member. Read about our Lifetime Membership benefits and discounts when you purchase Writing It Real services.

My Sure Fire Methods of Self-Sabotage (and What I’ve Done to Turn Them Around)

Posted on by December 22, 2016
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 to find in 2017. It’s not enough, though, to resolve to find that time. I … Continue reading →
To access this material you must be a member. Read about our Lifetime Membership benefits and discounts when you purchase Writing It Real services.

A Passion for Writing Might Save Us in These Times

Posted on by November 27, 2016
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 for people of color — here in a country where over decades we’ve: Passed legislation … Continue reading →
To access this material you must be a member. Read about our Lifetime Membership benefits and discounts when you purchase Writing It Real services.

Deepen Your Writing: 20 Prompts Using Point of View

Posted on by November 3, 2016
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 or she) when we want to tell an autobiographical story but feel too close to … Continue reading →
To access this material you must be a member. Read about our Lifetime Membership benefits and discounts when you purchase Writing It Real services.

We Write to Feel and to Make Others Feel What is Genuine

Posted on by October 2, 2016
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 keep yourself from writing, • because you hope at least one other person on the … Continue reading →
To access this material you must be a member. Read about our Lifetime Membership benefits and discounts when you purchase Writing It Real services.

Before and After: Shaping a Personal Essay Using the 3-Step Response Method

Posted on by and May 13, 2015
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 submission deadline. After I received her first draft, we immersed ourselves in the three-step response, back and … Continue reading →
To access this material you must be a member. Read about our Lifetime Membership benefits and discounts when you purchase Writing It Real services.

Get Real Response to Your Writing from Anyone

Posted on by April 29, 2015
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 hear, “That’s nice,” which is deflating and doesn’t really help us move deeper into our … Continue reading →
To access this material you must be a member. Read about our Lifetime Membership benefits and discounts when you purchase Writing It Real services.

Cognitive Therapy for Writers: Behave Your Way Into Writing

Posted on by February 11, 2015
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 we are to allow writing an important place in our lives. It matters that we … Continue reading →
To access this material you must be a member. Read about our Lifetime Membership benefits and discounts when you purchase Writing It Real services.

Letter to My Son

Posted on by December 31, 2014
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, I am especially inspired to write to my son, Seth. At the letter’s end, I … Continue reading →
To access this material you must be a member. Read about our Lifetime Membership benefits and discounts when you purchase Writing It Real services.

Why Write? My Answers in an Intervew with Mark Matousek

Posted on by November 26, 2014
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 that allowed me to dig deep and talk about why writing matters. I hope listening … Continue reading →
To access this material you must be a member. Read about our Lifetime Membership benefits and discounts when you purchase Writing It Real services.

To Follow Your Words, Not Your Keys, Home

Posted on by and October 30, 2014
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 the dullness of always expecting the expected, and what it requires of us, which is … Continue reading →
To access this material you must be a member. Read about our Lifetime Membership benefits and discounts when you purchase Writing It Real services.