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 →