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 →
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 →