Story Makers Show: This week’s podcast features the amazing author Carolina De Robertis in a generous discussion of story, structure, writing process, schedules, inspiration, revision and more. Check it out at http://StoryMakersShow.com or on iTunes or Stitcher!

Friends’ Week: You are invited to visit my Berkeley class for free on the last week of class. I am going to show you some dialog secrets that will change your writing. And we are going to have a lot of fun. Please sign up here if you’d like to attend (space limited):

It’s the dream-state I’m after, the mind’s freedom to juxtapose, to collage, to trust utterly the imagination’s ability to conjure worlds. Your dreaming mind never says, “We can’t go there, we haven’t done enough research.” Your dreaming mind takes risks without knowing they’re risks. It’s that entitlement I’m after in my early morning scribble, pen to physical page—the manual labor of this trade I’ve apprenticed myself to for decades now.

Poetry gives me that entitlement, dares greatly and minutely. Dares to describe “these fields” as “fallow and dried/ Gullies where gin/ Sparkled/ In the morning.” (Frank Linn). Poetry reminds us that the concrete surfaces of the world around us—this wrinkled blanket across my lap, this old knit sweater with the too-long sleeves—contain the clearest truths of what we want or have to say. Stick to the senses, baby, poetry tells us. They will wring heart, sock gut and all the rest of it.

Then look up from the page. There’s a world of detail in this living room. Sound of the heater, a low grind, forced breath of the house. Dark wooden planks laid side by side climb to the high ceiling of this room. Such precision, and each one with its own whorls and wavering lines, knots.

Try it. Give us your couch, blue, the long cushion beginning to buckle. Give us the ottoman askew in the middle of the room from someone’s forbidden headstand on the leather chair. Meaning accrues in things. Can you feel it? I’m writing to you from my dream state, from my living room, from the crabbed scrawl in the pages of my journal that represents my daily commitment to write. Write back to me, early and often, in the pages of yours.

We are opening the doors on our final class, which will explore dialog. Come meet our community and write with us! Sign up here: https://bookwritingworld.com/friends-week/

And next week, enrollment for January classes will open. I have only a few spaces left, because my current students get to re-enroll first and many have signed up for the whole year. So if you know it’s time for you to get this tremendous support, this boost in the direction of your life’s purpose and your dream, if this is the year of your book, be ready next Wednesday to hop over and sign up!