Practical Alphabet

I used to dream that something was threatening me and I needed to run but I couldn’t move my legs, couldn’t propel my body into motion. In my waking life, a fear took hold that if I needed to run, I somehow wouldn’t be able to get going. Then one day I realized that in […]

Say yes to your writing every day. Say yes when people ask you to read, when a line comes to mind and desires you to grab a pen, when the time comes to wake up and write and you feel like sleeping or you don’t know if you have anything to say or the right

The more you write and read and edit others and edit yourself, the more you develop a kind of x-ray vision. You take a look at rows of text and see, at once, the flesh and flaws of it, the frame, the bones, the muscle, the hairline fractures, the breaks. Because you engage daily now,

There is one way forward. Words to the page. Every day it feels like a bigger risk. Good. Take it, like a treasure left carelessly close to the mouth of a cave or a wallet left peeking from the mouth of a purse. Take the risk; agree to the fear. Write. Write your way into

I love guided meditations or hypnoses. Drop into the words, and your mind creates images, places, makes discoveries. As in sleep, our ability to conjure asks for no research or certain knowledge. We bloom story, or at least the full, embodied elements of story. Visualize your writing time, your pleasure in it, the bubbling up

There’s a side of each rock, creature, story, that doesn’t get exposed–to the sun, to the outside eye. Call it the underbelly, the hidden truth. Write toward it. Loosen your pen so something can lead other than clear-eyed intention or fear. Discover what you know in the act of writing. Thinking about writing is so

Much that is immediately visible to you will conspire against you. For many of us, a voice arises when we go to write or think about writing that says, “What if it’s terrible?” The only answer a writer can give to that question is to shrug. What it it’s terrible? It’s a silly question that

I was in a memoir class not too long ago, as a student. There were about ten of us and each had a story to tell. Some were experienced, even published writers, and others did not even have a particular affinity for writing, but we all had an idea of what our books would be

You have at hand so many master writers, living in your house, clustered in your writing space, by your bed. They will teach you not just what they know but what they did, for you have them in the form of their books, their stories, the words on the page, the images, the dialog, the