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Motivation is thrilling. This week Leo began to make a board game on a piece of poster board I had lying around, leftover from a vision board party. He became intent, staying up late and getting up early to create squares to lang on with activities and messages, twists and turns. Well, the board game […]

Early Enrollment Open to BWW Inner Circle (That’s You) I don’t really market my classes and I don’t actually have a huge mailing list. What I have are devoted students who keep taking my classes because we do magic together–and part of that magic is that we’ve created a strong, beautiful writing community. Part of

Free Class: Tuesday, March 8, 2016, 6 – 8 pm in Berkeley Our writing class community lead by me (published author/ distributed filmmaker/ Story Makers podcast host Elizabeth Stark) is hosting a free class for friends. Come join us to learn about what makes for excellent dialog and to write some yourself. Sign up here to

This is my workbook. I look forward to its big, blank pages. This is my blueprint-in-progress. A palette to mix colors, oversized cardstock for pasting down a collage. This is my word smithery, my what-if tavern, my kingdom of lost souls, my hide-and seek tundra. Horizon, horizontal, lines, lies. A choreography, a wild, improvisational dance,

Toward the end of January I taught a class called Putting It All Together. People come into my craft class and write in response to powerful generative exercises. After a while, they accumulate a collection of very strong writing, but what to do with the pieces? During the three-hour Putting It All Together workshop, we

Of Masters and Math by Angie Powers In her book, A Mind for Numbers, Barbara Oakley discusses how we learn, and though her book focuses on math, I think it’s pertinent to the whole process of creation. Apparently, we have two modes of thinking: focused and diffuse. Focused thinking means going deep into a single

I am in the process of reading the draft of my latest novel, which I finished at the end of last year. My plan was to dive in the first week of the new year, but I found I could not. I wasn’t ready. I know that the beginning of reading my new work is

I’ve been thinking about “enough.” In our evolving bodies—many thousands of years behind the actual circumstances of our lives—we have not yet learned the word “enough.” We think that we must eat what we see, because who knows when the next meal will come or from where? This has a relevance to nonfiction story-telling that

 Making the Familiar Unfamiliar Like so many other people today, I am on a David Bowie jag. Listening to his music, remembering who and where I was when I first heard each. Being somewhat younger than he, I didn’t get real time with him until the 80’s. As I moved through high school, I worked

Twice a week I do an hour of Pilates Barre class. I like it because there’s music and I’m getting stronger, but sometimes my teacher’s instructions baffle me. Bring your ribs toward your waist, she’ll say. Flex your upper ab. Bend from your leg, not your back. I can’t even quite replicate what she says