Guest Bloggers

Magic by Rebecca Evans

Rebecca’s writing and her workshops are magical, showing what happens when we let go and are open to making discoveries. Magic by Rebecca Evans: I am an AI Rebutter. I am a Long-Hand-Writer Endorser. I pen pages each morning in a journal, jot a list of tasks to (almost) complete, scaffold essays and poems across composition notebooks. In separate journals, I copy beautiful lines from artists I love, wishing to transfer talent by osmosis. For me, magic begins within this first planting. I lean into an unfolding. Instead of writing towards an idea or theme or popular topic, I follow the words where they lead. It is from this space in my first drafts, I discover seedlings. Tiny sprouts. Sometimes one piece feels as though it could be in conversation with a piece of work I developed earlier. Other times, I might recognize the start of the poem. I rarely…

Guest Bloggers

Best Writing: From the Heart

Guest Blogger Sarah Chauncey writes about increasing energy, exploring ideas, and preventing burnout: You’re driving on a long stretch of highway when you have an insight about your main character’s childhood. Or you’re mid-hair-rinse in the shower, when you suddenly understand how to bring together the braided strands of your novel. Or you wake up at 2 a.m. with the resolution to that thorny plot issue you’ve been wrestling. Have you ever noticed how many ideas arise when you’re not sitting at the keyboard?  As writers, we’ve all experienced the law of diminishing returns—the point at which our writing stops being generative and begins to feel like we’re pulling each word from our synapses by hand. I spent the better part of a decade investigating how to create what I half-jokingly call a “law of increasing flow.” How might writers support our writing practice in a way that doesn’t leave us mentally…

Sparks

From The Roots

Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page. From The Roots By Su Shafer I need to let go of the uncertainty That I am anything else but a dragon. Just a little dragon A little wood dragon Hatched from a little crystal egg As green as the nest of moss it was laid in Carefully built in the cool leaf mould Gathered in the crook of Granny Maple’s Gnarled old roots. There is a fire in my heart But wood dragons are careful Creatures of the trees Where fire is seldom welcome. Shy as a brown creeper, Hiding in plain sight, Few people see me And the ones who do Can hardly believe it. Su Shafer is a creative crafter, fabricating bits of writing in poetry and short stories, and other bits into characters that appear in paintings or sit on various bookshelves…

Sparks

MissUnderstood Me

Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page. MissUnderstood Me By Julie Sherman Not all dragons are fire-breathing, terrifying, scaley, menacing creatures. Folklore and fairytales have given us a bad name and have ruined our reputations.   Some of us are quite nice. Some are even meek. Some are mothers who just want to care for their young draglings in the dark, clammy caves of our homes.  Others are literally party animals and want to romp and roll in the mountains, scratching our backs on the rough terrain.  And most of us are kind.  Many of us go around helping other dragons fend off bully dragons who flap their immense, scabrous wings close to other dragons’ faces and blow smoke through their enormous nostrils and balls of fire through their mammoth mouths.  We are descendants of pterodactyl and t-rex, so we get our wide…

Prompts

More First Lines From Books . . . Prompt #771

“A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness . . .” “The Glass Castle” by Jeanette Walls “I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a dumpster.” “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus “Back in 1961, when women wore shirtwaist dresses and joined garden clubs and drove legions of children around in seatbeltless cars without giving it a second thought; back before anyone knew there’d even be a sixties movement, much less one that its participants would spend the next sixty years chronicling; back when the big wars were over and the secret wars had just begun and people were starting to think fresh and believe everything was possible,…

Prompts

Life . . . Prompt #770

More than one friend recently told me their difficulties, about how things seem impossible, how hard everything is. Sometimes I wonder why these things happen. And then I remember: Life.  Life happens. There are ups and downs. Situations that seem hopeless. And then time goes by. We find solutions. Or the situation remedies somehow. Write about a time that seemed hopeless. What happened? Or, if you are in a situation now that seems hopeless, write as if the problem has been resolved. What would your life look like if this situation was remedied? Writing About Difficult Times In Your Life by Guest Blogger Nancy Julien Kopp #justwrite #amwriting #iamawriter