A creative writing class may be one of the last places you can go where your life still matters – Richard Hugo Poet Richard Hugo, who started the creative writing program at the University of Montana and taught there for 30 years, thought that writing allowed you to more readily make sense of your life [...]

No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. – Robert Frost One of the great pleasures of writing is that you learn things about yourself and the way you think that you might not otherwise uncover. Former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner, Ted Kooser has a real gift for pulling together [...]

I had the privilege of taking a workshop from noted American poet William Stafford not long before he died. Stafford wrote a poem a day for most of his adult life. He would rise at four in the morning, make his tea and toast, then sit on the sofa in the living room and write [...]

Talking to paper is talking to the divine. It is talking to an ear that will understand even the most difficult things. Paper is infinitely patient. – Burghild Nina Holzer Each new year’s day feels like a chance to begin anew. This year I think we can all feel the call to live more authentically [...]

The act of showing up to writing as a daily practice has enrich my life in countless ways. As Annie Lamott says in the introduction to her book bird by bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, “Writing has so much to give, so much to reach so many surprises. That thing you have to [...]

I’ve been reading an interesting book, titled Writing Down Your Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within by Janet Conner. It focuses on how writing can help you access your inner wisdom and deeper ways of knowing. Anyone who establishes a writing practice, whether for creative expression or self discovery, begins [...]

Years ago I took a workshop from William Kittredge who taught creative writing at the University of Montana for thirty years. He said when he first started out teaching he was concerned with providing his students with information and techniques for writing. As time progressed he found that the most important thing he could do [...]

Earlier I explained you could start with the word kumquats and if you let it, the writing would take you where it really wants to go. Below is a poem of mine that came from starting with the word raspberries and having no idea what I was going to write. This is the final draft [...]

Recently in my morning writing class I was explaining if you get your mind out of the way to allow what wants to be written from the place of your deeper wisdom and knowing, (aka the intelligence of your heart) then what truly wants to be written will flow out. I exclaimed, “You could write [...]

In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration. Consequently, there must be some little quality of fierceness until the habit pattern of a certain number of words is established. There is not possibility. . .of saying, I’ll do it if I feel like it. – John Steinbeck Woody [...]