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WritingStrides Blog Launches April 15!
Make April 15 more than tax day–make it the day you commit to take your writing farther. The WritingStrides Blog will have tons of tips & tricks and writing inspiration to help you build your...
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Giveaway from WritingStrides: Free Mentoring Sessions
Four weeks until the WritingStrides blog goes live on April 15. It’s pretty exciting to think about growing a community of writers where we can encourage each other in writing, especially now that I’ve...
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Write better—Trust in the unknown
This morning I received an email from one of my students. She got a call from her mother while she was driving to work, and the ensuing conversation gave her the perfect ending to one of her essays....
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The Key to Writing: Begin and Let Go
Connecticut, 2009 When I started graduate school, everyone around me seemed to know what they would write for their thesis. One third semester student said, “Know what you want to write right away. If...
View ArticleWhat We Can Learn from Writing a Group Story
(Participating writers, scroll to the bottom for our book winner!) Ok, I’ll admit it. When I was in school, I hated group work. I was shy. I never knew if the other kids were going to do their share of...
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Writer Interview: Elizabeth Cohen, Whirling Dervish of Writing
Figuring out your writing process is like figuring out what you want to be when you grow up. The only way to figure out that you like to write in your parked car while rain drums the roof (been there),...
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Let’s move past assumptions, use writing to create understanding.
My mountain man hangs his wet towels on the bed posts in spite of having two towel racks and two towel hooks in the bathroom. From the moment we moved in together, this little habit drove me crazy. Yet...
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Pen to Paper: What is Your Origin Story?
We all come from someplace. I grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, but the place that shaped me was the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Portaging in the BWCAW My family (parents, cousins,...
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We Are All Beginners, Always
(Art by Katherine Lamm) Last weekend I took my road bike for a spin, the first time since moving to the mountains. Road biking has a short season here—it starts as soon as the ski season ends and stops...
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Writer Interview: Meet Kate Meadows, Redefining Tough
Kate Meadows Kate and I went to graduate school together. Most of our fellow students hailed from the East Coast; we both came from the Midwest. If you have ever lived in the Midwest you’ll...
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Believe in yourself. It’s okay to invest in your writing. Time. Energy. Even...
Before I moved to the mountains, I swore I would never be one of those people. The kind that had several bikes and a few skis, and oh, let’s throw some climbing gear into the mix, too. I showed up in...
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Pen to Paper: Use letter-writing to discover your story or character
Remember letters? Not the alphabet, the kind that begin with “Dear Mom.” (Well, technically, “Dear mom,” with a comma. But I couldn’t bring myself to end a sentence with a comma. When I was in first...
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Make Time to Write: Steal Small Moments in Strange Places
I recently flew to Germany to meet up with my college roommates, one of whom lives in Berlin. I used to love flying because it meant I was going somewhere. It’s lost its luster, especially flying...
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Writer Interview: Meet Barbara Richardson
Barbara K. Richardson’s novel Tributary follows the life of a woman raised in 1870s Utah Mormonism–just as polygamy was gaining momentum. Determined to find a life outside of the church, she sets out...
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Practice Writing: How to Write When You Don’t Know What to Write About
This morning, I reached the end of a notebook. Filled it up with my scribbly, hard-to-read writing (Who says doctors are the only ones who write in chicken-scratch?). I’ve filled notebooks before,...
View ArticlePen to Paper: Steal Some Time to Write
You know that I like to write in airports–it makes me feel clever to take that otherwise lost time and turn it into something useful. Plus, I always feel better when I’ve spent at least part of my day...
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Find Your Inner Compass: Shirk “The Shoulds”
“The Inner Compass” is a series inspired by every competent, bright, and thoughtful writer who gets caught in THE SHOULDS. They worry about how they’re supposed to do things instead of trusting their...
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Writer Interview: Meet Jana Richman
Author Jana Richman I met Jana Richman at a reading she gave with Barbara Richardson at Townie Books in Crested Butte. Her book, The Ordinary Truth, felt like an answer to a prayer because she used...
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Find Your Inner Compass: Learn to Listen
In Shirking the Shoulds, we played around with the idea of letting go of The Shoulds— beliefs we hold about how we’re supposed to do things. But that begs the question: If we don’t do things the way...
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New Classes & Coaching from WritingStrides
Summer is here, with jam-packed days and long evenings perfect for grilling and the occasional G&T (thank goodness). That might not sound like the writing season, but I’m a big believer that summer...
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