Meditation for Writers Remote GrubStreet Class

My upcoming GrubStreet workshop is Meditation for Writers, happening through March. I did a short class on this in October—and I’m amazed that these months have gone by (the last blog I wrote was in July). There was a need to both quiet-down and expand in other directions, and I think so many of us during COVID have experienced this, the opportunity (the demand, maybe) to do things differently. It’s been an intensely creative time, as I’ve been working on my next book and projects, and so there was on the one hand the outer—and sometimes inner—turmoil of this time period and ferocity of politics and disease, but on the other, also exciting things happening and the joy of making.

But back to this class! I became a certified meditation teacher because of this exact possibility: bringing it into the writing workshop. It’s hard to express how much I’ve loved this process, seeing what a difference meditation can make to writers, and in particular, how much effect it can have on VOICE. What I often encounter when working with writers, either in workshops or one-to-one, is a challenge around voice, and the accompanying ideas: the right to speak, the right to explore ideas, the right to play, be curious, give life to the vision that’s inside the mind (the one that writers often long to work with but hold back for various reasons). Writing can be so damn tough. Not everyone is called to create, and certainly not everyone is called to be a writer; it often requires enormous stores of energy, grit, a willingness to be intensely vulnerable (and I don’t necessarily mean here the baring of souls; this vulnerability can simply be a fear of working with an authentic voice, being true, a fear of being seen as different or unconventional). Because that’s what happens when we work with the real voice, the deep one. We end up discovering aspects of our own originality, and that can sometimes mean the writer is required to really stand in who they are.

Enter meditation, and this online class, which is for any genre of writer and any level of meditator. We’ll be covering foundations of meditation and mindfulness practice, and exploring each week how these ideas can be applied to writing. For more info and to register, click the button.

Memoir Voice Class!

I’m giving a new GrubStreet class (which will be on-line), coming up on August 6th—a four week memoir workshop that focuses on voice, and I have to say I’m really stoked about it. I love talking with other writers about their process and with all the social distancing, etc., of these last few months, I’m looking especially forward to seeing people and getting to talk shop.

The idea for this class came directly out of the last two workshops I gave before COVID rolled into town. We had been talking about Mary Karr’s notion that the most central aspect of memoir—the one that counts the most—is voice, which led to fascinating investigations about what exactly voice is. We all know a great one when we read hear/read it. There are certain concrete elements to it; after all, the narrative voice only exists through the details we write down. But the most intriguing part of voice is the mystery and atmosphere of it, the workings that are harder to define, yet carry so much power.

At my last workshop I wrote The Right to Speak on the board and there was something like an electrical pulse that rippled through the room. The writers seemed to have instant recognition and connection around this idea, and their personal struggles with it: the right to tell their story, the right to be themselves, the right to make time to develop their project and the right to finish it. It’s interesting that in a part of the world where we have a certain amount of freedom with regard to what we can write (relative to other places where a writer might be routinely jailed, or worse), so many fully grown adults still feel a lot of hesitation in their work, sometimes even consciously or unconsciously wanting to be granted permission or a kind of passage.

So, this four week investigation will uncover what voice is and how to better connect with it (amplify it, play with it, really use it—because it’s there to be used). This is about courage, maybe, or understanding what makes a particular writer tick and how to allow that energy into memoir through the most natural conduit there is: voice. If you’re interested in taking this class, here is a link with additional information and registration at GrubStreet.