It’s such a fraught topic, writing rules. Some writers are adamantly against them, feeling that establishing such guidelines is unnecessarily restrictive. Others clasp their writing rules to their chests as if they’ve been stipulated by a burning bush; they need those sideboards to give structure to their writing practice. My writing rules tend to boil …
I’ve been listening all weekend at the Danger Close: Alaska workshop. I have so much respect for writers learning to offer their heart connections in the most perfect words possible. Stories passed from heart to heart. A Story That Could Be True If you were exchanged in the cradle and your real mother died without …
Nothing like a little seismic instability to get you considering the durability of where you store your writing. After the 7.1 shaker we had early morning January 24, a member of 49 Writers reached out to me to ask about storing his writing in “the Cloud.” He faithfully backs up his computer on an external …
Want to make yourself unpopular? Correct someone’s grammar. And yet, for a writer, grammar isn’t just making sure you’ve got the right their-there-they’re, it’s about understanding how sentence structure and punctuation can be used to make your writing more effective. My students have often jumped to point out e e cummings’s lack of adherence to …
Alaskan writer and poet, Eva Saulitis passed away this weekend. Eva has touched almost every writer in the state in one way or another, through her writing, her teaching, her kindness, her support, her example of living completely and authentically. On Saturday, I watched as people grappled with her passing by posting memories on Facebook, …
In Homer, 2016 has been a year of rain and dark so far. Oh, I know it will get better and we will eventually return to the light, but this year has been dreary. And because I’ve been reading so many “dark” books lately, I’ve taken to reading a little snippet of Neil Gaiman’s The …
Eight Rules for Writing (or eight more rules for writing?) Read More »
Are you like me? Will you continue to write 2015 as part of the date for the first three months of 2016? Sometimes it’s difficult to ease into a change, even a good one. Here at 49 Writers, we’re pretty excited about all of the events and classes and projects we have in store for …
Each year, I spend the week between the winter holidays and New Year’s Eve reflecting on the year that is passing and preparing for the year that is coming up. I make sure that I take time to really consider the answers to the following questions: What do I want to let go of? What …
When I lived in the Lower-48, solstice didn’t mean all that much to me or anyone else that I knew. But now that I live where the dawns of December come late and the sunsets come early, I’m exquisitely attuned to when that light/dark ratio will start to slide back towards brightness. For me, solstice …
The following essay was written by Kim Stafford, the poet William Stafford’s son. Kim is an amazing author and teacher in his own right, and if you haven’t read either Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft, or 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: A Memoir, I suggest you correct that error …
Four Elements of a Daily Writing Page in William Stafford’s Practice Read More »
