This past weekend, I was at the California coast with a group of women I lived with in the dorms during college. We hadn’t seen each other since before the pandemic and there was a lot of catching up to do.
At one point, one of the […]
I was recently interviewed for a podcast sponsored by the Hoffman Institute. If you’ve never heard of Hoffman, well, let me say that if you’re ready to make some important changes in your life–or, if you’re stuck and have no idea where to turn–you may want to check […]
When I was eleven years old, still flat-chested and shaggy-haired, I wrote my father a note explaining in painstaking detail the hurt I felt over some favoritism he’d shown my younger sister. The specific incident is lost to memory, but I remember writing and rewriting that note several times until […]
I have no scientific data to back this up, but I would say—based on experience and observation—that it takes an average of four years to write a memoir, and by that I mean the kind of well-crafted story others would want to read.
In the process, memoirists not only […]
For the last year or so, I’ve been conducting in-person intensives with clients who are seeking clarity on book projects. For anywhere from one to three days, we’ll hole up together (usually in my office in downtown Boulder) and hammer out a plan of action.
Together, we’ll uncover their reasons […]
Excerpt from “Writing a Book That Makes a Difference” by Philip Gerard.
Every writer has a book he needs to write—the one that has been keeping him up nights, invading his dreams, teasing him with scraps of scene, dialogue, fact, invention, idea, image, memory. The book that in some way […]
