Have you had an experience you are too afraid to write about? Is there some anecdote you’ve been harboring as too shameful to share? If you’re like most writers (or human beings, for that matter), there is not one story you’ve been hiding, there are many.
If […]
Soon, we'll arrive at the ending to 2021. In honor of this, we'll spend this meeting of The Memoir Collective talking about endings, in particular, how to write successful sentence, paragraph, chapter and story endings. We'll also talk about that ever-vexing problem: how to identify the ending of your memoir.
One of the great privileges of coaching authors is that I get to work with people motivated by a deep sense of purpose. But often, when I start working with a new client, they can’t easily articulate why it is they must write a book. Often, they’ll attribute their desire to […]
The last two weeks I’ve been avoiding my piano, and two nights ago, after a particularly frustrating night of practice, I realized why.
Whenever I’d sit down to play—or, more accurately, clonk my way through the beginner’s book—I’d find myself confronting patterns of behavior that have plagued me my entire life.
I […]
I’d like you to ponder your vision for your writing life. (You know you have one, even if you’ve been too afraid to articulate it.) I’m going to lead you through a guided visualization, but first I’d like you to provide more answers to the following questions:
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 […]
I suck. I’m not a real writer. I’m not Mary Karr. I’m not David Sedaris. I’m not Cheryl Strayed. I mean… who am I kidding? I hear comments like these from my coaching clients all the time, and it saddens me to hear how mean […]
