Sometimes inner guidance sounds more like a whisper than a growl. It might stalk you from behind a flowering Camellia bush and distract you with red blossoms. It might tap you on the shoulder and then run away. It may wonder how many times or in what ways it needs to tell you the same thing before you’ll take its advice. But if your inner guidance is anything like mine, it will be patient—and it won’t give up until you receive its message. It will attract a variety of experiences designed to help you, though you may interpret them as obstacles instead of opportunities.
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A few months ago, soon after I’d finished writing my memoir, Raw: A Midlife Quest for Health & Happiness, I had the opportunity to share five minutes of my work at a reading. While combing through my manuscript for excerpts, I found myself thinking, Hmm, maybe this writing isn’t as strong as I thought. The writing felt flabby and slow. I found myself tinkering with passages so they’d read better in a shorter timeframe, and wondered if that was okay. In past readings, I’ve mostly read my poems, complete works, each one featuring a beginning, middle, and end. I attended my first AWP conference and book fair this year, where I feasted on literary and writing business delicacies, along with over 12,000 other attendees. After reviewing over 550 offerings, I selected fourteen panels, which I attended over three days. It was a treat to see SWP Publisher Brooke Warner speak on the panel: “A New Girl’s Network: Lessons From The Movement of Equal Voice,” and SWP editor and Grammergency blogger Annie Tucker, who spoke on the panel, “What to Expect When You’re Expecting A Redline.” In honor of Teacher’s Appreciation Week, which was May 4-8, here’s a list of qualities some of the best writing teachers share. They may not be the first thoughts that enter your mind when thinking about studying writing, but teachers with the personality traits listed below make excellent writing guides. Don’t settle for anything less. You deserve the best. Not long ago, a student who has been taking my classes consecutively for the past three years stopped by to pick up a letter of recommendation for a PEN Emerging Voices Fellowship. This same student, during her second year in my class, wrote a novel, for which she secured literary representation last fall. Our class is on summer break and I hadn’t seen her since June. After we took care of our PEN business she shared her growing frustrations with me about her writing career. “I felt like I gave my baby away,” she told me, and then lamented that she rarely hears from her agent and has no idea what’s going on with her book. Unfortunately, for writers lucky enough to sign with an agent, this is not an uncommon story. A few weeks ago I found out I was mentioned in Deborah Siegel’s excellent She Writes Webinar, “Thought Leadership for Writers.” |
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