The opening is the most important part of any story or book, one of the topics I’ll be discussing in my upcoming Seattle writing class, Tell Your Story, spend as much time as necessary finding a strong lead. Rewrite the …
Tag: Travel Writing classes
Ten Top Tips for Pitching: How to Get Happily Published
In my writing classes for The Writer’s Workshop, I always teach students how to pitch, including the Ten Top Tips for Pitching, the first step in getting happily published. There are so newspapers and magazines that neophyte writers often become …
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Brine Your Turkey!
In my travel writing classes for The Writer’s Workshop, I emphasize telling stories about a place through highlighting the key moments, feasts or special occasions. Thanksgiving is clearly such a feast in the U.S. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with …
Best Wines for Thanksgiving
In my travel writing classes, I have the pleasure of visiting places that have had centuries to find perfect pairings for food and wine. We Americans are newer to this, but we keep getting better. Practice makes perfect! It’s hard …
Dramatic Scene in Seattle Writing Classes
Dramatic scene is an especially effective way of organizing stories, one of the techniques I teach in my Seattle writing classes. In my Seattle writing classes, I explain how to use dramatic scenes to give life and movement to stories, …
Story Openings in Seattle Writing Class
The story opening is the most important part of any story or book, one of the topics I’ll be discussing in my upcoming Seattle writing class, Revising Your Life. If your lead is not interesting, intriguing or entertaining, the reader …
Seattle Writing Class Teaches Power of Details
In my fall Seattle writing class, Revising Your Life, I emphasize how using concrete detail can conjure a world and bring it to life. I just finished a novel which provides a masterful example of how to do this. Anthony …
Hemingway’s Influence on Seattle Writing Courses
In my Seattle writing courses, I emphasize how studying great writing is an essential part of learning to write. There are many outstanding writers, but Ernest Hemingway serves as an important inspiration for many writers, including myself. There is much …
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Hemingway and Travel Writing Classes
In my travel writing classes, I like to emphasize how using scenes and concrete detail can make a place come to life as Ernest Hemingway did in A Moveable Feast and other works. I recently returned from teaching the Travel, …
Writing Class Helps Bring People to Life on Page
In my writing classes, I emphasize the need to bring people to life on the page. I recently interviewed mountaineer Ed Veisturs for a magazine story and sought to bring him to life through a focus on his efforts to …
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Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”
Anne Lamott
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Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.
Flannery O’Connor
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Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.
William Faulkner -
Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes for thousands of years.
Willa Cather
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The Writer's Workshop, an on-campus and online program offering writing
classes in Seattle, online and travel writing classes.