Blog – Page 3

Here’s a peek into THE RELEASE, which comes out this October!

Your writing projects are your babies. Sometimes you dream about them before conception; sometimes they emerge in a passionate rush. You raise them with care, patience, frustration, labor, and abiding joy. Like child-rearing, revision is long, arduous, and meaningful. Often it seems the kid will never grow up. Then your baby is grown. The project is complete—more or less. It is […]

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What can dancing teach us about writing?

Craft, Creativity, Publishing, The Writing Process, Writing

Do you ever feel self-conscious on the page? A shout-out to the Brevity blog for publishing these reflections on stumbling our way to consciousness through writing. When my partner Emily teaches traditional circle dance to a group of newbies, they go through a predictable progression. First, they stride easily into the class, unaware of their

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This Queer Divine Dissatisfaction

Craft, Creativity, Spiritual Practice, The Writing Process, Writing as Gift, Writing as Sacred Journey

In preparing to launch The Release this October, I’m dizzied by the ironies of releasing a book about releasing creative work. If ever there were an opportunity to heed my own advice! So between now and then I thought I’d share some excerpts, in part to give you a foretaste but mostly to remind myself. The Release shares spiritual

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a graveyard in the background, yellow flowers are in the foreground

Last Regrets

Audience, The Writing Process, Writing, Writing as Sacred Journey

On a weekly basis, one client or another will tell me, “If I wind up on my deathbed without finishing this project, I’m seriously going to regret it.” This population of writers is, admittedly, peculiar; they share an intense enough degree of passion, compulsion, or vocation about writing to pay me good money. Or perhaps they seek

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Celebration on the Altar of the World

Contemplation, Faith, Revision, Spiritual Practice

Well, friends, my decades-long obsession with revision has reached a new extreme. I’ve shamelessly messed with another author’s work. Is this even allowed? When my mother died, her study group was preparing to read Teilhard’s Divine Milieu. I picked up her beat-up paperback copy just as I began a two-year formation program in contemplative Christianity. One day my teachers

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Flourishing in Creativity’s Gift Economy

Community, Writing as Gift, Writing as Sacred Journey, Writing Community

A few years ago I submitted an essay to an anthology of queer Minnesotan writing. I called it “Wearing Bi-Focals” because it explored bisexuality as a lens much as my progressive lenses help my eyes integrate what’s near with what’s far. I sent the essay out and promptly forgot about it. Six months later the

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A few hands gather to release a floating candle into the dark night sky

“Let it go! Let it go!”

Craft, Revision, The Writing Process, Writing

Years ago I coached a Buddhist priest in the development of his memoir. Unlike most beginners, Sensei V (as I’ll Christen him) cranked out a crummy but exceedingly workable rough draft in no time flat. Plagued by none of the usual hang-ups (self doubt, insecurity about “not being a real writer,” despair at how terrible his writing

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a visual of the cloud of unknowing that writers can tap into as they write

Writing in the Cloud of Privacy & Unknowing

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Perhaps because my first big writing project gave me room to articulate my sexual longings, come out bisexual, and figure out the implications for my Christian faith; perhaps because I’m drawn to spiritual and therefore intimate subjects, my first drafts (and often second and third) I tend to write for no one but me. Of course

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In Praise of Writing Community—And Fancy Cheese

Community, Craft, The Writing Process

Twenty-five years ago, I met a woman in the Loft mentor series whose feedback was superb and whose prose I adored. When she mentioned her writing group, I was so overcome with envy I blurted, “Any chance you’re taking new members?” Sure enough, someone was leaving and I was most welcome. Two and a half decades later,

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Image Description: a flower sits in a measuring cup

Cherishing the Measureless

Art Making, Craft, The Writing Process, Writing

As I write, Gwyn’s at the piano practicing a Beethoven Sonata, repeating trills, stumbling on scales, figuring out fingering. Distracting as her mistakes are, I find myself amazed that, after ten years of parental supervision, Gwyn is finally capable of cultivating for herself the joy of puzzling out a piece. Gwyn’s not naturally talented, but

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