Dear writing sisters, Years ago, when I was in my twenties and just setting out on what would become a quest to recovery my voice from silence, I joined a peer counseling class. The theme of the class was women’s empowerment. In this class, we learned how to listen to each other deeply. We would […]
Dear writing sisters, Every year at this time I choose a writing word to guide my writing in the coming year. Then I spell out my word with Scrabble tiles and set it above my desk so that every time I look up there it is, my writing word, reminding me of my conscious writing […]
Dear writing sisters, One of my quirky gifts is a knack for spotting potential writing prompts, especially when I’m reading a memoir. Prompts jump out at me. And when they do, I flag the page with a Post-It note and jot a craft category in the margin: develop your narrator, create empathy for your antagonist, […]
Dear writing sisters, At the start of my Virtual Writing Retreats, I like to hold a space for participants to set their personal writing intention. I also like to set a group writing intention as a way to keep us unified and connected—to really ground us into the power of the group energy—before we disperse […]
Dear writing sisters, Last week was my birthday—I turned 52 : ). On the day after my birthday I received a gift that will stay with me for the long haul: I got to hug Lydia McGranahan, one of my mentoring clients, in person for the first time after years of connecting via email, text, […]
Hello writing sisters, It’s been a while since I touched base with you! First, I was busy devoting extra writing time to my submission for the Vermont College of Fine Arts, where I’ll be attending the post-graduate writing conference in August. I’ve heard so many good things from a number of writing friends about this […]
Dear writing sisters, As many of you know, every year at this time I choose a writing word to guide my writing in the coming year. Then I spell out my word with Scrabble tiles and set it above my desk so that every time I look up there it is, my writing word, reminding […]
Earlier this week I posted the following in Writing Out Loud Sisterhood, a Writing Women’s Lives Facebook group: “This morning on the way to an annual check-up I caught the tail end of an NPR report about children and self-confidence. The report stated that when children dress up as one of their heroes–Wonder Woman, for […]
Today’s interview finds me chatting with Charla Gabert who, like Joanne Cooper, made her way back to writing by way of art; in Charla’s case, mosaics. As a child, Charla “disappeared into books,” so it was only natural that she would write poems and stories and work on her high school literary magazine. She even […]
Welcome back to the Conscious Writing Journeys interview series. In today’s interview I speak with Joanne Cooper, a woman whose life experiences led her to writing as part of her larger purpose. Joanne Cooper is so in tune with her intuition that serendipity, which she refers to as “Grace Winks,” is central to her way […]