The Passion of Both Writing and Teaching

                                                                      
                                                                      An early morning realization
 

This morning I had an inspiration to write about the writer's journey from a somewhat different perspective. I was thinking about how dearly I love both writing and teaching. And I realized that, after a lifetime of passionate writing, I enjoy coaching writers and leading workshops as much I do writing.

My own writing life has never been just about writing fiction. I've always been a keen observer of my process. The teacher in me was always watching and learning and journeying with me! Perhaps she knew long before I did, that her time would come.


For over thirty years, I've been helping others navigate the often tumultuous waters of the creative process, then standing back and, with joy and pride, watching the brave ones take off and fly!

Flying is really how I've experienced my writing...
soaring above the confines of my physical self into other realms, other experiences of being and other landscapes that expanded, challenged and changed me -- all for the better!

Which doesn't mean being a writer is an easy journey. On the contrary! I think writing is as risky as sky diving, psychically that is. It asks us to journey into the unknown. It asks us to give ourselves over to characters and mysteries that we didn't even know lived within us. Then it asks that we be a fool for love — love of our great passion for writing.

What fuels this great passion?
I believe as writers we have an insatiable hunger to explore the human condition, and we explore it all: folly, brutality, tenderness, love, sex, death, toil, the broken heart, the lost opportunity, the heroic and the courageous, the cowardly and mean spirited, the beautiful and the ugly, god and the devil.

We want to make sense of this strange journey called life; we want to find the resolution that often slips through our fingers. We want the human spirit to triumph! We do this through all kinds of writing: mainstream, memoir, humor, thrillers, children's, chick lit, detective stories, fantasy, horror, science fiction...

Writing is a leap of faith
Because this is so primal to my passion for writing, I work with writers who sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, are willing to take the leap of faith into the unknown. This leap is difficult, and the journey demands great stamina. Writing takes time — writing, tossing away, rewriting, tearing out one's hair, laughing, crying, dancing, taking long naps...

So, I'm asking you to take a journey that I myself have taken, and onto which I've led countless others. The path inward is well trodden by the millions of creative people who've journeyed before us. Sometimes we need a light to show the way, and a tool bag that makes the going easier. For those of you who have worked with me and will work with me in the future, I hope I can be that light and carry that tool bag, until you're ready to shoulder it yourself.

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