I’m often asked, “What’s your five year plan?”  I don’t know.  I am so busy, I don’t have time to dream, I only have time to execute.

Last month, I facilitated a one hour journal writing workshop for some of my friends (artists and non-artists) as a break from the busy holidays.  So, together, my friends and I carved out this hour and started to dream.

The experience of writing in silence surprised many of them.  They walked away feeling focused and refreshed.  One of them said it was so nice to have a few moments where no one asked anything of her.  We decided to meet once a month  and I’d like to open up this free class to my faraway friends.

This experience is about panning for our inner gold, sorting, exploring, asking, wishing, wondering, wandering, changing, creating, cultivating, learning, discovering, being.

This experience is not about making to do lists, planning, doing, right answers, expectations, fixing for others, standards, metrics, performance, supposed tos, shoulds.

I will post a prompt once a month (the first one is on Wednesday at noon, Pacific time) and invite you to set a timer and write for 40 minutes or at least three pages.  Or write until you feel like giving up, then go for another 20 minutes.  (Excellent advice from the writer Ron Carlson.)

Please join us online.  I’d love to hear your feedback.

I don’t remember exactly when I came to writing.  This part of my artistic history is fuzzy, without a logical path or series of connections.  I am not a lover of words or language.  My struggle with both of them humbles me.  But when I read good writing, I can feel it.  I don’t commit prose to memory even though I have been a lifelong reader since the age of four.

I do remember writing in a journal as a corporate frequent flier over ten years ago.  To this day, the sound of ice breaking in a plastic bag dropped repeatedly on the galley floor by the cabin crew makes me want to write.  As I collected miles, the travel changed me and I noted these observations, images, stories, so I could think about them later and understand them.  I didn’t know then that writing was a means.  I just flew, worked, listened, and wrote in the margins of my life – one word after another.

And that’s how I became a writer.

And why do I stay?

This is a fair question.  Today, I live in a busy city with a busy mind in a life with an overflowing inbox, a buzzing BlackBerry, and a long commute.  These and other distractions from writing are my life and I return to the blank page because I don’t understand something unless I’ve written about it.  This practice on the blank page sustains me, makes me laugh, stretches me, and fills in the gaps of my journey and experience.  Writing is for my mind like a deep breath is for my body.  My life without writing is only half-lived.

“Omiyage” Kauai Back Story: Web.  2 Sep. 2009.

“Geocaching: Less Cash, More Fun” Mensa Bulletin: The Magazine of American Mensa, April 2009: 22-23.

“Sublime: From Solid to Vapor” Quiet Mountain Essays: Web. 1 Mar. 2009.

“Penny Wise, Pound Foolish” Prism Review, Spring 2009. 59-60.

“Metrolink” Broadside with art by Mathew Digges, Voice In Action, Creative Writing and Modern Languages Department, University of LaVerne, LaVerne, CA, September 2007.

“My Fourth and First AG” Mensa Bulletin: The Magazine of American Mensa, August 2007: 22-24.

“Stop and Go” Prism Review, Spring 2006. 61-63.

“Rind” mo+th: Poetry and Prose for the New Millennium, Spring 2006.

“Rebecca” mo+th: Poetry and Prose for the New Millennium, Fall 2005.

“Toe to Toe” Mean Girls Grown Up: Adult Women Who are Still Queen Bees, Middle Bees, and Afraid-to-Bees. Cheryl Dellasega. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, 2005. 63-64.

“Solemates,” Broadside with art by Mathew Digges, Voice In Action, Creative Writing and Modern Languages Department, University of LaVerne, LaVerne, CA, September 2004.

“Spelling His Way to the Top,” I Love My Job! A Digest of Workplace Wit and Wisdom. Steve Herbelin and Jocelyn Herbelin. Riverbank Books, January 2001.

Untitled. The Noon Quilt Sue Thomas. Nottingham, UK: trAce Online Writing Community, 1999.