Liz Shine teaches high school English, writes, edits, and coaches other writers from her home in Olympia, WA. When she begins to feel overwhelmed by it all, she simply looks up at Mount Rainier in the distance and gets back to work. If that fails, she heads to the ocean. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press. Her Substack Make Time is her gift to writers, like her, trying to magic time in this crazy, busy world. All of those posts are cross-posted on the blog here. You can see more of her writing at lizshine.com and find her on Instagram {@lizshine.writer} cooking, traveling, and in other ways seeking moments of awe.
She has been an active participant in communities of writers since the early 1990s. She’s learned that two things feel truly purpose-driven in life: writing and coaching other writers. In the in between (because one cannot be driving for a purpose every moment), she enjoys looking for wonder and connection. She is a lifelong yoga student, an enthusiastic walker along streets and trails, and an amateur gardener and vegetarian cook.
She lives in Olympia, WA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud I picked this book up so that I might feel better equipped to teach a graphic novel this spring. In terms of ... Read more
Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon Chris and I read this one together. We came across a preview for the movie coming out in December and, impressed by the cast and ... Read more
Dear Writing Friends, I won’t go into the details, but suffice it to say this week was wrought with unexpected emotional turmoil at work that I am struggling not to ... Read more
That’s how broken our practice had become. We squeezed $90 out of our measly budgets to stay at a dive hotel a mile or two from our houses. We started ... Read more
I’m not entirely sure yet what this story has to do with writing, but I know that it does have to do with writing in a big way. There are ... Read more
This week I encountered a major setback in the progress of my novel after several days of sweet flow. I set a goal of eight pages per day Monday through ... Read more
My seniors have spent the last several weeks reading excerpts from different styles and genres and responding to creative writing prompts. These seniors are IB students who work hard and ... Read more
In Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life there is a section devoted to anecdotes of the strange means by which writers sometimes call their muses. In that section, there is a ... Read more
Dear Present Moment, The click of keys. The ponderous pause. The long-distance stare. Alert, alive, creating. The problems to solve are diverse, complex, and many and I must be some ... Read more
When I first became aware of self-publishing, I dismissed the idea, figured it would last about as long as I <3 Boobies bracelets did at the high school where I ... Read more