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.
I didn’t have much time. My other had dinner in the oven and I’d just returned from errands which included a four mile run to pick up our car from ... Read more
I sat down to write, but wasn’t sure how to begin so I checked Facebook looking for inspiration. I found an article that expanded my knowledge of the Common Core ... Read more
Writing here with more regularity is a goal I have for 2014 for mostly selfish reasons. The more I am writing and thinking about how to stay focused and producing ... Read more
I hear myself say this is such a busy school year and I have to laugh at the joke. It’s always a busy school year. Life is unexpected and social ... Read more
The first full week of school and temps will be in the eighties all week. The fast pace of the year has started and I find myself keeping up and ... Read more
Today is my fourteenth Professional Day. Wait—thirteenth. The year I started teaching I was hired six weeks into the school year. This is the day before school starts, kids gathering ... Read more
When I read I almost always pick up something longer. I subscribe to magazines and journals but rarely read them. I have read plenty of short stories and essays, but ... Read more
There are some things I should have learned by now. This isn’t my first first draft. This morning, approaching twenty thousand words, in the zone of the scene I was ... Read more
Natalie Whipple writes here about the struggle with confidence that I have heard every writer I know struggle with at some point. Her assessment rings pretty true to me and ... Read more