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.
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
At first Ms. Puglisi’s ideas here at The Bookshelf Muse seemed brilliant. I had already pulled out a pad of paper to start making my list, when this voice in ... Read more
Here’s someone who agrees with me that just about anything you can imagine will work so long as it works for you. Walks and yoga are rewards for me, but I’ll ... Read more
One has to be comfortable with beginning again to stick with writing. I am beginning summer again, that time when hours of time for writing open, which, paradoxically, can slow ... Read more
Today, I got mixed up on carpooling details and missed my weekly critique group meeting. I walked all the way downtown to make the car pool ( a couple of ... Read more
Watching you lately, the way a new beat consumes you, the sound of the beginning of a track played over and over again, inspires me. I can ask you to ... Read more
At first, I couldn’t manage more than a poem, but the poems came so fast I carried a notebook with me everywhere. I wrote my first short story when I ... Read more
We were eight, maybe nine, when we met. I don’t remember the first moment, but I remember a lot of important moments along the way, including the time we went ... Read more