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.
A paragraph came without warning. I was reading Great House on the way to a wedding in Seattle. I didn’t even have a notebook to write it down, so I ... Read more
“A long-lost book reappears, mysteriously connecting an old man searching for his son and a girl seeking a cure for her widowed mother’s loneliness. Leo Gursky is just about surviving, ... Read more
Dear Long Distance Stare, You’ve gotten me into trouble a few times in public. “Stare hard, retard.” OR “What are you lookin’ at?” That sort of thing. If I had ... Read more
When all else fails, count words. Pick a number, any number and write that number of words daily until you are back in the habit, until sitting down to write ... Read more
Pride, You may not be everything, but there are days when if it weren’t for you, I’d turn in my pen and take up baking. Yours gratefully, Liz Buy my books ... Read more
A few days ago I was whining to my best friend (also a writer) about how I lack discipline and am not writing consistently. We have this conversation quite often. ... Read more
I finished reading Lolita last week. It took me a while because originally I started reading it for my writer’s book group and didn’t finish it on time. After our ... Read more
Dear End Goal, You are publication, ultimately, but also just desire to have finished the work. At a recent writer’s group meeting a friend proposed that one of our greatest ... Read more
Stuck? Try moving. The body-mind connection is no joke. Take as many walks as you need to in one writing session to reach your goal. Try jumping jacks or sit ... Read more
Writing occurs in solitude. It can only be done by you and requires that you linger long in that internal space of imagination where you have to go alone in ... Read more