Daily Life

lizshine74by lizshine74

In On writing.

I’m out of practice in this thing called life. While at the RWW residency, I lost track of place and time. When my sister picked me up (I was only a thirty minute drive from home), she said she hadn’t realized I was so close, that it’d felt like I was clear across the continent. I’d felt that way too. At times this was inspiring and uplifting, at times I felt too vulnerable and exposed. I’m home now, slowly shuffling around the house, placing things where I had expected them to be when I returned, taking the things from my suitcase and placing them where I think they belong. I’m settling in to write, though I’m a bit wary of where to begin. I guess I began this morning, shuffling about the house musing over the various reasons why it is I persist in writing.
Here’s the first paragraph of James Salton’s essay “Some for the Glory, Some for the Praise”:
“To write! What a marvelous thing! When he was old and forgotten, living in a rundown house in the dreary suburbs of Paris, Léautaud wrote these lines. He was unmarried, childless, alone. The world of the theater in which he had worked as a critic for years was now dark for him, but from the ruins of his life these words rose. To write!”
Why do you write?

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Some past posts to keep you making time: 
Adjust your pace accordingly.
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
See it to achieve it
Washing the dishes
Write slowly
A celebration of the pause
Monday, a run through the driving rain
Zen accident
Get out of your comfort zone

lizshine74

lizshine74

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.