In the eight years of my tango addiction, I have tangoed on many types of floors and surfaces, indoors and outdoors, from Paris to Prague, New York to San Francisco, Buenos Aires to Montevideo. But I have never danced on virgin redwood. Such was the case this past weekend at the lovely 186-year-old Weller House Inn in Fort Bragg (Mendocino), California.
Writer’s Intensive Workshop
November 29, 2011 by
A full day (8 hours) of writing instruction in a very small group (limited to six participants).
You’ll learn everything from unlocking the writer within, the six key elements of winning creative non-fiction (or personal essays)to understanding the all-important narrative arc, how to shape it, how to cultivate your voice (or voices!) and the delicate art of self-editing. You will write, write, write, and leave inspired.
Writing Intensive Workshop, Beginners
November 29, 2011 by
A full day (8 hours) of writing instruction in a very small group (limited to six participants).
You’ll learn everything from unlocking the writer within, the six key elements of winning creative non-fiction (or personal essays)to understanding the all-important narrative arc, how to shape it, how to cultivate your voice (or voices!) and the delicate art of self-editing. You will write, write, write, and leave inspired.
Francis Ford Coppola on Writing
November 25, 2011 by
Coppola says, “I’m convinced there is a hormone in the blood of young writers that makes them hate their own writing.”
The one thing all of my students needed, no matter how skilled they were, was encouragement to keep on with their writing. Having come through the mill of self-doubt, self-criticism, and other self-destructive resistance, I knew how to give the honest support they needed. Writing can be lonely. It can be frightening. In fact, it brings up the whole prism of emotions. But there is nothing like the satisfaction of pulling out the story we know is in us. It is no less art, no less grand and magnificent than Michelangelo’s pulling his David from the block of cararra marble.
Truths, Half-Truths, & Truths-and-a-Halfs Writing Workshop
November 25, 2011 by
A writer of integrity never wants to have the footnote after her/his name that James Frey, who “fictionalized” his memoir, will forever have. The bald-faced lies may have earned him some dough, but you don’t want a liar’s fame. In the long run it won’t serve him.
However, there are much less egregious examples of bending, re-focusing, refracting, embroidering the truth. Is there ever a place for it in creative non-fiction? A number of respectable writers have said there is . . .
Your Passion is Your Prose Writing Workshop
November 25, 2011 by
As journalists we’re trained to be detached and objective in our reporting. However, there [Virginia Woolf] are many markets and outlets for the writer who can report on a topic objectively AND with passion. I jump-started a successful food-writing career (books and feature articles) after publishing one article in a free monthly pub. I built a successful travel writing career after publishing a story on a gourmet bike tour in France in a monthly newsletter. Eight years ago, I was bitten by the tango bug and . . .
Trick & Treat
October 30, 2011 by
You never know who you will run into in New Jersey. That’s Dancin’ Will with me. When we met on a transatlantic cruise from New York to Lisbon in 1998 I had no idea we both had Jersey Shore connections. You’ll get my drift. Aka Bill Rodgers, Will was a social host on that cruise and I was on a assignment for VIA Magazine. So I stepped all over his toes. He still remembers it. Buddy Morrow (then 80 years old then) and the Tommy Dorsey Big Band played on the high seas for us.
Captive Backpacker Suffers Helsinki Syndrome
October 29, 2011 by
I was taken prisoner for six nights and seven days by a Sierra Club Local from southern California. I am now suffering from Helsinki Syndrome. I fell in love with my captors.
They marched me up tall mountains, some more than 11,000 feet above sea level. They led me into an isolated northeast corner of Yosemite National Park. They did not need to blindfold me for the sun was blinding at those dizzying heights. My vision was filled with blue sky so deep it had the loft of velvet. Scintillating, light-reflecting lakes with diamonds bouncing off the surface finished (Finnish-ed )the job. For I was a captive audience. They didn’t need to lure me by appealing to other senses, say, like filling the air with a fragrance so divine – of pine and vanilla of wood baking in sun. But they did.
Tango Brujo
October 26, 2011 by
A spell comes over me as soon as I step into the warm envelope of tango’s embrace. No matter who my partner, no matter how skillful he is. I learned early on that tango is a language that defies our limited speech. Everyone who attempts tango eventually wanders through this portal into Big Space of Limitless Expression. Therein, each dancer finds her/his secret. This is what I mean by tango brujo.
My Tango Teaching Style: Street Tango
October 26, 2011 by
” . . . And tango was born anew in my body each time with each partner. It was exhilarating to just let it happen, not knowing, not worrying, each time I entered the dance. And becoming so eager to dance with every man sitting on the men’s side of the dance hall. My mind was torn down. My whole body was shaped and re-formed by this experience.”