by Laurie Wagner | Aug 5, 2014 | Blog
Day after day, day after still day,The summer has begun to pass away… -from Summer’s Elegy, by Howard Nemerov I can’t be sure, but I think we’ve come to the part of the summer where we’re tilting a little too heavily toward the fall. You can almost see September if you squint. So I won’t, though I do feel like I’ve been put on notice: Attention! Laurie! Have as much fun as you can in the next three weeks! Get to the movies! Go camping! Sleep in! Make bonfires! It’s like my mother giving me the ten-minute warning before it’s time to get out of the pool. For me, this is a serious warning because fall hits hard around these parts with lots of classes happening here and a schedule that begs me to get some sleep and take care of myself. There are big personal changes afoot too; both my girls will be going to school in Colorado this year, one in Boulder, the other in Leadville, which means the empty nest has landed – a little earlier than expected. After I return from taking them to Colorado, I’ll enter that new phase, which is sort of an old phase – the phase I had before I met their dad, before one became two, became three, became four. I’m going back to one now. It’s daunting, it’s a little scary, but I think I can do it. I have a memory of this moment before I married their dad, 100 years ago. I was living on the third floor of this building, in a tiny studio apartment in Oakland. It was essentially...
by Laurie Wagner | May 27, 2014 | Blog
“Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.” – Agnes De Mille If you’re a woman, you’ll understand when I tell you that writing this blog post has been exactly like changing your clothes 17 times before you leave the house. Not pretty. Not easy. You upend your closet looking for something comfortable that also makes you look good, that hides the parts of you that you’re less in awe of. No. This hasn’t been one of your throw-down-some-thoughts-and-post-it kind of blogs. It’s been more like, Does this blog post make me look fat? Does this blog post reveal the part of me that waits for the sun to go down so I can watch another episode of Scandal? Does this blog post pull the curtains back on the part of me that feels flat, dull and without inspiration? The part of me that wanders around my house doing laundry, washing dishes and surfing the internet because I’m not inspired to do anything else? The part of me that wants people to see my “good side” so they’ll want to work with me? Because if it does, I’m in trouble. That’s why I find this Agnes De Mille quote so beautiful and so troubling. I mean, it’s one thing to do this marvelous work of not knowing, of leaping into the dark on the...
by Laurie Wagner | May 6, 2014 | Blog
When my friend + long time student, Lisa Sadikman asked me if I wanted to participate in a blog hop where writers get a chance to write about their writing process I said sure, then immediately regretted it because I had just promised myself that I wouldn’t say yes to anything more until I’d completed the pile of projects on my desk. But if I’m anything, I’m a girl who stands by her commitments — which isn’t always smart, but in terms of commitments, writing is probably the best thing you could say yes to because everyone knows that those deadlines are everything to getting ink onto the page. So thank you Lisa. Below are my answers to the four questions traveling from blog to blog. Next week, two wonderful friends of mine and writers — Sherry Richert Belul and Jill Salahub will share their thoughts on writing via their blogs. What am I working on/writing? Most of my writing these days happens in the Wild Writing classes I teach each week here in the Bay Area. For two hours, five mornings a week, I have the pleasure of sitting around a table with 8 other women writing really quickly and really badly. That’s one of the tenants of the class — to write as poorly as possible. It’s not a joke — it’s a totally freeing way of getting past our ingrained attempts at looking good, smart and clever — which is pretty much what we’re trying to do most of the time — on the page and off. It’s unconscious, a throw-back from the days when it was dance or...
by Laurie Wagner | Apr 7, 2014 | Blog
Mostly we use poetry to inspire and jump start our Wild Writing classes over here at 27 Powers, but the other day I came across a letter my then 10-year-old Zoe wrote to her friends at school telling them why they should vote for her for student council. It captured everything I love about being a human being; these sometimes feeble, sometimes heroic attempts at love + living. I tell my students that they will get so good at Wild Writing that they can use the back of a cereal box to write from, and write something beautiful. So why not the plea of a 10-year-old girl who wants to run for office? “My name is Zoe Wagner and this is why you should pick me for student council… 1. I am not afraid to talk in front of the whole school. 2. I want to help everybody 3. You can trust me 4. I’ll work hard 5. I’ll make everything right” This is my riff on it in class this week: Why You Should Pick Me 1. I make an awesome cup of coffee 2. I don’t hog the blankets 3. I keep coconut, black sesame snacks in the freezer 4. My mother says I’m very beautiful when I cry 5. I’m learning to make a solid fire 6. I still listen to Joni and Neil 7. Cowboy boots are never the wrong choice 8. Lately I am drawn to difficult conversations 9. I carry my Grandmother’s kerchief 10. My Father left me a pair of his old reading glasses 11. My Mother and I threw two shivas...
by Laurie Wagner | Feb 25, 2014 | Blog
“If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act—truth is always subversive.” – Anne Lamott Goodness, here I sit on a Monday night with a Tuesday morning deadline to write a blog post. There are a number of other things I could be doing, like watching the latest episode of Downtown Abby and finding out, good god, if Edith’s boyfriend, the father of her unborn baby, miraculously returns, saving Edith’s reputation and bringing her the happiness we know she deserves. Seriously, I’ve tried to write this blog post a few times, even looking back into recent Wild Writing journals to see what I could get away with. Nothing. I’m feeling pressed to do something and I’m feeling empty of anything pithy, funny, smart or admirable. Sitting here trying to rouse the troop of my words, I get this quote sent to me from my friend Marci Hannewald and I realize the jig is up. Forget about writing something funny. Something that bathes you in the best light. Forget about writing something important or sage and that will inspire people to want to work with you or know you. Just write about what’s true. “Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability....
