by Laurie Wagner | Feb 10, 2014 | Blog
One of the best things about staying with your work for a very long time is that you have a chance to understand, year after year, what exactly you’re doing. Not even because you’re trying to do it better, but because each year your work reveals itself even more to you, and you can deepen your understanding as to what it is about your work that you really care about. I knew I was teaching people something about writing for the last 14 years, but each year was an opportunity for me to peel away a little more the layers and get to the center of that work. Yes I could help people get published and find homes for their books and stories. Yes I wanted to help them tell their stories in engaging ways, but the more I worked with people, the more I understood that what I really cared about – more than whether someone published – was to inspire and to be among people who were striving to find the most honest language to tell their stories with. My aim is to help people find the words that open like doors and which invite both the reader and writer into deeper understanding of what it means to be alive. What I look for in a story is a chance to learn something – – not even a lesson per se, but perhaps some instruction on how to behave in the world. I remember seeing Ira Glass from the radio program, This American Life, on stage in S.F. many years ago and he told...
by Laurie Wagner | Jan 27, 2014 | Blog
This is a Wild Writing piece inspired by the poem, Permission Granted, by David Allen Sullivan. Yes, you have permission to refuse the rest of the red velvet cake your Mother wants you to pack up and take with you on your 300-mile drive back home. Yes, you can also refuse to take the brownies that she’s made, even though she tells you with some urgency that you’ll get Alzheimers if you don’t eat sugar. No, she’s not really worried that you’ll get Alzheimers, but yes, she’s super bummed that you’re sticking her with the cake. It’s 6:30 in the morning and you’re standing in her kitchen in Los Angeles – the same kitchen you had your whole childhood – the one with the black and yellow tile that sits below a shady grove of eucalyptus trees. This morning she’s wearing the short, black and white polka dotted nightie that you bought her for Christmas. “Sexy,” she’d said, turning toward her 82-year-old boyfriend Ralph when she unwrapped it a few days ago. When you drive away from her house 30 minutes later, your blond teenage daughters are like sleepy puppies on pillows in the back seat. Mom will be standing at the front door in her short, polka dotted nightie, Ralph towering over her wearing your Dad’s pajamas, both of them waving your car goodbye. No, you did not take the cake. No, you did not take the brownies. Yes, you got over the fact that your Mother’s boyfriend wears your Father’s pajamas. Yes, they were practically new when your Father...
