by Laurie Wagner | Aug 29, 2016 | Blog
When my friends Jen Louden and Lisa Jones invited me to Boulder, Co. this summer to go on a little hiking/writing retreat with them I leapt at the chance. Not only did I look forward to seeing my pals, I was looking forward to some real writing time. Earlier in the summer I’d spent a week with my writing mentor, Deena Metzger, at her place in Topanga, with 20 other writers, but I hadn’t done much writing since then. I’d liked what I’d started at Deena’s – it was juicy – and I figured these two friends would give me the ass kicking that I needed. They’d challenge me, they’d get past all my clever shit and push me to the wall for more. In my mind, Jen and Lisa were the real writers, while I’ve considered myself more of a writing teacher over the last 15 years. Yes I’ve written books, and yes I write with my students 10 times a week, and yes I write blog posts that I care about, but Lisa and Jen sat down daily to work on their own writing projects – their books. They had discipline, and both had agents who encouraged them. They’d made actual deadlines for themselves, and Lisa was positively unstoppable after 12 publishers had passed on her latest book. She was sure she knew how to make the right changes and she couldn’t wait to get back to work. I was in awe of her. Writing is hard work. I don’t need to tell you that. Teaching is not as hard for me, and Wild Writing – the...
by Laurie Wagner | Jan 11, 2015 | Blog
Dear Writers and Creative Friends, If I’m about anything, it’s helping writers to take the lead out and get some ink on the page. I’m a process person – I believe Mo is Bettah when it comes to writing – which is to say, let’s get a lot of words on the page so that eventually, good golly, a story will emerge. It’s kind of like that joke about walking into a room full of horse shit. There’s got to be a pony around here somewhere. That’s what I mean when I encourage people to write as poorly as possible. What I’m saying is, don’t sit there huffing and puffing over the right word or the right line. You’ll find both, but start writing. Perfection is very rarely going to come out of you like lightening the minute the pen hits the page. The beginning of your piece, that awesome lead, might spill out of you on the second page of your messy scrawl – but that’s what it took – if you’re lucky – two pages of messy crap to find the one thing you meant to say. I support that kind of murky goodness. That’s my practice and I would never ask you to do something I wasn’t willing to do myself. I know that if I’m just willing to keep the pen moving a story of some sort will emerge eventually. I might not even love it, by the way, but it doesn’t matter. Every piece I write makes me a better writer. I’m in it for the long haul. It takes patience and...
by Laurie Wagner | Jul 14, 2014 | Blog
And so, after a couple of fairly unproductive days of writing – or – not writing – as the case was – days where I’d meant well, had made a little nest on the couch, surrounding myself with not only a pile of bills, but a list of writing assignments and essays I’d started, but which were going nowhere. After all that, I found myself jogging in my town with a little group of work out buddies from my gym. Most of us aren’t real runners, we just take orders from this horribly fit man named Nate who has no fat on his body, and who we pay to push us around. Yesterday he told us to run five times around a hot, city block, lift heavy weights – sometimes running with those weights – do planks, crunches and an assortment of other horrible things – all of it culminating in something called a burpy, where you throw yourself onto the ground, do a push up and then jump – no – leap into the air and clap your hands like you’re simply delighted, when in fact, you really just want to throw up. We did this like 25 times. So there I was running and feeling sorry for myself because I’m certain I’m not built to run, and my middle aged legs feel heavy, and I’m huffing and puffing and tears are leaking out of my eyes, and I’m hoping that all this hard work will pay off so I can fit into these dresses which I want to wear for these upcoming weddings. And then...
by Laurie Wagner | Dec 16, 2013 | Blog
The truth about being a writing teacher is that everything you teach to others is often a lesson that you have to keep learning for yourself, over and over. So it will come as no surprise when I tell you that it truly is a challenge for me to sit my fanny down and write. And which is why I find myself so hungry as I begin this blog post. Not just hungry for good words, but hungry for sweet things, salty things, things with caffeine. I’m also suddenly very interested in the laundry, determined to make my bed, sweep the back deck, tidy up the branches felled by the windstorm last week. I’m certain it’s the perfect time to make the matzo ball soup I promised Zoe for dinner tonight. And while I’m at it, I better get a move on those Christmas gifts even though the great godly holiday is over a week away! In fact, I would be happy to do practically anything other than sit down to write. In my 20’s, when I was just starting out as a journalist for the East Bay Express in Berkeley, I found that if I had a glass of wine, no, two glasses of wine, writing came easy. Not only that, I was funny! Inspired! Smart! The words flew through me and out onto the page like magic. Then, as I got more assignments, I realized that I couldn’t catch a buzz every time I sat down to write, not if I wanted to make a life of this. So I had to learn to write sober and...
