Featured Writers

from Laura's Classes

Suzanne Kronisch: Patience Feels Like This

Suzanne Kronisch is in the Thursday night feedback class and was also a participant in the 2010-2011 Memory to Memoir Intensive. She wrote this piece at the Commonweal "Writing Retreat of Your Dreams" in Bolinas this past summer.

We all loved it because Suzanne so beautifully described something so many of us have in short supply. Personally, I felt like I was getting a tour of a foreign country.

Patience feels like this:

I can wait.
There's no hurry.
As long as it takes.
When you're ready.
When the time is right.
It's in God's hands.
I'm not in control.
You're not in control.
Let's find out.

Patience feels like this:

It doesn't matter how long it takes.
What gets accomplished is exactly what what was supposed to get accomplished.
We'll start again.
Not a problem.
Totally fine.
I'm in no hurry.
There's nowhere else I'd rather be.
I'm not going anywhere.
I have no agenda.

Patience feels like being.

If it takes the rest of my life it takes the rest of my life.
It'll take as long as it takes.
No worries.
No problem.
My pleasure.
We'll just go back.
We'll just turn around.
Easy.
That's fine.
Can you give me that again?
I want to understand you.
Can you say it another way?
Let's slow down.
Let's not hurry.
I like that about you.
There's no need to change.

Patience feels like this:

No matter how long it takes, that's how long.
Whatever it takes.
It's not about finishing it.
It's about being together,
Doing it,
Enjoying the process.

Patience feels like this:

I'm not trying to change you.
I don't expect from you what you can't do.
Let's see what you can do from where you are right now.

Patience feels like a big, permissive, unhurried opening,
A place where things can only emerge and not be forced or coaxed,
But happen when all the forces are right,
When the karma is ripe,
The conditions are in place
And the space is there.

When you give up hunting, searching, trying,
And it appears in front of you as if a gift,
You know that patience was in play.

Suzanne Kronisch has been cultivating patience for over three decades. The same year she took the first stich of a still-unfinished tapestry she encountered the Feldenkrais Method® of Somatic Education. She has been practicing the refinement of her own embodied awareness and that of others since 1978. Although she also loves to go really fast, Suzanne prefers train travel, in part because it takes forever to get there. She is currently immersed in the process of finding just the right words for her first book, which won't be done anytime soon.

http://www.bodyofknowledge.ws

Melanie Coon: Tips from Author Andrea Alban from the New World of Publishing

Andrea Alban is very funny. Her presentation at the New World of Publishing Conference in Santa Cruz on May 21, 2011 sounded like a lively conversation with a favorite friend. Andrea’s latest book is a scrumptiously-designed young adult novel, Anya’s War. The cover is an irresistible Chinese red with a gold Star of David ringed by delicate gold scroll work. The jacket design combines symbols of Jewish history and Chinese culture. You can’t resist picking up this inviting book, lured by wondering what these two cultures could possibly have in common.

The author experienced the same wonder as an eight-year-old daydreaming about her relatives who fled pre-World War II Odessa for the safety of a protected colony in Shanghai. Alban says that their stories, told and re-told by her grandfather and her father, looped through her memory and panned across her mind’s eye for twenty years.

She began writing the novel when her son, then age three, was attending Jewish Community Center pre-school. Alban chose to exercise “truth in fiction” as Amy Tan has done with her novels, rather than creative non-fiction. She wanted to embellish the truth with a captivating story line and fresh characters. Anya’s War was published just before her son’s twenty-first birthday. It is a labor of love eighteen years in the making.

Anya’s War features a spirited main character, Anya, age twelve, whose life is carefree and privileged; whose heroine is Amelia Earheart. The story becomes complicated when Anya finds an abandoned Chinese baby girl in the marketplace. She brings the baby home and tries to hide her from her family. An interesting knot of cultural attitudes and values gets pulled tighter when the baby is discovered. At the end of the book, Anya emerges a strong young woman who forges her own identity in a world that is rapidly changing.

At the conference, Andrea Alban gave One Big Tip for aspiring writers: get yourself into a writing conference where you have to submit a piece of writing. Research the speakers to find ones you are interested in, give them your proposal, and ask if you can send them something. Use email, and title your submission with the conference name followed by “Requested Material” so that yours will make it to the top of the pile. Unsolicited submissions are rarely read, so if yours in requested, it has a better chance of getting a glance from someone who can help you.

On the subject of agents, Andrea added another tip for finding one who you can work with. She suggested reading the Acknowledgements page of books you love. There you will find profuse thanks expressed to the author’s agent. Use Publishers’ Marketplace to get the contact information for that particular agent. Andrea’s own agent, Barbara Moulton, was also on the panel. Barbara says she feels like a “nattering nabob of negativity” when she has to rein in Andrea’s creativity. The balance between a fabulous idea and what is realistic is the function of a partnership between writer and agent.

Andrea Alban is the epitome of creativity and relish for life, qualities that are reflected in her presentation as well as her writing. Anya’s War took eighteen years to come to fruition, so take heart from the story of this book and keep writing.

Melanie Coon is a high school Special Education teacher and memoirist who lives near the beach in Santa Cruz. She has two adult daughters who live in the San Francisco Bay area. When her oldest daughter left home to attend college in 1996, Melanie joined the Central California Writing Project. There she found her voice. Stories from her childhood visited her in dreams and haunted her during the day until she met Laura Davis in 2010. In Laura's Memory to Memoir yearlong Intensive, Melanie learned that those stories are worth drafting, polishing and sharing.

Sandra Locke-Paddon: What I Learned at the New World of Publishing

The May 21-22 workshop with Janet Goldstein was a treasure chest of information. Janet provided a map for the pathway through the fast changing world of publishing. With Laura Davis as our guide, keeping us traveling smoothly along, we renewed our passion and focus. Through a series of exercises and a sprinkling of guest speakers, Janet’s energetic presentation gave us a wealth of tools and information.

The keynote speaker, Daphne Rose Kingma, author of Ten Things to do When Your Life Falls Apart, brought her elegant style in talking about our passions and purpose. She has written many books on the emotions and was inspirational.

The weekend took us from the idea stage of our writing to the nuts and bolts of pitching a project. The laser coaching sessions were dynamic. We could really imagine ourselves in the hot seat struggling to describe what it is we’re working on and by the end we had a much more refined and concrete piece to work with and a better idea of how to express ourselves and our projects.

We focused on our platform, an area that writers in general fall short in. We spend our time with the words but today we need to spend time on the marketing aspects of getting our work out there, it’s not enough to market the work itself. Marketing ourselves via blogs, affiliations with other writers, a good agent, a coach and editor all play a part in creating the foundation for success in getting our work published.

The Publishing Panel guest speakers, Nathan Bransford, who has worked in publishing and is a new author himself, spoke about the online world of publishing. Andy Ross, an agent, spoke about making the deal with a humorous flair. David Carr talked about the value of working with a freelance editor and we came away with more clarity about these aspects of the business side of our writing.

Author Andrea Alban and her agent Barbara Moulton told the story of their journey together with laughter and a glimpse into the relationship between creative writer and sometimes stern but loving agent. All of the authors spent time signing their books and chatting with everyone. Karen Leland was an excellent speaker and source of information about broadcasting our work and getting our message out there.

Being in the same room with like-minded creative fellow writers is a great opportunity to network and talk about our writing, stressed throughout as important in the life of a writer. We dined together and heard each other's stories, and came away filled with luscious food and memories. Janet and Laura pointed us in a new direction and we took with us a plan for the next steps in getting published.

Sandra Locke-Paddon has been writing since childhood. She has written for magazines and newspaper, has senior edited several literary journals, and started two community newspapers. She is currently helping friends write their memoirs and is finalizing a novel about domestic abuse.

Meredith Born: Ways to Say No

Meredith Born is a dedicated member of the Tuesday night class--her high point of the week. She always longed to write, and journaled daily for 13 years before taking Laura's Memory to Memoir workshop at a local bookstore last spring. Then she won six weeks of writing classes from Laura and has been hooked ever since. She wrote this piece in response to a writing prompt to list ways of saying "no." Through this exercise she learned, once again, that saying "no" frees her to make an authentic choice--the only kind that matter.

1. It's my decision, and my decision is no.

2. We're not a match.

3. Sorry, I'm not interested.

4. That's never worked for me before; I don't see why it would work now.

5. Not this time around.

6. want to say 'yes' to get your approval, but my real answer is 'no'.

7. That doesn't work for me.

8. That door is closed.

9. There's nothing for me in this.

10. I can't.

11. (Smiling) No, I don't want to do that.

12. (Smiling) No.