Theo Pauline Nestor's Blog, page 8

The Reason to Find Your Voice Is So You Can USE It

For the last four years, the place all my work has circled around has been this thing, this force, this process called “finding your voice.” It started here, really, when this Writing Is My Drink blog came into being in 2010. I’d write a post about my lifelong struggle in the war between Expression Vs. Pleasing Others and wouldn’t know how to categorize it and then created the category “Theo Finding Her Voice,” and the stories there later evolved into  the book Writing Is My Drink: A Writer’s Story of Finding Her Voice (And a Guide To How You Can Too). Finding one’s voice has also become the epicenter my teaching radiates around–in my memoir classes and now in the Writing Is My Drink webinar.

One key to helping writers find their voices, I’ve found, is locating the conversations they long to be a part of and the important topics they yearn to write about. For numerous reasons among which self-doubt and fear of conflict rank high, many of us are staying out of the conversations we want and need to be in and away from the topics that magnetize us. One of my students who often experiences block noted in a recent class discussion that when she wrote a blog post about a topic that made her very angry, she had no problem staying on task and her reader response was enormous.

“So what else are you pissed off about?” I asked her and I ask myself because our anger and our sorrow and our indignation point us to our important work, the topics through which we will find our vision and voice. When we surrender to these stories fully, we often find our voices rising off the page with clarity.

But even if we’ve done the work to “find our voices,” we still might not USE them.We might not use them because we are afraid. I am afraid. I am afraid of conflict, of being wrong, of rocking the boat, of offending, of losing myself along the way, of fighting losing battles. But what is the point–I ask myself–of all the education I’ve been given and that I’ve struggled for as a writer and a person if I do not use that education to write about important struggles beyond my own fears and to speak up in the face of injustice? What’s the point of finding my voice if I do not use it? I continue to ask myself this, to challenge myself with the charge of really using my voice.

I teach my students that after they’ve found their important topics to locate the flaw they fear will keep them out of the conversations they need to be a part of. Often the flaw will keep us out but if we can locate it and name it, our flaw can also be our way IN. The flaw I feared would keep me out of important conversations about writing, for example, was my self-doubt. Yet after I embraced my self-doubt, it became my way of connecting with readers and students. By sharing my own stories of delay, procrastination, fear, and doubt, I’ve been able to help writers to find their voices. Why? So they can use them.

My next Writing Is My Drink webinar starts September 4th. Details and registration here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teaching News from Theo

Hi Readers,

Here’s the latest news on my writing classes.

Teaching with Anne Lamott at Bird by Bird & Beyond in January 2014.

I’m teaching a four-week Memoir Essentials webinar that starts tonight at 6pm. This is a great class for anyone wanting to get started on writing a memoir or who wants some instruction part way through the process. Topics include: narrative structure, memoir as the story of the transformation of the self, zeroing in on your topic, scene/summary/musing, how to write a scene that sizzles, more.

My 2014/15 University of Washington Professional & Continuing Education memoir certificate course is full, but there are still 5 spots remaining on the wait list. Follow the link here to apply.

I’m teaching a nine-month manuscript at Hugo House in Seattle starting September 17, 2014. This class is for writers who have a start on a memoir and have previous workshop experience. If you want to take this class, I advise you to become a Hugo House member so you can sign up as soon as registration opens August 11th. Enrollment max is 15.

I just finished teaching my first Writing Is My Drink Webinar. It was really fun! If you’re interested in being on the mailing list to hear the announcement for the next Writing Is My Drink webinar, email me at theonestorprods@gmail.com

I will also be teaching a weekend memoir writers intensive in Austin in early January (more details next week).

That’s all for now!

As always, thanks for reading my blog.

Theo

Cora Lucille Lindholm’s 26-Minute Memoir

Hi Readers,

In 2009 I started a blog called 26-Minute Memoir and started publishing 26-Minute Memoirs--stories that describe the essence of your life written in 26 minutes–from students, friends, Facebook and blog followers. In my book Writing Is My Drink: A Writer’s Story of Finding Her Voice (And a Guide to How You Can Too), I encourage readers to write their own 26-Minute Memoir and send it to me, and they have! Below you’ll find Cora Lucille Lindholm’s 26-Minute Memoir. Please feel free to write one of your own. You can find instructions and links to other 26-Minute Memoirs here: http://writingismydrink.com/26-minutes/.

I’m posting the 26-Minute Memoirs sporadically and there’s quite a lag between when they’re sent to me and the date they go up on the blog.

Theo

Cora Lucille Lindholm ‘s 26-Minute Memoir

I find myself looking for something, anything and I have no idea what it is. I am currently in, what I like to call, “the 20’s limbo”. This terribly awkward time in my life where I am done being a student and having such a structured, planned life, but I can’t see past a year in my future. I am graduating a semester early, three and a half years, in December 2014 from The University of Alabama. I am just too organized, anxious, and uptight for my own good.

I have always considered myself entirely right brained; spacey, creative, and always expressing myself in a completely “oh that’s Cora” kind of way. I have this extremely chill vibe, thanks to my Southern California roots and living my life according to a surfer. I relate everything to surfing; every aspect of life, it’s ups and downs like the surging energy of the swells molding into waves and crashing to the calmness of the line up to the danger of falling to the completely intoxicating feel of accomplishing a ride and paddling back up no matter how tired you are.

My dad is a surfer. My mom says he has always been in a constant affair with the ocean. Salt water runs through my family veins.

My mom is exceptional. She has this selfless love and care for her family, I have never seen it in any other human being in my life. When she is mad, furious, and disappointed or happy, enlightened, and the life of the party, it’s all out of love.

My sister, Ida, is the ying to my yang. She has characteristics I have never found in myself: aggressive, assertive, and a confidence so loud it can be all consuming and most importantly inspiring.

My immediate family is my foundation for the life I am living. I am wild in the sense of seeking adventure. I am so anxious I left Portland, Oregon to study in the south (a complete culture shock nonetheless), now I am living in Newcastle, Australia continuing my studies in photography and journalism.

Why?

I put myself in the same situation everywhere I go. I can’t be comfortable in one spot. I am so thirsty I might die. And the worst part is, I don’t know what that thirst is?

 I have always been locked up in my own thoughts. My greatest fault is that lack of ability to ask questions and be wrong. This expectation I put on my self is down right stupid. I watch movies and visualize myself as the leading actor… why can’t I do that? I read a book and say to myself, “I have ideas too, I could write a book”. No joke, I am starting a novel. I have no idea how. I have already wrote 35 pages. I read over it the other day and was like. Why?

SIMPLIFY. I AM SO DESPERATE FOR SIMPLIFYING LIFE. I want everything, therefore it all adds up to nothing.

I took this Honors American Lit course last semester with the most inspiring professor I have ever met, McWaters. We read Walt Whitman and he described the simplicity of life and how everything is beautiful; the dirt beneath our feet. He made me so proud to be an American. He made me want to scream out my thoughts, find this way to communicate with people.

Communicate with people.

Middle school was the hardest experience of my life. There would be groups of friends huddled in different corners of the hallway. I would sweat profusely, wearing multiple sweaters to hide my sweat in fear someone would notice. I couldn’t approach a group. I felt so lost. I needed an invitation. A green light flashing GO. I only saw reject. What if, what if, what if.

FUCK YOU WHAT IF.

Excuse my French, but honestly. Fuck you.

Alabama changed my life forever. I found the inner Cora I have been searching for, knowing she was in there all along. I found a piece of my soul I could let shine. What is that exactly? A confidence with love and compassion for other people, this achievement for communication. I know this is my purpose. To understand people and connect bridges of miscommunication because miscommunication is the one and only root of ALL PROBLEMS.

World War II, Pearl Harbor, black slavery in the South, the American Civil War; every major problem in history. All it takes is the bravery to attempt to understand someone else.

I am so incredibly selfish. I feel like it’s an essential for my age though. It’s all me, me, me. I have to get good grades, what will my career be? I need to play a sport I am good at, I need to get involved, I I I I I I I.

I want to escape myself. Don’t get me wrong, I love who I am. But, we are meant to live this life together. “Intermingling souls” as Walt Whitman likes to put it. What is life if it isn’t shared? As a result, I am a hopeless romantic. I want to share this life with someone. It feels so meaningless.

I am here in Australia. It’s amazing. There is a didgeridoo playing in the courtyard as I type away in the sunlight, burning my toes. I have to wear bug spray everywhere I go.

The raw truth though is it takes me so long to adapt. I am very long term. It’s been a month and I finally feel a little bit comfortable. But I am still so scared. So scared of no meaning and why.

SIMPLIFY. PRAY. LOVE.

And just… ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Just get out there. Stop thinking for five seconds Cora. And live. All I want to do is live.

My essence of life is hugging my dogs, looking into their droopy eyes, and feeling this unconditional love. The kind of love my mom breathes through her core, the kind of love my dad finds within the ocean and the peace of riding a wave, the kind of love Ida screams when she walks into a room and steals the show.

So why do I travel the world to find that something, I ask myself, when I have it at home?

I think it’s to share it, because I simply can’t soak in all the love for myself. I understand me and my family’s love. Now, how do I communicate with others and understand them?

I’ll figure it out. Breath.

 

 

Enrollment Open: Memoir Essentials Webinar with Theo Pauline Nestor

“What happened to the writer is not what matters; what matters is the large sense that the writer is able to make of what happened. For that, the power of a writing imagination is required. As V.S. Pritchett once said of the genre, ‘It’s all in the art. You get no credit for living.’”—Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story

Want to use the rest of your summer getting serious about your memoir?  Enroll in my Memoir Essentials course, a four-class webinar focused on the fundamentals of memoir writing that also offers generative writing tasks designed to take you deeper into your story.  

Course outline:

First meeting: Introduction to the memoir genre; understanding story structure and how to develop your memoir’s narrative arc, narrator transformation and the hero’s journey.


Second meeting: The three narrative modes of memoir: Scene, Summary, and Musing; the essentials of scene writing; the use of time in a memoir; how to write a scene that sizzles.


Third meeting: Developing the emotional preoccupation of your memoir; creating a narrator and a narrative readers care about; developing the universal elements of your story.


Fourth meeting:  Finding your voice as a writer; letting your personality show up on the page; obsessions; special memberships; creating a narrator who serves as your story’s “central consciousness.”

  Enrollment in Memoir Essentials: (4) 1.5 hour-long classes that meet on August 6, 13, 20, and 27th at 6pm PDT. Registration fee:$149.

Payment Plan: Enrollment in Memoir Essentials:  Registration fee of 149 dollars paid in two installments of $74.50, one now and the other on August 6, 2014.

Add-on Consulting: Individual feedback from Theo in a 45-minute phone consultation on a manuscript up to 3000 words in length. 99 dollars.

How does it work? During our meetings, I will be giving lectures on the various memoir topics listed in the course outline above and fielding questions from you on these topics. I will also be guiding you through in-class memoir writing exercises and giving you optional assignments to work on outside of class. Each week you’ll read assigned readings from our texts and short writing assignments.

The logistics: Shortly after you enroll, you’ll be sent a confirmation email with a link to the register on our class’ GoToWebinar page. You will attend our class meetings over the phone or online through GoToWebinar.com. As long as you can dial in, you’ll be able to hear the class discussion. If you are online, you’ll also be able to see me and the class blackboard. If you miss a class (or want to listen to it again), the recordings with audio and the class blackboard will be available for you to listen to at your convenience.

What if I miss a meeting? The day after the class meeting, you’ll receive a link to a recording of the meeting, which you can listen to at anytime.

What if I want to ask a question before I register? Email me at theonestorprods@gmail.com.

 

Theo Pauline Nestor

Who’s the instructor?  Theo Pauline Nestor is the author of Writing Is My Drink: A Writer’s Story of Finding Her Voice (And a Guide to How You Can Too) (Simon & Schuster, 2013) and How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed: A Memoir of Starting Over (Crown, 2008), which was selected by Kirkus Reviews as a 2008 Top Pick for Reading Groups and as a Target “Breakout Book.” An award-winning instructor, Nestor has taught the memoir certificate course for the University of Washington’s Professional & Continuing Education program since 2006 and also teaches at Richard Hugo House in Seattle. Nestor also produces events for writers such as the Wild Mountain Memoir Retreat, Bird by Bird & Beyond, and the Black Mesa Writers’ Intensive, featuring talks by literary leaders such as Anne Lamott, Cheryl Strayed, Julia Cameron, and Natalie Goldberg. She lives in Seattle with her family and their cat, Rory. You can follow her on Facebook here and on Twitter @theopnestor. Read testimonials from coaching clients here.

When do we meet? Our class meetings will be four consecutive Wednesdays: August 6,13, 20 and 27th from 6:00 to 7:30pm PDT.

How do I enroll? To enroll in the course, click on the “Buy Now” button for the course below to pay either through Pay Pal or with a credit card. After your payment has been received, you’ll receive a course confirmation with further instructions. If you prefer to pay by check or money order, email me at theonestorprods@gmail.com.

Can I get a refund?  Yes, until August 7th at 6pm PDT (24 hours after our first meeting), your registration fee is 100 percent refundable. To get a refund, send a request for a refund to theonestorprods@gmail.com. After August 7th, the webinar registration fee becomes non-refundable.

What if I want individual feedback on my work? Click on the “Buy Now” button for individual feedback and pay either through Pay Pal or with a credit card. (If you prefer to pay by check or money order, email me at theonestorprods@gmail.com). You’ll then receive instructions for sending a manuscript (up to 3k words in length) to me either now or during the course. After I’ve read your manuscript, I will meet with you for a 45-minute phone consultation.

Getting Past “Write Every Day” Writing Advice

When I was in my 20s and 30s and wanting to be a writer (and yet not quite, um, writing), the only type of writing advice that seemed to come my way was some version of Hemingway’s credo “You must write everyday no matter what.” That advice never helped me or made me write. I couldn’t force myself to write, and the fact that I couldn’t only made me feel worse about myself. On top of being a dilettante who fancied herself a writer when she barely wrote, now I was undisciplined and weak–the writing equivalent of a person who “can’t stay on a diet.”

And yet deep down, I knew writing was the work I needed to do, and so even though I felt like there was something horribly deficient about me, I started showing up places where I could learn from other writers. I saw a handmade sign in a rural Utah grocery store and the next week I was sitting on the floor of a poet’s desert trailer scribbling on a notepad. I heard about a writer’s retreat in the mountains and there I learned about the triptych. I started to write and to write quite a bit–not because I was meeting a daily quota but because it made me happy. I was excited about the work and didn’t want to stop. I rediscovered the joy of creativity I felt as a child making batiks with my grandmother JoJo, that feeling of discovery and mastery that filled me with focus and purpose.

Of course, this sounds like wildly dangerous talk. If we only wrote when it made us “happy” or “excited,” how would one ever complete the enormous task of writing a novel or even complete enough revisions to make an essay publishable? And it’s true, that there’s a lot of showing up come sleet or hail that has to be done eventually, but I find I’m willing to do that once I’m engaged, and I’ve never become engaged telling myself I should or by forcing myself to write. I know the write-x-number-of-words-a-day edict works for many writers and I think that’s terrific. But I find that for many of us, it just doesn’t.

In fact, I find that many of my students are similar to me; they will do the work that’s needed, once they’re engaged. The focus of my upcoming Writing Is My Drink Webinar is teaching writers how to create the conditions that will allow them to write more and to write with greater focus and vision. Because most of long to get to our real work. We’re not lazy. We just haven’t found the road in yet.

At JoJo’s making batiks in 1968. Clearly, I had to use a lot of discipline to get the work done here.

*The Writing Is My Drink Webinar starts July 10th. Details here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kaela Garvin’s 26-Minute Memoir

 

Hi Readers,

In 2009 I started a blog called 26-Minute Memoir and started publishing 26-Minute Memoirs--stories that describe the essence of your life written in 26 minutes–from students, friends, Facebook and blog followers. In my book Writing Is My Drink: A Writer’s Story of Finding Her Voice (And a Guide to How You Can Too), I encourage readers to write their own 26-Minute Memoir and send it to me, and they have! Over the next few weeks, I will be posting these writings. Below you’ll find Kaela Garvin’s 26-Minute Memoir. Please feel free to write one of your own. You can find instructions and links to other 26-Minute Memoirs here: http://writingismydrink.com/26-minutes/.

Theo

Kaela Garvin’s 26-Minute Memoir

I first started a diary when I was six years old.

It was Christmas.  The diary, a gift from my grandmother, was seafoam green with heavy white pages and a watercolor teddy bear on the front.  The previous night, I had woken up in the early hours of the morning– the light was blue and dusky, or so it looked from my top bunk.  I needed to use the bathroom, and badly, but was afraid Santa would see me and thus leave his job unfinished.  So I waited, watching it grow lighter through the window to my backyard, until I could wait no longer.  And thus, among the first sentences I penned in my first diary is “I pead in my pants.”

They weren’t pants, really; I remember exactly the getup I was sporting–a red plush zip-up pajama robe with ruffled white ribbon trim.  I remember because it looked like a Santa robe, but for girls.

Two years later, when my brothers and I were playing hide and seek, I found a curious roll of wrapping paper.  I was ensconced in our laundry closet.  Our family room, really a converted garage, featured washing machine-sized wooden closets with just enough extra room for one child atop the device.  Perched there, I saw a bin filled with all kinds of wrapping paper– birthday, Elmo, and one roll of red wrapping paper with vintage, Coca-Cola style Santa Clauses printed on it.  Every year since I could remember, our gifts from Santa had come in this wrapping paper.  I felt my face get hot and my heart start to quicken.  I called my middle brother, Jackie, then six years old, to see the discovery.  We both knew what it meant–we had been duped.  Years of writing to Santa, mailing the letters, attempting to be good– down the drain.  The cookies we’d left him?  He hadn’t gotten them.  The carrots we’d left out? Someone other than Rudolph had chomped on them.

I remember one time my brother had a Batman-themed birthday party in the backyard.  My parents built an entire Gotham City out of discarded refrigerator boxes, and our two uncles pretended to be the Joker and the Riddler, fugitives of crime.  We, the party guests, were in charge of finding and apprehending them.  As I recall, one had hidden in the shower.  We moved from that house when I was eleven years old, just entering adolescence, to a slightly larger house just a few blocks away.  I remember, prior to our move, Mom stopped into  neighborhood Open Houses quite frequently “just to look around.”  My brothers and I scootered along on our Razors behind our parents one Sunday to see the whitewashed, peak-roofed house that we didn’t know was to become our home.  We were devastated when they told us.  We just planted that apple tree in the front yard, we wailed, and we’ll never get to have the apples.  My parents rented out that house, installing a plush new carpet in the downstairs family room, powder blue.  We walked barefoot on it before the new tenants moved in.  It was nicer than anything we’d had when we lived there.

I never knew what I wanted the rest of my life to look like.  That’s not true– I did know what I wanted it to look like, but I dreamed too big.  I dreamed so big that I find my current life at twenty-three a sad mess of unfulfilled dreams.  I thought I’d be an actress. I thought I’d be on Broadway. I had no concept of the actuality of things, of how hard it is to make rent and support a different lifestyle, so I dreamed as big as I could.  And even now, even when I don’t want those things anymore, I am lost.  Even my current dreams are too big.  I want a washing machine in my house, and a dishwasher. I want a dog or a kitten and someone to share him with.  I want to change the world, but I never want to get out of bed.

Sign Up for the Writing Is My Drink Webinar!

Hi Readers,

This July I’m teaching a webinar based on the book Writing Is My Drink: A Writer’s Story of Finding Her Voice (And a Guide to How You Can Too), and I’d love for you to join me. In Writing Is My Drink, I tell my story of coming into my voice as a writer because I believe that any story of a one person’s journey from Can’t to Can contains within it the story of pretty much everyone’s path from No to Yes. The circumstances may differ from person to person, but each of us who has felt both simultaneously compelled to express and daunted by the task has faced the same challenges, the same doubts, the same fears.

Similarly, there are common paths for finding the way out of doubt and into your voice. In the four-week Writing Is My Drink webinar, I will walk you through the process of discovering your own true material and momentum as a writer.This is not a technical class about how to write a memoir or a novel; this is a class about how to get past the fear and the doubt and get to what I call “your real writing,” the real work you know you need to do. No previous writing experience is required.

The webinar will focus on finding your work’s (sometimes hidden) themes, discovering your aesthetic as a reader and a writer, and understanding what inspires you and learning how to tap into that inspiration so that your work is not just functionally sound but also representative of your vision and mission as a writer. We will also be discussing how to recognize and address the doubts that can stop us from writing. The webinar will offer many opportunities to do short in-class writing assignments and very short homework assignments designed to bring you into “your real writing,” the work that quietly and sometimes not-so-quietly nags at you until you do it.  By the way, I’m not a fan of writing exercises for the sake of writing exercises. The webinar’s activities are designed with the idea in mind that each participant should find at least a few that morph into larger pieces of writing that feel authentic and powerful to both the writer and readers.

The last half hour of each 1.5 hour long class session will be used for Q and A, in which students can ask me any question they like about writing.

Classes will be held on four Thursday evenings at 6pm to 7:30pm Pacific Time, starting July 10th (July 10, 17, 24 and 31). The classes will be held via GotoMeeting.com, allowing you to both see and hear me as well as the other students. (It’s actually very easy to use and you participate in the class even if you don’t have a webcam). All classes will be recorded, so if you miss a class, you’ll be able to listen to the audio portion of it at your convenience. You can attend the classes from anywhere you can call in or get online. All enrolled students also receive a 30-minute private coaching call with me.

After you’ve paid for the class using Pay Pal or credit card, you will receive a confirmation email from me and instructions for entering the first class on July 10th and setting up your included one-on-one coaching appointment.  Cost for the four classes and 30-minute coaching session: $145. Questions? Email me at theonestorprods@gmail.com.

Registration fees are 100 percent refundable until July 10, 2014.  From July 10-17, 2014, registration fees will be 80 percent refundable. After July 17, 2014, registration fees will not be refundable.

$145.00

Writing Is My Drink Webinar registration:(4) 1.5 hour-long classes and (1) 30-minute coaching call with Theo Pauline Nestor.

 

Optional: Add a one-hour coaching session with Theo Pauline Nestor for 99 dollars to be used anytime before 9/15/14 (a 30-minute coaching session is included with the webinar):  

 

Interested in real life Writing Is My Drink classes? Email me at theonestorprods@gmail.com. I’m planning on teaching one-day Writing Is My Drink intensives in various U.S. locations beginning this fall.

Theo Pauline Nestor is the author of Writing Is My Drink: A Writer’s Story of Finding Her Voice (And a Guide to How You Can Too) (Simon & Schuster, 2013) and How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed: A Memoir of Starting Over (Crown, 2008), which was selected by Kirkus Reviews as a 2008 Top Pick for Reading Groups and as a Target “Breakout Book.” An award-winning instructor, Nestor has taught the memoir certificate course for the University of Washington’s Professional & Continuing Education program since 2006 and also teaches at Richard Hugo House in Seattle. Nestor also produces events for writers such as the Wild Mountain Memoir Retreat, Bird by Bird & Beyond, and the Black Mesa Writers’ Intensive, featuring talks by literary leaders such as Anne Lamott, Cheryl Strayed, Julia Cameron, and Natalie Goldberg. She lives in Seattle with her family and their cat, Rory. You can follow her on Facebook here and on Twitter @theopnestor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sign Up for the Writing Is My Drink Teleseminar!

Hi Readers,

This July I’m teaching a teleseminar based on the book Writing Is My Drink: A Writer’s Story of Finding Her Voice (And a Guide to How You Can Too), and I’d love for you to join me. In Writing Is My Drink, I tell my story of coming into my voice as a writer because I believe that any story of a one person’s journey from Can’t to Can contains within it the story of pretty much everyone’s path from No to Yes. The circumstances may differ from person to person, but each of us who has felt both simultaneously compelled to express and daunted by the task has faced the same challenges, the same doubts, the same fears.

Similarly, there are common paths for finding the way out of doubt and into your voice. In the four-week Writing Is My Drink teleseminar, I will walk you through the process of discovering your own true material and momentum as a writer.This is not a technical class about how to write a memoir or a novel; this is a class about how to get past the fear and the doubt and get to what I call “your real writing,” the real work you know you need to do. No previous writing experience is required. I will be talking about what I’ve learned about getting over yourself and getting to your real writing and I will be guiding you through prompts and activities that lead to “real writing” (my students tell me they do!). The last half hour of each class session will be used for Q and A, in which students can ask me any question they like about writing.

Classes will be held on four Thursday evenings at 6pm to 7:30pm Pacific Time, starting July 10th (July 10, 17, 24 and 31). The classes will be held via GotoMeeting.com, allowing you to both see and hear me as well as the other students. (It’s actually very easy to use and you participate in the class even if you don’t have a webcam). All classes will be recorded, so if you miss a class, you’ll be able to listen to the audio portion of it at your convenience. You can attend the classes from anywhere you can call in or get online. All enrolled students also receive a 30-minute private coaching call with me.

After you’ve paid for the class using Pay Pal or credit card, you will receive a confirmation email from me and instructions for entering the first class on July 10th and setting up your included one-on-one coaching appointment.  Cost for the four classes and 30-minute coaching session: $145 dollars. Questions? Email me at theonestorprods@gmail.com.

Registration fees are 100 percent refundable until July 10, 2014.  From July 10-17, 2014, registration fees will be 80 percent refundable. After July 17, 2014, registration fees will be nonrefundable.

$145.00

Writing Is My Drink Teleseminar registration:(4) 1.5 hour-long classes and (1) 30-minute coaching call with Theo Pauline Nestor.

$72.50 now and the balance July 10th.

Payment plan for Writing Is My Drink Teleseminar registration: Same class and coaching call as outlined above paid in two installments. One payment of 72.50 paid now and the other paid on July 10, 2014.

 

 Interested in more real life Writing Is My Drink classes? Email me at theonestorprods@gmail.com. I’m planning on teaching one-day Writing Is My Drink intensives in various U.S. locations beginning this fall.

Theo Pauline Nestor is the author of Writing Is My Drink: A Writer’s Story of Finding Her Voice (And a Guide to How You Can Too) (Simon & Schuster, 2013) and How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed: A Memoir of Starting Over (Crown, 2008), which was selected by Kirkus Reviews as a 2008 Top Pick for Reading Groups and as a Target “Breakout Book.” An award-winning instructor, Nestor has taught the memoir certificate course for the University of Washington’s Professional & Continuing Education program since 2006 and also teaches at Richard Hugo House in Seattle. Nestor also produces events for writers such as the Wild Mountain Memoir Retreat, Bird by Bird & Beyond, and the Black Mesa Writers’ Intensive, featuring talks by literary leaders such as Anne Lamott, Cheryl Strayed, Julia Cameron, and Natalie Goldberg. She lives in Seattle with her family and their cat, Rory. You can follow her on Facebook here and Twitter @theopnestor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Try This: Create a Timeline of Your Creative History

Partial image of timeline. Download “overview” below to see entire timeline.

Hi Readers,

At the end of each chapter of Writing Is My Drink: A Writer’s Story of Finding Her Voice (And a Guide to How You Can Too), I included “Try This” activities designed to help lead you into your voice and what I refer to as your true material. I thought from time to time, I’d share ones here that didn’t make it into the book…mostly because I hadn’t thought of them yet.

As I’ve written previously, I got a bit stalled out right after I signed the book contract for DRINK (Note to self: Count on this–it’s happened twice. It will, no doubt, happen again). And in my floundering and “procrastinating,” I turned to drawing out characters from the book and trying to create visual representations of the book. This was not, as I feared at the time, a “waste of time.” This was actually working although it did not look like work. My younger daughter–thirteen at the time–would walk by my room, glance at me sitting on the bed with my sketch pad and markers, and say things like, “Aren’t you supposed to be writing??”

One of the “non-working”activities I did with my sketchbook at that time was to draw a timeline of the story of my coming into myself as a writer. Due to the limitations of my technological abilities and that of my scanner, I am not able to make a photo of the entire timeline (see partial image above), but you can see the full image here in this PDF file. Click on the word “overview” to download: overview. Please note: I made this at the time not thinking anyone else would ever see it, which is often the secret to how you create something helpful–although now I’d like to make it prettier for you but then some of the honesty of the example would be lost.

I’m sharing this timeline as an example of the Try This activity that you can do today or another day. Do it today!

Try This: Create a Timeline

1. Create a visual timeline of the story of your coming into yourself as a writer or creative person.

or

2. Create a visual timeline of a book or story you’re writing right now or want to write.

Hey, if you like your results, please feel free to share an image with me at theonestorprods@gmail.com.

Have fun!

Theo

 

 

 

 

 

 

Free Coaching Session for the Next 3 Doe Bay Retreat Signups!

Just about a month until my writers’ retreat at Doe Bay on Orcas Island, and I’m giving away one-hour writing coaching sessions to the next three signups! (I’ll announce it here on this post when the three signups are gone). The retreat will be four days of writing and learning at the one-of-a-kind Doe Bay Resort and Retreat. I’ll be teaching daily classes in memoir writing, and Nicole Hardy and Natalie Singer will drop by to teach guest classes. There will be great food, good company, and the beautiful long light of the days approaching the summer solstice at the 49th Parallel. Opportunities for kayaking, yoga, hiking, and hanging out in the hot tub too. Max. enrollment 20. Learn more and register for the retreat here: http://writingismydrink.com/2014/02/11/doe-bay-work-on-that-book-writers-retreat/

Learn more about my coaching here: http://writingismydrink.com/coaching/.

Questions? Email me at theonestorprods@gmail.com

Cheers!

Theo