Living The Comma #2

[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!

Melanie Faith

Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.

Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.

The Society of Professional Journalists

In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.

I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.

Maxine Greene

Philosopher and Education Scholar

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Giving. Shitty First Drafts. Anam Cara.

Dear Writing Friends,

Thank you for a wonderful November writing group yesterday. Sharing presence and words always lifts my spirits and feeds my imagination. I truly hope it does the same for you. Let’s head into this month — and season — feeling stronger and lighter knowing we walk (and write) together.

In the hope of continuing to build our community between our face-to-face gatherings — and taking writerly-steps together along the way — I have gathered a writing prompt from Behida Dolić, writerly advice from Maria Popova (distilling Lamott’s challenge to write Shitty First Drafts), words of wisdom from John O’Donohue, and a poem from Joy Harjo. (A poem we wrote about yesterday.)

Feel free to share responses to the writing prompt, thoughts about the advice and wisdom offered, and/or pieces of your work that you would like us to look at, and/or other thoughts that might be swirling around as we pay attention and seek what we love in common (thank you for that concept Ross Gay) on my newsletter.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

From the heart of the comma.

Katie

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