San Diego Events for Writers September 2015

Blogging 101: In-Person at San Diego Writers, Ink    

As part of San Diego Writers, Ink, “Fall for Writing” Weekend Conference, I’ll be teaching Beginning Blogging on Saturday, September 12, 2015 from 11 am to 12:45. Today is the last day to take advantage of 10 sessions for $120 member/$140 non-member or purchase each session for $20 member/$25 non-member if you do it before the deadline on Thursday (today). 

Classes offered over the weekend include:

Blogging 101 with Tania Pryputniewicz
Making Memorable Characters with Lisa Kessler
Creative Writing with Jenny Lane
Want to be a freelance writer? with Kevin Brass
Prose Poetry with Ron Salisbury
Brainstorming with Kim Keeline
Scrivener with Kim Keeline
Memoir Structure with Marni Freedman
Scene with Mark O'Bannon
Goal Setting for Writers with Jill G. Hall
Writing Memory with Judy Reeves

Here is the course description for my Saturday workshop:

Blogging 101: It seems everyone has a blog nowadays. It is a prime way for people to share their ideas. And whether you simply want to write a blog or use it to promote your new book, you need to plan how to do it. More than half the blogs that are started are abandoned within a year. Don’t be a statistic. This intro class will help walk you through the steps of launching a blog and keeping it for the long haul. Social media and promotion will also be touched upon.

I also invite any of my former students to come and write with us—I’ll be passing out my usual worksheets but I’ll have some new ones for you. We will write from new prompts in the hat! As you know, the hat always comes to class!

Here is the link for more information and to register for the Fall for Writing Conference.

Creative and Professional Excellence: A Radical Reframe with Jeffrey Davis

Also coming up in late September, Jeffrey Davis of ArtMark will be coming to give an interactive talk as part of the Tracking Wonder Tour on Thursday, September 24 from 6:30-9:30 p.m. at San Diego Writers, Ink at Liberty Station. You may reacall I blogged for a bit as part of an amazing pack of creatives Jeffrey had assembled for us last December. I am so thrilled to have a chance to meet him in person and to hear him speak; he’s changed the way I think about the possibilities for transforming my relationship to my own business artistry. Here’s a link to more information regarding the Tracking Wonder San Diego Tour evening, Creative and Professional Excellence: A Radical Reframe on eventbrite; cost to register for the evening is $20.

Phoenix Seahorse by  Tania Pryputniewicz

For a more personal look at the kind of work Jeffrey inspires, here are links to the posts I wrote as part of Quest 2015; you'll find links to other creatives I met and have come to love at the bottom of these posts: 


Stopping to Start

Blogging and the Shadow Self

Phoenix Eggs in the House of My Father 

A Pilgrim Path and Mentor Dolls 

A Nightmare, A Sky Boat and Serendipity

A Phoenix Seahorse and a Heart Door 

Trusting the Noir Fairytale

Shadow Bags and Joan Swift's Dark Path of Our Names.

Photo by Robyn Beattie

Wheel of Archetypal Selves: Moon to Universe: On-line with Story Circle Network

I’ve had a beautiful year of deepening my relationship to the Tarot alongside my students. My upcoming Tarot/writing course starts on September 21, 2015 and covers the last four Major Arcana cards from the Moon to the Universe. No prior experience with the Tarot necessary; all level of writer welcome. Do join us! Full course description here at Story Circle Network; or you can access the course description here on my website along with links to writing I’ve posted before in relation to the Tarot.

Mother Daughter Writing Exercise and Call for Guest Posts

Photo Robyn Beattie

I have more to say about August’s trip to Ghost Ranch; I’m always grateful for the two-year gap between A Room of Her Own Foundation Retreats. It takes that long and longer to reap the harvest. Here’s a post about the retreat and how Maxine Hong Kingston’s book, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, inspired a writing exercise about the Secrets between Mothers and Daughters. I hope you’ll feel inspired to write in response to the exercise; we are also looking for guestposts generated by the exercise at Mother Writer Mentor.

Tarot for Two: July and August Cards of the Month

Mary and I continue to co-blog at Tarot for Two. July brought us the Chariot and the Prince of Swords respectively.

Photo by Robyn Beattie

Mary on the Chariot:

…I’m very happy in general that my card of the month was the Chariot—it’s saying something good, is pretty much all I’ve managed to take from it in my thinking so far.  Which is often the main thing I look for when I pull a card—is it a good card, or is it a bad card or a boring doesn’t-say-much-of-anything-good-or-bad card?...

Tania on the Prince of Swords:

…We don’t see the rider’s eyes, but the horse’s are blue, wide open. His muzzle and profile line meld into front hoove line. Four propellers, transparent as dragonfly wings, spin on top of the knight’s helmet and are labeled North, South, East, and West. Where is this duo headed with such purposeful haste?

Read the Rest of The Chariot and the Knight of Swords.

August’s card of the month: The Death Card. Period. For both of us:

Tania on the Death Card:

…So Mary and I both pulled the Death card in August as our card of the month. That’s never happened—pulling the same exact card--in the three years we’ve been on this project. And wouldn’t you know, it’s the juggernaut of cards, the King of Kings, the Arcanum Alejandro Jodoroswky and Marianne Costa in The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards call the Nameless One and Lady Frieda Harris paints with vibrancy, such gleeful fervor emanating from her Thoth deck’s dancing skeleton with his black scythe and black bucket helmet tilted askew.

Mary on the Death Card:

…I figured that since the cards gave both Tania and me Death by way of playing a little joke on us, I probably wouldn’t have much that related to it all month.  But I was wrong.  I’ve never had a card of the month that talked to me as much as Death did this past month.  The whole month was like one big ending/cleansing/cleaning up of the past and there was some real death in it too. 

Read the Rest of The Death Card and the Death Card.

My thanks to Robyn Beattie for her beautiful photos and artwork, as always, my gratitude for her collaboration.

Phoenix Eggs, Beginning Blogging and The Wheel of Tarot's Archetypal Selves

Phoenix Egg Doodle

I’m always looking for ways to grow as a blogger, which in addition to my passion for the form, is the main reason I teach blogging.

To that end, I’ve joined the Tracking Wonder #Quest2015, a hands-on virtual journey structured so creatives meet online in public and private forums under the stewardship of Jeffrey Davis to consider prompts by twelve visionaries during the month of December.  Quest questions urge us to ruminate intensely on goals, intentions, hidden saboteurs, and life-dreams in order to manifest a potent 2015. Many of us are writing and posting our answers to our blogs. And doodling! Phoenix Egg 3 is part of a new habit I've committed to daily: a morning color doodle meditation focused on Sacred Joy (I'm posting to a board on Pinterest)...thanks to one of the prompts I'll describe below. 

I joined #Quest2015 mid-stream, so expect me to still be considering some of December’s questions in the coming months. Here is a list to the three posts I've been able to formulate at Transformative Blogging; at each post's end, you’ll find links to the posts of fellow questers, many whom are formulating wildly fertile answers across mediums from visual art to music to quilting to written and recorded reverie:

Vine O Joy Doodle

On Stopping: Stopping to Start, based on the following prompt: We often think too much about adding new things, when the source of a lot of our growth is eliminating old things. What do you need to STOP doing in 2015? And what do you need to do to make that STOPPING more than an intention?—Charlie Gilkey of Productive Flourishing and best-selling author of The Small Business Life Cycle.

On our Dark Side: Blogging and The Shadow Self, based on the following prompt: Which emotions do you feel most guilty about having? Afraid that others might find out? How could you spend this year trying to be open to the emotional window that allows you to be courageous? It rarely feels good right before we do something courageous, but these moments are the most meaningful and treasured. Todd Kashdan (author of The Upside of Your Dark Side: Why being your whole self – not just your good self – drives success and fulfillment(Hudson Street Press) with Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener as well as Curious? Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life (Harper Collins).

Photo by Robyn Beattie

On Sacred Joy: Phoenix Eggs in the House of My Father, based on the following prompt: How could you make moments of joy a sacred priority in 2015?
What forms will such moments take?
Doodle, draw, photograph, or write your way into these questions.. –Sunni Brown of the TED Talk “Doodlers Unite!” and leader of The Doodle Revolution – a global campaign for visual literacy and also the name of her new book. Sunni is also the author of Gamestorming.

I also couldn't refrain from posting this new beautiful image by Robyn Beattie, my poetry movie collaborator, that she sent me after reading that post. To me, this image looks like a liquid rendition of the inside of a phoenix egg. The art braid continues....

November Butterfly Update:

Photo Robyn Beattie, Cover Design Don Mitchell

I have taken a poetry prompt break to play on #Quest 2015, but you can find links to all eleven of the prompts written for the iconic women in section one of November Butterfly (just released this November, 2014, by Saddle Road Press) here under my About page. I will resume writing prompts in the new year.

And please do continue to check my Events page for updates and information about the writing workshops and readings I’ll be doing on book tour in 2015 in support of this first poetry book. We are working on an event in March 2015 for which we show a handful of our poetry movies at the invitation of Sonoma County’s Occidental Center for the Arts in Northern California. Robyn Beattie and I will be inviting the artists featured in the poetry movies to bring their corresponding physical artworks to the event that night to display. It should be an amazing celebration of collaboration. As I mentioned earlier, check my Events page to stay in touch or to suggest venues. I’d love to hear from you.

January Classes

Photo Robyn Beattie

Beginning Blogging in person through San Diego Writers, Ink

I am excited to be offering an ongoing series--Beginning to Advanced Blogging--over the course of the year in 2015 (in six week installments); should you sign up, know this is a marvelous way to be part of an ongoing trajectory towards your blogging goals for inspiration, support, and new ideas over the course of 2015.

This first course in January offers beginning bloggers the chance to create material to launch a blog or to recalibrate an existing blog through completing a series of writing exercises and inventories. We look at blog platforms and blog technique; we will also preview the Web for examples. We brainstorm together, create content, discuss image use, and refer to a checklist towards blog launch. Students will emerge with sample posts and a map in hand for how to proceed in the future.

Course runs Tuesday nights, 6:30-8:30 p.m. January 13-February 17. Cost is $180 for members of SDWI and $210 for non-members. No prior blogging experience necessary.

For full course description and to sign up, visit Beginning Blogging

 

Luna on the Wheel

Wheel of Archetypal Selves: Fool to Hierophant

This is online class is offered through Story Circle Network. Using the Major Arcana as a focal point, we make connections to the archetypes and our past and current experiences. In turn, we mine these writings and others inspired by the imagery of the Tarot to help revise existing writing projects or inspire new ones.

We will focus, one card per week, on the first six cards that make up the Major Arcana progression (from the Fool to the Hierophant), connecting our own past experiences to aspects of each archetype as well as answering weekly questions based on definitions assigned the cards by Tarot scholars. We will also read excerpts of published work based on the Tarot. Students will keep a Tarot Journal for the duration of the course, noting any experiential synchronicities occurring during the week in relation to the cards under study.

Course runs January 12-February 23, 2015. Cost is $192 for Story Circle Network Members and $240 for non-members. All level of writer welcome; no prior experience working with the Tarot necessary.

For full course description and to sign up: Wheel of Archetypal Selves

T's sand dollars

New Perhaps, Maybe with Liz Brennan: Evolution

Liz and I continue to play at Perhaps, Maybe with prose poetry. Perhaps this will be the year you write her a Perhaps of your own, or take her up an responding with a Maybe to her Perhaps--do contact her if you’d like to play; she is always looking for collaborators. Here is a teaser from each paragraph of our latest collaboration:

Perhaps the bicycle, perched in evolution between horse and car, allows a girl the modest means to ride…

Maybe the bicycle wheels, larger than dinnerplates, spin off wordlessly into the air as they continue to evolve…

Read the rest of Evolution here.

I hope this time of year affords you some moments of peace, stillness, and joy with the family of your choosing...I am feeling blessed and grateful to have so many portals of communication across which to play. Bless you for listening and for engaging with me here at Feral Mom, Feral Writer in 2014.