Thursdays
April 10-May 22: Beginning Blogging, Coronado Adult Education:
I’m looking for two more San
Diego area or Coronado bloggers to round out my beginning blogging class
through Coronado Adult Education. The course runs on Thursday evenings from
6:00-8:00 p.m. starting April 10th through May 22nd (7 weeks) for $77 or $69
for Sr. To register, visit Coronado Adult Education's Website.
Course description:
This
course 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
also preview the Web for examples. We 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. While students may
bring laptops or iPads to class, I welcome writers and bloggers at all stages
of comfort level with technology, so please bring a notebook and pencil to each
class (laptop/ipad not required).
Saturday, April 12: Poetry Play: A Tour of
the Forms
I’ll also be braving it
across the blue bridge for my first time teaching for San Diego Writers, Ink—this
4 hour workshop is slated for Saturday April 12 and runs $60 for SDWI members and
$72 for non-members. I hope you’ll come out for a wild ride through as many
forms as we can get to during our workshop. To register, visit San Diego Writers, Ink. Course description:
Do
you haiku? Every written a haibun, aubade, or epistolary poem? Want to try your
hand at a sestina, sonnet, or villanelle? During this four-hour workshop we
will fearlessly and playfully write our way towards working drafts of as many
of the forms as we can.
We’ll
start with the deceptively simple but evocative gem of haiku. Then we’ll
breathe into the slightly pithier prose lead required of the haibun with its
haiku chaser. Next up: dawn songs, or aubades, for a love lost or left at
sunrise. And then, hearts astir, we turn to the letter form: if you could write
a letter to anyone, placed at any juncture in time, who would you address?
The
last three of our forms—sestina, sonnet, and villanelle—present challenges of
rhyme and word repetition and more, but fear not: we will map out a potential
course for poems you’ll write later on your own. Bring a notebook and pen;
writers across the spectrum welcome, including absolute beginners. While I will
provide examples of each form, please feel free to bring in favorite poems
written in these forms to share with the group. Come out and play!
A Writing Exercise for You to Try:
Earth, Air, Fire and Water: Using the Tarot to Inspire Your Writing Practice is a guest post I wrote for Jan Marquet, a colleague at Story Circle
Network, live at “Free the Pen.” It is a gentle way to begin to understand the structure that most Tarot Decks use at their basis for the Minor Mentors. This exercise encourages us to start with our own experience of the four elements before turning to the cards for depictions of how our experiences of the elements might manifest.
Though we relocated to San Diego just over a year now,
I’ve only recently discovered San Diego Writers, Ink, located just off Pacific
Highway at NTC Liberty Station. I seem to learn the city best by showing out-of-towners around, this week my sister
(I’m overjoyed to spend time with her). A writer herself, my sister willingly came
with me to a Brown Bag session for a wonderful hour of on-the-spot writing at
the Ink Spot. Here we are, pictured in front of the Alfonso Arambula Archangel
statue gracing the courtyard below. 
Next stop for two sisters on a sunny San Diego
afternoon outing before kid pick-up: the exquisite Chi Chocolat coffee shop located just below Inspiration gallery and the Ink Spot writing room. We
sampled (ok, devoured) our truffles: purple dragonflies featured a lavender flavored
interior, green owls (see the “hoot” spelled out? downright adorable)
featured mint, the nova oval a Mexican spice interior, and last, pretty much
the ace for us: the 1 of diamonds with
its soft cardamom dark chocolate filling. We sat admiring a beautiful wooden chess set at
the table next to us perched waiting for players and savored our coffee,
truffles, and memories of Narnia prompted by the lantern gracing our table.
I'm re-reading The Chronicles of Narnia to my youngest
son from an original set of volumes that belonged to my grandmother. Coincidentally earlier this month, while cruising
the library for poetry volumes, I discovered The Magician’s Book, A Skeptics Adventures in Narnia by Laura Miller. I skimmed the book, intrigued, but a bit hesitant to
quell the joy of rekindling childhood memories by analyzing the methods or
intentions of C.S. Lewis. A quote from Miller's website about The Magician's Book reads: 
Here’s a link to a CNN blogpost about the writer responsible for throwing out the
idea, Alexander Chee, and the first writer responsible for tweeting about
Alexander’s idea (thus garnering Amtrak’s attention and completing the first successful
unofficial residency): Amtrak's Free Residency. I even opened an Instagram account (I imagine chosen writers will be tweeting, facebooking, and instagramming their way across the country). With less than two minutes on Instagram, my daughter swapped out my profile photo in favor of the one with the cat riding on my shoulder...how can she already have my password?
