A book is never done; it just goes to print. People ask me all the time how I know when my books are done. I don’t believe any piece of writing is ever really done. I’ve participated in readings where authors were sitting backstage revising their published work before they read it. At a certain [...]
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On Writing Well
To write well, read everything. Read cereal boxes, classic literature, billboards, contemporary fiction, the tattoo on the arm of the woman sitting beside you at the dog races. Read calendars, thesauruses, dictionaries, encyclopedias, car-repair manuals, climbing and hiking guides to the Welsh backcountry. Read comics, neon signs, advertising on balloons, graffiti on trains and water [...]
On Writers Groups
This essay was written in 2004, on the occasion of the Slow Sand Writers Society 10th anniversary. Starting a writers group is like your first kiss or your first skydive. It’s exciting and a bit reckless. It’s also scary, putting yourself out there to fail, or succeed. When my writers group got together, I was [...]
Our story
When our writers’ group formed in 1994, most of us were making our livings doing commercial writing, editing, and teaching. Yet we all yearned to do more creative work. One of our founding members, Marilyn Colter, was writing a manual about slow sand filtration systems. We saw a metaphoric connection between water filtering through sand [...]
Writers Group Tips
So you want to start a writers group? Here are issues to consider. (If you live in Northern Colorado and want to join our group, read this.) Membership Decide on a comfortable number of members, typically between five to twenty-five members. The Slow Sand way: We have found that eight to ten is a good [...]
