I honor story. I honor the importance of craft. I imagine that if you have found your way to Breakthrough Writing, you are discouraged or dissatisfied with how you honor your story, your craft – or both. Together, we can bring you home to your writing. You’ll find no gimmicks here, no cute buzz words, no guarantees. You will find support in rediscovering the ancient art of storytelling, and help with the craft of bringing your stories into their finest shape.

I’ve been mentoring writers one-on-one for the last twenty-five years, working with fiction, non-fiction, creative non-fiction and memoir. I teach writing at universities and colleges, for writing conferences and book festivals and in private workshops and circles.

I bring to my students not just thirty years of writing personally and professionally, but a solid grounding in the deeper traps and fears that stop us from our creativity. I worked as a counselor for fifteen years, but more importantly I live with an addictive personality and a penchant for obsession – both challenges have hurt my writing, served it and taught me much. I also raised three children by myself. My professional writing had to wait. I doubt there is much of what a writer goes through to get themselves firmly in their writing chair that I haven’t felt.

I’ve written seven nationally published books, ten years of NPR commentaries, hundreds of magazine articles and columns, filled dozens of journals with words – and spent years not writing. Those droughts felt like not being fully alive. I know that something crucial is missing.

If you’ve come here because you know there is something missing in your life, it may be finding the time to write. Many of us have taken on demanding careers, demanding partners, demanding anything so that we’ll be too busy to write. And we would rather talk about writing, read books about how to write, go to therapy to unblock our writing, listen to writers tell us how to write, than sit down and write. You can begin here and now to break that cycle.

A prompt: We are in relationship with our writing as we are in relationship with our lives.Grab a pen or put your hands on the computer keys and write for ten solid minutes from that prompt – no stopping. If what you discover brings you closer to your writing, contact me and we will take you further into your work. To receive free weekly writing tips, craft exercises and prompts, subscribe to Breakthrough Writing.