Site availability (due to storm)

Updated 11/2/12: Thanks to the amazing efforts of the dedicated employees of Squarespace (and others), there has been no downtime for Squarespace-hosted sites. These amazing efforts have included hauling fuel up 17 flights of stairs in the dark to keep the generators going. (You can read the surreal status updates about the unfolding drama here: www.status.squarespace.com.) I've always loved working with Squarespace, and this is just one more reason to adore them. Their customer service is the best I've ever seen, and I felt that way before they started hauling around containers of fuel in a bucket brigade. I'm even more smitten with the company and its people now. Thank you, Squarespace, for being amazing. Keeping my website up probably wouldn't have been at the top of my own priority list had I just experienced a huge natural disaster. The fact that you cared enough about your customers to make it your priority stuns me in the best way. May all your people be safe, warm, and well-cared for during this intense time.

My little corner of the world here in southwestern Pennsylvania escaped the worst of the so-called Frankenstorm with just some wet (and now cold) weather. We never lost power, the big tree in the backyard didn't blow over onto the house, our water supply is fine, and neither the basement nor the garage flooded as I'd feared they might. I'm thankful, but I'm also thinking of all of you who faced the brunt of the storm and are dealing with the devastation.

A technical note: This website is hosted by Squarespace, which has their offices in Manhattan (which is, as you probably know, flooded). They've notified customers that they're going to lose backup power at some point soon, which will mean my site will be offline until they can restore it. If you're reading this in your RSS feed and had hoped to register for Alchemy: The Art & Craft of Writing this week, please email me (jennifer[at]thewordcellar[dot]com) and I can register you manually. I can also send you course info or answer any questions. The course started on Monday, but you can easily join us any time this week. The course website is not hosted on Squarespace, so I don't anticipate any interruptions over there.

But most importantly, may you be safe, comforted, and well, wherever you are.

The world is everywhere whispering essays

The world is everywhere whispering essays, and one need only be the world's amanuensis.

~Alexander Smith, "Of the writing of essays"

{amanuensis: one employed to write from dictation or to copy manuscript (www.m-w.com)}

Final Session of Alchemy (and a 50-hour sale!)

{Save a whopping $40 on course registration with the code TRANSFORM. Details below.}

A little over two years ago I launched my first online course, Alchemy: The Art & Craft of Writing. Since then, I added two additional courses (and an ebook) to the Alchemy line-up (Alchemy Daily and Alchemy Inspiration: Start Writing). It's been a really good run, especially since I had no idea -- back when I launched the first course -- how many people would sign-up.

I knew I'd created great material by bundling together the techniques, resources, and inspiration that had dramatically changed my own writing. I was excited to share all of that with you, and I had a fairly good idea that some of you were looking for such a thing -- I just had no idea if it would take off! Ten course sessions, one ebook, and hundreds of students later, I'm thrilled to look back and know that you were pickin' up what I was layin' down.

The next -- and final -- session of Alchemy: The Art & Craft of Writing starts next Monday (Oct. 29). This will be the last time I offer this course online for the foreseeable future, quite possibly forever. I have no plans to run it again, even though I still love the content and believe in its power to help people take their writing deeper and wider than ever before. But it's time to make way for some exciting new things to be born. (Over the next few months I'll be diving into a process of soul searching, creative dreaming, and business brainstorming, sussing out what's calling to me and then working to make those big ideas happen. No promises yet, but I think I can see some some new courses, a book or two, and maybe even some photo+words combos shimmering on the horizon.) 

If you've been thinking about signing-up for Alchemy: The Art & Craft of Writing and haven't done so yet, now's the time. Class starts October 29 and runs through December 14. This session includes six full weeks of course content, plus one "open" week in the middle (as a sort of mid-semester break) during the week of U.S. Thanksgiving. You'll receive an ebook (100+ pages!) of the lessons, inspiration, and writing prompts and exercises. You'll also get my in-depth feedback on up to 500 words of your writing.

Alchemy is the process of transforming something common into something special. In the Alchemy e-course, we transform words (common enough things) into your stories (special things, indeed). You can read all about the course over here. (Make sure you check out the fabulous guests who will be sharing their wisdom and inspiration with us. I'm honored to bring you interviews and guest posts from Brené Brown, Marianne Elliott,  Liz Lamoreux, Sue William Silverman, Susan G. Wooldridge, and Meredith Winn.)

--->To celebrate this final session of Alchemy, I'm offering a 50-hour sale (one hour for every month since I first announced Alchemy). The sale officially* starts tonight at 9:59 p.m. (ET) and ends Friday (Oct. 26) at 11:59 p.m. (ET). Use code TRANSFORM to save $40 on the course!

You get all of the following for just $169 $129: 

• Six weeks of in-depth writing instruction
• 12+ core writing lessons (to get you started)
• 6+ bonus lessons (to take your writing deeper)
• Nitty-gritty writing tips (with fun examples)
• Weekly writing exercises and prompts
• Weekly video posts
• Interviews with featured guests
• Nuggets of inspiration and encouragement
• A private online community with your own virtual notebook to share your writing and support your fellow Alchemists
• Feedback on up to 500 words of your writing
•  A 100+ page ebook of course lessons, inspiration, and exercises/prompts (yours to keep)

(The feedback and ebook alone are a $130 value. So with this sale it's like you're getting the supportive writing community, the amazing guests, access to me for all of your writing questions, plus an extra $1 in your pocket -- all for free!)

If you're on the fence about joining Alchemy: The Art & Craft of Writing, please read all the course details here. If you still have questions, just send me an email.

If this course feels like a fit for you, I invite you to register today and join me for this final session of Alchemy. (Remember to use code TRANSFORM to save $40 until 11:59 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 26.)

Thank you to everyone who has been part of Alchemy during the past two years. I'm so grateful to have worked with you, and I'm really looking forward to the new ways we'll work and write together in the future.

{*psst....If you're reading this before the "official" start of the sale, go ahead & use that TRANSFROM code now! I'm about to take a nap before going to roller derby practice, which is where I'll be at 9:59pm tonight, so consider this the unofficial start of the sale. Go for it!}

Creative Momentum

vermont studio center, johnson, vt

I was in Vermont last week to visit a few friends and to write. I didn't write much, but dadgummit I wrote a little. I plowed my way through part of a rough draft of an essay that I've been mulling over for about a year. I still don't know what the essay is really about or what it's trying to be, but I'm doing my best to find out. I wrote sloppy phrases, terrible sentences, downright ugly paragraphs. I forced myself to write one sentence and then another even when my writing muscles, which are flaccid and fatty from under use, screamed at me to stop. I wish I had written more and I wish I had written better, but this retreat wasn't about the quality of writing, and it wasn't even about quantity.

It was about momentum.

I needed to start moving, to start dancing clumsily with words once again. I needed to jump off the cliff, or into the water, or whatever physical metaphor of movement and faith you'd like to use.

In preparation for this little writing retreat, I cleaned my studio before I left. I'd hoped to have some momentum going when I came back, and I wanted that space to be ready to use.

Sadly, my studio (in a spare upstairs bedroom) is where clutter goes to live and to multiply. It gets especially bad just before I take a trip, when I'm always shoving things in there and shutting the door, vowing to deal with them when I return. But then I come home and avoid dealing with the stuff. The studio and I are in a constant cycle of avoidance, de-cluttering, limited use, and re-cluttering. Sometimes it's so bad that I actually apologize to the room itself, to any muses or creative energy that are trapped in there waiting for me to liberate and honor them.

The studio was pretty much unusable when I left for Oregon back in July, and it stayed that way until just before I left for Vermont last week, when I managed to make about half of the small room accessible again. That's three months of avoidance and neglect. Three months of a low-grade anxiety fever every time I even thought about the studio. Three months of working at my dining room table and on my couch. Three months is one-quarter of a year. Sad, sad.

I'm back from Vermont now, and yes, I'm writing this at my dining room table. The space in the studio that was clear and usable is now junked up with unpacked luggage. The rest of the space holds the never-ending miscellany that needs to be filed, recycled, put away, found a home. The dining room table is a nice place to work, but there are too many distractions down here: dishes to wash, laundry to do, floors to vacuum. Right now the sun is shining and the air is warm enough to have the sliding glass door open, so working here is lovely. Later, when the sun goes down and this chair starts to hurt my back, I'd like to move upstairs to my cozy studio space with the twinkle lights. But unless I deal with the clutter and clear a path to my desk, I'll simply move to the couch. The couch can be a nice place to work, but then the lines between work-time, writing-time, and home-time blur until I can't decipher which time is which. This sucks the life out of my creativity and kills my momentum.

A body at rest wants to stay at rest. A body in motion wants to stay in motion.

I don't have much momentum from my time away, but I have enough. If I keep rolling down the hill slowly, I'm bound to pick up speed, right? I'm recommitting to my writing, to my creative work. Maybe some day I'll find a rhythm or system that makes this commitment easier. Or maybe there's no magic formula for momentum but to do the work: clean the studio, write the ugly paragraphs, breathe and repeat, until maintaining the sacred space and movement of creation is second nature.

** ** **

If you'd like to commit to your own writing practice and gain some momentum, I invite you to join me for Alchemy: The Art & Craft of Writing (Oct. 29 - Dec. 14). Alchemy is the process of transforming something common into something special. This online course will help you take your writing deeper and w i d e r. (This will be the last time I offer this course online. I'm making space for new projects to be born.)

I Want You to Be

I'm glad to have a short essay in Issue 12 of Sprout online magazine. This month's theme is "Becoming." 

Here's an excerpt from my piece, "I Want You to Be."

"The most loving of all caring things, and the most caring of all loving things that you can say to someone is not 'I love you,' but 'I want you to be.'"

I'm paraphrasing the above quote, and I no longer remember who said it, but my best friend and I heard it during college and latched onto it. It became shorthand for our friendship: I want you to be. Shorthand for: I love you like a sister. For: I want you to be you, to be all the things you are, to be all the things you dream of, and I want you to simply be in this moment – alive and here and awake to joy.

Find the entire essay, plus poetry, prose, photography, and artwork from many other creative souls, in Sprout #12: Becoming.