Steve’s Blog
Writing is a powerful tool to greater self-understanding, but it’s a lot more than that: It’s a way of life. In founding the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods in 2013, Steve and Sarah were drawn to the challenge of taking the inspiring calm and natural beauty of their little swath of land at the end of Amigo Road and sharing that with visitors to help them energize their lives. The hope was that others could leave feeling a little closer to nature – and to themselves – and carry that feeling forward. In his regular blog, Steve explores the mysteries of writing, and of inspiring other writers, and he also delves into the delicate balance required to think less and feel more, to be excited by life but not let stress or time sickness poison our sense of the moment. Steve’s Blog is an effort to start a dialogue, one we hope you’ll take part in regularly.
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Steve’s Blog: Stuck at Home? Read Books – and Buy Them
The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go. ― Dr. SeussRead More
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Steve’s Blog: Book-Deadline Exhaustion
There is a reason we forget. And those of us who remember, well, it is hard on us. It exhausts us. ― Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer I recently came up for air after a grueling two-month book-deadline push, the kind of sleep-deprivation experiment that leaves you utterly spent, and it reminded me of how much exhaustion is a theme for every working writer. George Orwell (Eric Blair) pretty much wrote himself to death, authoring…Read More
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Steve’s Blog: Roger Angell on Editing
It’s no great trick to take a great piece of fiction and turn it into the best story ever written, but anybody can do that. The hard thing is to make it into the best story this writer can write. -- Former New Yorker Editor William Shawn, as Quoted by Roger Angell My favorite part of the excellent new interview with Roger Angell that Willing Davidson conducted for The New Yorker are some of the…Read More
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Steve’s Blog: Reverse Hemingway Principle
If you leave out important things or events that you know about, the story is strengthened. If you leave or skip something because you do not know it, the story will be worthless. The test of any story is how very good the stuff that you, not your editors, omit. --Ernest Hemingway Generations of writers have been influenced by the Hemingway principle of making a conscious choice to leave out important things. It makes a lot of…Read More
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Steve’s Weekly Blog: Writing Through Impeachment
Every four years when it is time for the Iowa caucuses, and people start gathering at caucusing sites, I am reminded of Shirley Jackson’s story, 'The Lottery." ― Anne Lamott Nothing jolts the creative writer like failure, a necessary and constant companion to every working writer, so maybe the complete breakdown of our collective ability to tell the story of our national life in this perilous time in U.S. history will jolt writers to do more,…Read More