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: Writers in the Time of Trump
One remarkable difference between Obama and Trump: the latter seems to have absolutely no sense of humor. The clearest sign of a dull mind. ―Stephen King That thunder-clap sound many of us have heard reverberating in our ears in recent weeks is the sound of a starter's gun, telling us it's time to do something. That's especially true for writers, who have a unique potential to counteract the dumbed-down, twisted-beyond-all-coherence, tweet-fed alternate reality of an impulsive narcissist President doing…Read More
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Steve’s Blog: Lessons on Writing From This Year’s Nobel Winner
I'm a poet, and I know it/Hope I don't blow it. The news out of Stockholm last month was startling, no doubt: Rather than choosing a novelist for the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature (I was pulling for Murakami), the Nobel Prize jury was awarding this year's top literary honor to ... Bob Dylan. Reaction was mixed. Much snark shot around social media, and thoughtful people like Pamela Paul of the Times Book Review lamented the fact that no…Read More
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Steve’s Weekly Blog: ‘The Nix’ by Nathan Hill
Not so long ago, warnings kept bubbling up about the imminent demise of the novel in an era of information supersaturation. In fact, we need the restorative space of books more than ever, especially the kind of deceptively profound and rollicking entertainment that Nathan Hill delivers with his debut novel, “The Nix,” a feat of levitation that wears its seriousness lightly and functions almost as smelling salts for the imagination. Like Emma Cline’s “The Girls,” Hill’s 625-page…Read More
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Steve’s Weekly Blog: What Comes Next After the MFA?
Everywhere I go, I’m asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. - Flannery O'Connor At our most recent Author Talk event here at the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods writers' retreat center, featuring Mary Roach and Kathleen Founds, I was struck by something Kathleen said. She was talking about her Master of Fine…Read More
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Steve’s Weekly Blog: Make a Writer Happy Today
I can't write without a reader. It's precisely like a kiss—you can't do it alone. - John Cheever Writers give us so much: Why not reach out, today, and try to bring a smile to a writer who has made a difference for you? Why not do it every day? If you're reading or recently read a book by a living author, and you enjoyed that…Read More