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.
-
Steve’s Weekly Blog: Have a Blast!
You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. - Ray Bradbury Both writers and non-writers are well aware that writing is excruciatingly difficult. As Red Smith (and maybe Hemingway) put it, writing is simple, you just sit down at your typewriter and bleed. But if you're doing it right, creative writing should also be deliciously, deliriously fun. If you're not having a blast, you're not doing it right. Having a blast means…Read More
-
Steve’s Weekly Blog: Are Great Editors Going Extinct?
An editor is like a priest or a psychiatrist; if you get the wrong one then you are better off alone. - Toni Morrison My friend Ed Beitiks used to have great fun telling a joke about an editor walking off with a piece of writing, unzipping and taking a leak on it. "What are you doing?" the astonished writer protests. "Improving it!" the editor gruffly retorts. Ed would flash his eyes wide with…Read More
-
Steve’s Weekly Blog: Grab Readers With a Great First Line
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. - Gabriel García Márquez It's like that first blast of a party when the door opens and you make your way in: Does that first glimpse make you want to turn around and leave, or are you tugged forward, wanting and needing to explore, get a walk around,…Read More
-
Steve’s Weekly Blog: A Book a Week in 2016?
Clearly one must read every good book at least once every ten years. C.S. Lewis There are book people for whom book reading is like breathing: They feel more at home lost between covers, tucked away with the world hidden and remote, forever keeping it at bay by turning the next page, cracking the next volume, than they ever do at any other time. Through most of my life I've envied such people, as I've…Read More
-
Steve’s Regular Blog: What 2016 Will Bring at WCR
For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice. T.S. Eliot It was a crazy year, for us here at the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods and for the country and the world, a year in which the news was more often dominated by the scary than the hopeful, a year in which the mean and the crude…Read More