Wellspring Writing Workshops

PAPER PEOPLE: HOW WRITERS (AND READERS) CREATE CHARACTERS Jennifer Hodgson “The students I teach, although very able literary critics,...

WRITING, WATER, & EXPRESSIVENESS (from Reclaiming the Wild Soul : How Earth’s Landscapes Restore Us to Wholeness by Mary Reynolds...

"Following Golden Threads" from Ensouling Language, Stephen Buhner The term golden thread was coined by William Blake (though he called...

THE WRITER'S WORKSHOP "Writing Alone & with Others", Pat Schneider HANDOUT: “We write together—leader as well as participants—in...

Handout from Spring 2017 Writing Workshop WRITING BOOT CAMP from a lecture by Robert Olen Butler In the nearly two decades I’ve been...

INSPIRATION: THE BREATH AND THE WORD - (handout) (taken from Writing from the Body by John Lee pp 21-38) The Spanish poet Federico Garcia...

SENSE OF SMELL IN WRITING (handout from April 13, 2017 workshop) "Given the power of smell, you'd think authors would cram their work...

Opening Lines (link to handout from workshop) Exercise: Part 1: Write down 4-6 opening lines. Don't overthink it; just write what comes...

"Sound in Writing"- (link to handout from workshop) Exercise: Think about a particular sound from your childhood; something that means a...

BREAKING INTO FICTION (modified from an exercise by Pat Schneider): Part 1 - Write a short, autobiographical, first-person narrative. ...

My Dog Practices Geometry by Cathryn Essinger I do not understand the poets who tell me that I should not personify. Every morning the...

from HOW TO KEEP AND FEED A MUSE by Ray Bradbury ...When people ask me where I get my ideas, I laugh. How strange--we're so busy looking...

"It's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out." Khaled...

"All grown-ups were once children...but only a few of them remember it." Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince WRITING PROMPT: ...

A KIND OF DOTING Muriel Nelson Strange beings we are. Baby facemakers playing the lifetime sport of peek-a-boo. Verify, verify, we say...

IN THE CAGE I would like to say good-bye to my rage, snare it and send it for taxidermy. But it sits on my chest, in my chest, pinning me...

WISDOM (Excerpts from Reclaiming the Wild Soul, Mary Reynolds Thompson) Today I have grown taller from walking with the trees. Karle...

WIND by Ted Hughes This house has been far out at sea all night, The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills, Winds stampeding...

"The Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca once explained that all true art must be produced out of the "energetic instinct" that Spaniards...

CAGED BIRD by Maya Angelou A free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream till the current ends and dips his wing in the...