I'm Giving an Online Lecture

On a subject that you may find interesting.

If you are a writer or are interested in the art and craft of writing, then read on. If you are not, the regular newsletter will be coming your way soon.

Following Golden Strands—A Lecture About the Magic in Writing

March 26, 2023 | 7 pm ET | Live on Zoom | 75 minutes | $10

Join me for a live lecture “Following Golden Strands” to be held Sunday, March 26, 2023 via Zoom.

At work in every piece of good writing is something beyond craft and mechanics. It can't be codified. It can't be seen. It can't be proven. But it's there, moving about.

The thing is Spirit. Invisibles. Magic. Mystery. Myth. The Imaginal Realm. The Dream-world. Intuition. The Unconscious.

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We see spirit at work in good writing and we want to know where it comes from and how we employ it.  How do we engage the unconscious and get to the magic? Do psychedelics work? Can the ancestors assist us? Does wildness help? Does a land-centric life get us closer to it? We sign up for craft classes & enroll in writing workshops & read how-to books, yet almost never do any of these address this most vital part of writing.

In this 75-minute live lecture Ray will talk about our relationship with spirit in many of its forms, from a gut feeling to dreams to divination. She will examine deep sources of power, ways to tap that power, and ways to transfer it to the page.

This lecture is about finding meaning in words, reanimating language, and turning to invisibles in order to help us rewild our stories and ourselves.

The link to register is here. Once you sign up, you will be sent a Zoom link. I look forward to seeing you the evening of Sunday, March 26.

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The Kittredge Essay Schema

5 weeks | Starting April 5, 2023 | Wednesdays 7-8:30 ET | Live on Zoom | $350

This is the first time *ever* that I’ve offered this course. I’m excited to present it to you.

Join me in a 5-week class focused solely on writing an essay using the Kittredge schema. The class meets live on Zoom one night a week, Wednesdays 7-8:30 pm ET, starting April 5. Dates are April 5 | April 12 | April 19 | April 26 | and May 3.

Preferably you will have sufficient time to write during the week, since I invite you to produce a 10-15 page essay during our time together. It's much easier to learn this schema by practicing it yourself, rather than simply hearing about it.

You will receive, if you wish, detailed & substantial edits (if needed) from me--developmental, line, and copy edits. In plain English, that's structure, sentences, and grammar.

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When I arrived at graduate school in the 1990s in Missoula, Montana, the first class I enrolled in was a creative nonfiction workshop with the iconic writer William Kittredge, a kind, bearlike man who had been raised a cowboy in the ranchlands of the Warner Valley of Oregon.  Bill had just published his memoir, Hole in the Sky. In that class I was expected to write two essays, something I did not know how to do. 

On the first day of Bill’s workshop, understanding how baffled we were about our assignment, Bill proceeded then to lay out a schema. I’m going to map it out for you in this class because that formula, if you want to call it that, flat-out and hands-down changed my life. Boom. I’m not sure I would have become a writer were it not for that detonation, which both blinded me and made me see. This schema was more aptly a treasure chest, which I was not smart enough to unlock on my own, although it was right in front of my eyes, in everything I’d ever read. I was then still under the impression that writing was a gift, not an apprenticeship, that it fell outside the bounds of deconstruction because it happened magically. I actually thought that. Bill Kittredge gave me a priceless gift, and I’m going to give it to you.

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To be honest, this is a difficult schema, so the course is only open to *advanced* writers. By “advanced” I mean that you should already have published a number of pieces of literary nonfiction. You may already have published a book or you may have an MFA.

The class will be fast-paced, technical, and immersive. The first night’s class will be essential to attend, because a recording will not suffice for this material.

What you will receive:

• Five 1.5-hour classes exploring a particular structure that will set you on fire, unlock what you need to write a good story, and change the way you think about creative nonfiction.

• Handouts to keep (in the form of pdfs), including a graphic of the schema; the three building blocks of writing (and I don’t mean intro, body, and conclusion); and examples of the essay in use.

• Substantial & constructive edits (if necessary) returned to you in Track Changes on a final essay, if turned in by May 5. The essay should be 10-15 pages, DS, 12-point font. This in itself is SOLID GOLD.

• My unflagging encouragement and coaching.

• A finished essay or one that is close to being ready to submit.

 The cost is $350.

Writing a 15-page essay in 5 weeks from inception to revision is not going to be easy. Please do not sign up for this class if you don’t have the time to apply yourself to this project. However, if you are ready for a challenge and to learn a sweet trick of the trade, I wholeheartedly invite you to join me. The link to register is here.

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Course—The Magical Craft of Creative Nonfiction, Level 1

6 Weeks | Tuesdays | Starts April 4, 2023 | 7-9 pm ET | $500

Join me for a 6-week session of Magical Craft, Level 1 where you learn the essential secrets to writing great creative nonfiction. The class features memoir, the personal narrative essay, and the flash essay.

We will meet via Zoom on Tuesday evenings from 7-9 pm ET, starting April 4, 2023--6 sessions over the course of 6 weeks. Meeting dates are April 4 | April 11 | April 18 | April 25 | May 2 | and May 9.

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When I was a young writer, I thought I could teach myself what I needed to know. I thought that if I read enough Welty and O'Connor and Hurston, I could figure everything out. What I learned is that I could be moved by what other writers were doing, yes, but I couldn't understand on my own how they were moving me.

Unfortunately, I lost years. Finally I began to study with great teachers, and I realized what a mistake I'd made. Finally I learned things that I could have never untangled on my own.

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We'll dive deep into craft and structure, including practice writing the infinitely usable flash essay.

However, what I've learned after publishing a dozen books is you need more than craft to be a great writer. You need magic. There's no other word for it.

And I know where you find magic.

In this time together we’ll peer into the deep sources of our power, discover how to tap that power, and learn how to transfer it to the page. We'll talk about what holds us back (our own limiting beliefs.) We'll practice wilding our stories and wilding ourselves.

This course can transform your life. It can give you the tools you haven't been able to figure out for yourself to make a story fly. It can set your writing on fire and make you want to sit down and nail your shoes to the floor under your writing desk.

The cost of the live-on-Zoom course is $500.

What you get

• six evenings where I pour my heart & soul into your heart & soul.

• my honest, authentic belief in you.

• a chance to learn in a safe space.

• pages and pages of important, useful handouts in pdf form.

• an entire session on publishing and marketing your work.

• interesting readings.

• the opportunity to ask questions of me weekly.

• my substantial edits (developmental, line & copy), if needed & desired, on up to 15 DS pages of your work.

• & of course a receipt to file with your taxes.

Move yourself from stuck to empowered with one decision. The link to register is here.

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Workshop—Write Your Birth Story

May 13, 2023 | 11 am ET | Live on Zoom | Open to all

One kind of story holds a tremendous amount of power for women especially, and that’s birth stories. This makes sense, because birthing a baby takes superpowers. Yet, think about how few containers there are to hold our birth stories. 

I’m offering a virtual workshop for writing your birth story. We’re going to do it on Saturday morning of Mother's Day weekend 2023. That’s May 13, 2023 from 11 am-1:30 pm Eastern Time.

No writing experience is needed. This is not that kind of workshop.

This is a place for the stories to emerge and begin to live outside our bodies.

It’s open to anyone who has given birth or assisted at a birth, which includes moms, dads, non-binary parents, doulas, midwives, nurses, and doctors.

When I was a girl, my extended family was large. My mom came from a family of seven children and my dad from a family of eight. At gatherings the women would gravitate toward the kitchen table, which was scattered with coffee cups, and suddenly they’d be talking birth. My Aunt Bertha gave birth to twelve children, my Aunt Doris to seven. My mom had four.

I’d be in a corner playing with dolls and I’d realize—wait!—that the tone of the conversation had changed. The voices were lower and more intense. I’d start hearing words like “stirrups” and “contractions” and “placenta.”  I learned (from experience) to get really quiet and very still, because if I moved they’d realize I was eavesdropping, and I’d be banished from the most riveting, necessary conversation in the world.

And isn’t that what has happened, aren’t we mostly banished from the most riveting, necessary stories in the world?

So tell yours. Write it down. Write it down for the baby you birthed, whether they’re grown now or whether they’re still at the breast. Write it for yourself. Write it for healing. Write it out of pride. Write it for the novel you’re working on.

Get it out of the deep tissue of your body and onto the sacred page.

I’ve been thinking about birth a lot with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. As Nina Burleigh, journalist of American politics, wrote in an op-ed, women share “the utterly exceptional, unique challenge of being impregnable.” Impregnable. In fact, Greg Olear, after interviewing Burleigh, helped me realized that two things keep patriarchy in place: one, women are not in general as physically strong as men; and two, women are impregnable.

(I want to recognize here the difficulty some women experience in getting pregnant.)

Birth is an event for which we prepare for nine months. We try to learn all we can during that time. We try to write a birth plan that works for us. We try not to think of the physical risk of giving birth, that every cemetery we’ve wandered through has at least one grave of a woman who died in childbirth.

There’s a lot tied up in our birth stories: power and powerlessness, choice and force, pleasure and pain, hope and disappointment. For a while the story consumes us, but it’s not the kind of story we can go around telling—not really—so we learn to be silent about it. 

I hope you join me to write the birth story you’ve been carrying. Registration is here, on my website. You will be sent a Zoom link for the event. 

The workshop is 2.5 hours on a Saturday morning, hopefully when things are quiet at your house. For those hours you’ll be in LABOR. The last 30 minutes of the zoom is for sharing the stories. The entire timeframe is 11-1:30, but at any point if you need to scoot off into your day, feel free.

You are a magnificent creator of life. You birthed the baby, now birth the story.

Do it for your own healing.

Do it to clear energy.

Do it as a gift to your child.

I’m going to provide a safe, inspiring, sacred container for you to tell your story. I’m going to guide you through it, kneel beside you every step of the way. Think of me as your story doula. I’m going to get you close to other people telling their stories. I’m going to help you feel the joy that comes from bringing new life into the world.

The workshop is $49, and the place to register is here.

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Thank you for your interest in story as a means of changing the world.