Writing your own life into story

Book cover from Amazon.com

Today I did something I should do much more often - I took a class. It was called Writing Your Life Into Story given by Barbara Abercrombie, a writing teacher at UCLA who has written and published a gazillion books. Well, quite a few anyway; I think fourteen. She has written a new book called A Year of Writing Dangerously, and I bought it, of course. That was the price of the workshop.

It was well worth the time (3 hours) and the price ($16.95) and the effort (a drive from Oakland across the San Rafael Bridge to Corte Madera on a gorgeous sunny morning with the Bay all sparkling and blue). I've been writing pieces of my life for several years, partly for therapy and partly so the things I remember don't disappear with me, so I was especially interested in the subject. At the same time, Barbara reminded me of the joy of writing, and how it doesn't need to be a tiresome over-wrought thing. One of her mantras is: Just get out of your own way and write. Amen.

The class was held at Book Passages in Corte Madera, in Marin County. What a gorgeous bookstore! What a pleasure to be there! Of course I wanted to buy all the books, but I'm on a bit of an austerity tear at the moment, what with income and property taxes coming up, plus a bit of expensive dental surgery. Nevertheless, I feasted my eyes and perked my brain, and now I have Barbara's book to enjoy.

Barbara Abercrombie's blog site is: http://writingtime.typepad.com/.  I expect to come across more pearls of wisdom there too. She was just delightful.