Cathy Holloway Hill, Author and Certified Life Coach, is pleased to announce the completion of her new non-fiction book soon to be released in mid-2008. The book is entitled “Brilliant Women, Brilliant Careers” and the book addresses a very important topic in the lives of women – acquiring and maintaining a career that is lucrative, fulfilling, and enjoyable. We spend approximately one third of our lives working, so why not make this an enjoyable experience. Please visit Cathy’s website at www.chollowayhill.com for excerpts, release dates, etc. Also feel free to email her for career advice at cathy@chollowayhill.com.

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Q: When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?
A: I felt I was a writer from about the age of 12. I loved to read and wanted to put words on paper that others would find illuminating and enjoyable. I was fortunate to have teachers who told me that I was a good writer and encouraged me to pursue it.

Q: How and when did you make this dream a reality?
A:I put great effort into every opportunity I had to write — letters, school assignments, school newspapers, essays. I also wrote funny short stories and some poetry. I published my first book in 2004 and that was a thrill for me.

Q: What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned so far in your writing career?
A: I believe it’s very important to keep writing and continually fuel your imagination. Drink in everything that stimulates emotions and thoughts. There’s a story or valuable eye-opening idea to share in just about everything. Write it down for now or future reference because otherwise it may be lost to you.

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NAWW Member Event: Shaping Your Experience for the Page—Turning Personal Experiences into Insightful, Moving Writing

Shaping Your Experience for the Page—Turning Personal Experiences into Insightful, Moving Writing

Attendees will learn:

1. Locating your writing’s occasion
2. Extracting insight from your experience
3. Using the first person skillfully
4. Using sensory imagery to keep the reader with you

Note: Call-in information is on your member login page. If you do not have your password, e-mail us at support@naww.org

If you are not an NAWW member yet, find out more about NAWW Membership Benefits by clicking here: naww.org/blog/benefits

About Sheila Bender

Sheila Bender, writing teacher, poet, essayist, columnist, and book author, is now offering her know-how and ability to offer instruction through weekly online articles that encourage and help those who write from personal experience. Whether you want to break your writing out of its current form, revise effectively, generate more writing or facilitate the writing of others, you will benefit from Sheila’s weekly articles.

Sheila has been writing seriously since 1975 and I has taught writing since 1980. She published her first book about writing (Writing in a Convertible with the Top Down) in 1991 and have continued since then writing and publishing my poetry (Sustenance: New and Selected Poems), reviews (in Poet Lore, The Seattle Times and The World), and articles (Writer’s Digest Magazine and in Spring 2006, The Writer), as well as producing and publishing seven more books on writing, the newest entitled Writing and Publishing Personal Essays from Silver Threads in San Diego. Others include: Writing Personal Essays, Writing Personal Poetry, Writing in a New Convertible with the Top Down, A Year in the Life, and Keeping a Journal You Love. Her essays and poems appear online and in numerous North American literary magazines and anthologies.

As she wrote, her teaching expanded from local community education courses in writing to workshops at national writer’s conferences and university-sponsored classes. She served as curator for Seattle’s Poetry on the Buses program and as a judge for the Associated Writing Program and Writer’s Digest literary contests. She is a frequent presenter, instructor and panel member at conferences, most recently the San Francisco Jack London Writer’s Conference, Washington’s Whidbey Island Writer’s Conference and low-residency MFA program, the 2005 Conference on College Composition and Communication and soon, the 2006 Society of Southwest Authors’ Conference.

In 2005, she developed LifeJournal for Writers at www.lifejournal.com/writers with Chronicles Software. She has an undergraduate degree in English from the University of Wisconsin, an MAT in Secondary Education from Keane College and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington.

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By Sumangali Morhall

Consciously focusing on the heart rather than the mind can help unlock ever-new writing potential, keeping your creativity flowing ever more consistently, bringing forward from within your own unique writing capacity. Writing from the heart is allowing our true inner self speak about the world around us.

Prolific writer Sri Chinmoy once said:

“There is a vast difference between what you can get from the mind and what you can get from the heart. The mind is limited; the heart is unlimited.”

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Q: When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?
A: It was something that lay beneath the surface for many years since I was young. I always enjoyed writing, but never saw it as something I would use as an expression of the artist in me. For years, I had been editing papers for my college friends, composing letters and other correspondence for family.

Q: How and when did you make this dream a reality?
A: I discovered in my 40’s that not writing, not expressing my art was no longer something I could suppress. I took the leap and attended my first writer’s conference, and that was it. I took classes, attended workshops and conferences to meet the goals I had set for myself, to find my voice, to improve my craft, and to become a published author.

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