Walking into Fire: Sidestepping Fear, Writing Your Heart Out, and Letting Your Story Tell Itself with Susan Piver

I'm only about halfway through it, but I love it so far. It's helping me re-think where I am coming from in my writing and why I write, and why I am so reluctant to commit to it. I've already recommended it to a few friends, and I'm sure that once I am through with it I will recommend it to more. My only problem is the recording itself. It was cut with CD length in mind, with no regard whatsoever to what was happening. So the first disc actually cuts someone off in the middle of a sentence, and you put in the second and she finishes it off.

I listened to this on a business trip. I was driving back to Chicago from Dayton Ohio. It was fantastic. I loved the stories of each of the presenters. I loved different points of view and it has changed the way I tackle my writing.

This is a great program. I listened on a long trip home. My favorite things were the different points of views from each of the writers. I liked their honesty and playfulness. It has changed my approach to writing!

The highpoint of this workshop was Susan Piver's presentation on meditation, which surprisingly to me directly hit upon one of my biggest struggles with writing: concentration and persistence. The rest of it, although sometimes interesting and always amusing and enjoyable, was too overloaded with the sort of hackneyed writing advice that can be found in the self-help section of any bookstore. It is not that some of it isn't helpful, it's that it's cliched and typically fails to get to the root of anyone's problems with writing. Piver's section, however, was different.