Category: Writing

Slipper Camp, Writers, Writing

Slipper Camp – the secrets we carry

Linda

I’d like to invite you to my next available Slipper Camp.

The topic: the secrets we carry.

All of us have secrets. In this online writing ‘Slipper Camp’ we will be writing about our secrets, both light and dark, our deepest fears and shames but also our secret strengths. That’s why I love the quote above from Marianne Williamson-that it is our potential and power that frightens us and keeps us small. That perhaps the greatest secret we carry is that of our own magnificence.

It will be the same format: 10 writers will receive 3 illustrated prompts about the secrets we carry every OTHER morning for 20 days along with daily writing tips and coaching suggestions.

Tuition: $200
Limit: 10 writers
Starts: July 9th ends July 27th
Please let me know if you’re interested in joining us.
Payment secures your spot.

xoxo
Linda

events, Slipper Camp, Writers, Writing

Slipper Camp – HOME

Linda

On October 16, 2017, HOME will be the subject of the next online Writing Slipper Camp of 2017.

Home is a breathtakingly universal need. After her great adventure, Dorothy realized, “There’s no place like home.” Robert Frost wrote, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Home might be where the heart is. It might be a person, a pet, a place… you name it. I’ve often felt hiraeth: a longing for a home that never was.

Whatever your experience, the prompts in this Slipper Camp are designed to guide you through writing 10,000 words about HOME in your own unique way.

I hope you will be 1 of 10 writers who will receive 3 illustrated prompts about HOME every OTHER morning for 20 days along with daily writing tips and coaching suggestions. You will be writing 1,000 words (2 pages) on 1 of the 3 daily prompts and sending it to me by midnight every OTHER day. I will read them each day and we will talk about your writing at the end of Slipper Camp.

Starts October 16, Ends November 3rd. Over 400 writers/non-writers have taken this structured online writing class since 2011.

Please email me at lspravina21@gmail.com me for further details or sign up here on Facebook.

Price: $200 for 20 days.

Can’t wait to read your writings.
xoxo
Linda
NOTE: Slipper Camp fills up fast so please sign up if interested.
THANK YOU

family, Writing

Chasing Ghosts

Linda

We will never see each other again, said my grandmother to my mother. Westbahnhof train station. Vienna 1938. That was the last time they saw each other. My mother was 21. Her mother died in Auschwitz six years later. Remembering what I never wanted to know.

Slipper Camp, Writers, Writing

Slipper Camp: My Travels and Inner Journeys

Linda

My next online writing Slipper Camp – My Travels and Inner Journeys – begins on April 2nd. I was inspired by this image.

We will be writing about our outer and inner journeys. As always, you can stay home and write in your pjs and slippers. As always, if you enroll you will receive 3 prompts a day (every other day) for 20 days. As always, you will write 1,000 words on a prompt of your choosing and send it to me. Please join us. You can email me for details  at pravina@aol.com (or join the Facebook event here).

THANK YOU

Linda

love, Memories, Tibor Gergely and Me, Writing

2017 Wishes

Linda
tiborgergely-newyear

Hi there,

Children’s book illustrator Tibor Gergely, our dear family friend, drew this image for a magazine cover in 1942.

Newly an immigrant fleeing the Nazis he poured his love for the beating heart of small-town America into every moment here.

We send this to you with fond wishes for peace and joy in the coming year.

Linda
events, Slipper Camp, Writers, Writing

Slipper Camp – Freedom

Linda

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Dear Writers,

The last Slipper Camp – MINDFULNESS – took us into the election and past it. Twelve writers wrote at a heightened time, a critical time in our lives and the life of this country. I don’t need to remind any of us about that.

Like a beautiful sand castle that’s washed away by the next wave, our lives changed in a moment on November 8th. Every Slipper Camp writer who wrote on the 30 prompts about MINDFULNESS said it was an enormously positive, grounding, helpful and, for some, a lifechanging experience to be writing at that time.

In the past month I’ve searched within and without to find the topic of the next Slipper Camp. I finally settled on FREEDOM. Please click on the photo above. It helped me to decide on that as our topic.

I can’t think of anything more relevant about which to write 10,000 words in January. FREEDOM. We’ll be writing on Martin Luther King Day, the March on Washington and the Inauguration. We’ll be writing about FREEDOM from many different angles. I’m already creating the 30 prompts we’ll be using and hope you’ll be writing along with me. FREEDOM. Don’t you love the ring of that word?

WHAT IS SLIPPER CAMP?

SLIPPER CAMP is an online writing class. It’s open to only 10 writers who will receive 3 illustrated prompts about FREEDOM every OTHER morning for 20 days along with daily writing tips and coaching suggestions.

If you join you’ll be writing 1,000 words (2 pages) on 1 of the 3 daily prompts and sending them to me by midnight every OTHER day. Whenever I get your words I’ll read them and let you know I got them. At the end of Slipper Camp we’ll set a one-hour call to talk about your writings.

Hundreds of writers have taken this structured online writng course over the past years. The most common comment I hear is that the combination of structure and accountability yields good writing. Books, screenplays, a play, two novels and numerous published articles have been generated in Slipper Camps.

If you want to join Slipper Camp please email me at pravina@aol.com (or join the facebook event here) and we’ll send you details. Starts January 15. Ends February 2. Limited to 10 writers, 5 spaces are taken already.

Slipper Camp is a place where you discover yourself on the page.
Slipper Camp allows you to remember who you are.
If you have more to say (who doesn’t?) please join Slipper Camp.
If your story is ongoing please use Slipper Camp to continue it.
If you feel you don’t write enough, come write in Slipper Camp.
Please join us.
FREEDOM!

THANK YOU

Linda

family, Memories, Writing

My Grandmother’s Dishes

Linda

img_2759

orange green purple
italian country dishes
with roosters
and rabbits
and carrots and dots
cheerful, hand-painted
seeing them, i feel uplifted and
joyful and home.
white porcelain with
royal blue and gold
rims, my grandmother’s
dishes, fragile like her
a woman i never met
the woman my mother mourned
for as long as i knew her.
elegant and simple,
like my grandmother,
these heirloom dishes
will stay in my keeping
until i, too, die
like my grandmother,
her life cut short
in auschwitz
concentration camp
img_2761
concentration camp dishes
white blue gold
fragile but heavy
with memories and
guilt.
my mother’s
guilt for leaving
her mother behind
at the train station in vienna
when she left with my father
who saved her life
long ago
eighty years ago
and the dishes
always remind me
of what we
all lost. What i
lost and find again when
i place the
white blue gold
dishes on my table
used again
by living breathing
people. my grandmother
smiling gently sweetly
my mother grateful
i always grandmotherless
and now motherless
travel through time
and reclaim my legacy.
Writing

The Things We Carry

Linda

the-things-we-carry

Some things feel irreplaceable. For Joey, the main character in Tears and Tequila, it’s the four yellow wooden hangers her mother left behind after leaving when Joey was only five.

These yellow wooden hangers are all she has left of her mother. She hasn’t heard from her in the past 27 years. She doesn’t have good memories of her. She barely has any memories at all.

But, for some reason, every time Joey’s moved (and she’s moved a lot) she’s taken those four yellow wooden hangers with her.

I, too, have those yellow wooden hangers. Like Joey, they’ve survived my every move. They’ve traveled with me from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to the Hudson River Valley to Beverly Hills and now, Sherman Oaks. For some reason I can’t part with them.

Even now, every time I see them, I feel happy. What do they remind me of? Living in a pre-War building on 76th Street and West End Avenue at a sweeter, simpler time? A time when I was a child with doll clothes strewn across my closet floor? When I would fall asleep hearing strains of classical music from the radio in the living room? A feeling of home? Safety? Comfort?

I don’t know the answer. All I know is this. I can’t part with those yellow wooden hangers any more than Joey can.

The things we carry. We’ve all got them.

What are yours?

Life Advice, Motivation, Writing

#Transformation

Linda

“The main block to transformation is the thought that we shouldn’t be where we are, that we should already be further along in our growth than we perceive ourselves to be.” I’ve had this quote on my desk for decades. On this same scrap of paper that I cut unevenly long ago. I’ve never re-typed it onto a new page Or framed it. Or re-cut the paper so it’s even. I like it just the way it is. And every time I reread it the words say as much to me now as they did then.

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events, Slipper Camp, Writers, Writing

Upcoming: #SlipperCamp: #Mindfulness

Linda

14568199_10153759094655957_6486554691410864052_n

I’ve been searching for awhile for the next topic of my online writing Slipper Camp. This one will take us into the the election and past it. (Starting October 29, ending 20 days later.) We will be writing at a heightened time, a critical time in our lives and the life of this country. I don’t need to remind any of us about that. Every topic I thought of I ended up rejecting. Not deep enough to create 30 prompts around at a time like this. Then I came upon this photo. It reminded me of one I took years ago on Fire Island. A photo of a majestic sand castle I found early one morning as the tide was coming in. And I marveled at the non-attachment of building such a creation, knowing it would be destroyed by the next wave. So here’s the topic of the next online writing Slipper Camp – Mindfulness. We’ll be writing about times we’ve lived our lives in every moment. Times we’ve been present even as we’ve built and loved, knowing that life can change in a moment. Like a beautiful sand castle that’s washed away by the next wave. Impermanence. Non-attachment. The circle of life. Hope and faith. Mindfulness. That’s what I’m creating prompts about. I hope you’ll be writing along with me.

It will be the same format as always – 10 writers will receive 3 illustrated prompts about Mindfulness every OTHER morning for 20 days along with daily writing tips and coaching suggestions.

You’ll be writing 1,000 words (2 pages) on 1 of the 3 daily prompts and sending them to me by midnight every OTHER day. Whenever I get your words I’ll read them and let you know I got them. At the end of Slipper Camp we’ll set a one-hour call to talk about your writings.

Hundreds of writers have taken this structured online writng course over the past years. The most common comment I hear is that the combination of structure and accountability yields good writing. Books, screenplays, a play, two novels and numerous published articles have been generated in Slipper Camps.

If you want to write online with me, please PM me and we’ll send you details. Starts October 29. Limited to 10 writers, 5 spaces taken already.

THANK YOU