Good News and Fall Classes!

Originally Published August 19th, 2019

Sunset on Casper Mountain

Dear Friends,

It’s so good to be home after two weeks on the road out west with my family for our son’s wedding. It was amazing. Some of you know I lived in Casper, Wyoming as a child. Hard years, actually, and for that reason and more, images of Wyoming appear frequently in my literary work. In fact, we even chose to stay a night in Casper on our way home from the wedding, because I have not been back there since childhood, and I wanted to track down the various houses and schools and other landmarks that were part of my life from ages 6 to 12 (1974 to 1980). Retracing those hard years now, as an adult, in the company of some of the people I love most in the world, and texting my sisters photos and questions and shared memories of these places, was transformative.

But here’s the unbelievable part: we drove up to the top of Casper Mountain to watch the sunset, and, while on the literal top of that mountain, taking pics with my phone, I received an acceptance email from a dream journal, North American Review, for my short story, The Climb, which is about a lonely young girl living in Casper who builds a staircase in her backyard that takes her up up up to where she can see over Casper Mountain to everything that lies beyond. How unlikely is that?! I'm still having a hard time believing this actually happened, just as I am describing it, but it did. It really did, right there on the very top of that mountain whose shadow I lived in as a girl. Then we ate dinner, surprisingly some of the best Indian food we've had in a long time right there in Casper, and I read my story out loud to my husband, Jon, and my daughter Lillie and her partner, Tao, and we had a toast, and I felt happy, happy, happy.

Considering that amount of perseverance and rejection we must accept as writers, moments like this shimmer all the more. I wish much brightness for all of you, as well! And I have to say, if I had not set out to receive 100 rejections this year, this moment would never have happened. I wrote The Climb years ago and stopped submitting it after only a handful of rejections. My determination to submit enough work to get rejected 100 times compelled me to dust off some old pieces and get them out there again. This practice of seeking rejections has led to quite a few acceptances, including an exciting development with one of my novel manuscripts!

Meanwhile, as I write and submit and await news on it all, Elephant Rock is finalizing fall workshops and classes, and you have a few exciting chances to write with us! While our October Write for Your Life Memoir Intensive in Minneapolis is full, we have one more spot open for the November intensive, and we’d love to have you there!

Also, our remote classes start up in September, and there are a few spots left in both:

The Art of the Fractured, which explores innovative, fragmented forms as a way of amplifying meaning, and is our most popular remote class

The Visceral Self, a deep dive into work of writing through the body, including the reasons why embodied writing is so powerful, and devices to bring it alive on the page

Meanwhile, I also have two openings for private mentorships. If you are interested in working with a mentor to advance your writing, learn new elements of craft, set goals and deadlines, structure larger projects, receive detailed, constructive, and individualized feedback on work in progress, determine how to start or restart your creative practice, I can help. Contact me to discuss and/or for references. I love working with writers, and am an ongoing mentor for both the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Writer-to-Writer Program and the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. I also mentor science writers at the University of Minnesota. I have been teaching for 20 years, and it is in my blood. When I sign on to work with you, I take your words as seriously as my own.

Okay! That’s all for now. Let’s all enjoy these waning days of summer and find as much beauty as we can in this slow turning of the wheel.

With love,

Jeannine