Next week, the Pemberton Library hosts a creative writing workshop and discussion led by Whistler writer and writing coach, Rebecca Wood Barrett.

Natalie Goldberg was my first “writer coach.” I picked up her Writing Down the Bones and a Giant Padlocked Gate suddenly swung open. Goldberg believes any can write. And should. If you have the inkling. It’s a practice. Like meditation, dog-walking, swimming laps, drinking tea. Goldberg was a practicing Buddhist, and saw so many parallels between her writing practice and her sitting practice. After all, you don’t sit in meditation because you’re already enlightened. You don’t practice writing because you’re a writer. You do either, because you’re a human, and you’re afraid and busy and inspired and all-kinds-of-things-at-any-given-moment, and you’re going to die, and you need to find a way to balance all that mind-swirl out, and inhabit the space in between with some kind of articulate grace.

Oprah ran a lovely cheat-sheet of Goldberg’s best advice.

If it speaks to you at all, swing by the library on the 29th January.