Copywriter by day, novelist by night, I'm able to quench my writing thirst on the 9-5, but I'm looking to quench my soul with this writing group. 

I have so many ideas that I want to share, but between imposter syndrome or being slammed with too busy a schedule, my ideas never seem to leave my Google Docs. 
 

Overall, I'm looking for encouragement, accountability and advice from all you talented, beautiful writers. 

Seems like I’m always writing something.  But due to ill health, publishing only here and there:  a co-authored book about children’s literature, one magazine article, one essay in a collection, some feature articles for a little local newspaper, a weekly gardening column for them.

During that whole time I’ve been possessed by a need to write about my experience with masochism.  So now I’m writing a book:  Persephone’s Choice:  Revisiting the Victim Goddess. Thanks to Scrivener and WordPress, bit by bit it’s getting on the Web.

Since the content would embarrass my family, and could expose me to harassment online, I’m using a pseudonym.  As a result, it’s hard to find people I can talk with about this project, my passion, my mission.

This is what I’m hoping for in a writing group:  Hearing other people’s reactions to my work, and to my ideas.

Rusty writer looking for inspiration, writing prompts, a group to share work with who can critique and offer a gentle push to get going and keep going.  I've attended three different Iowa Summer Writing Workshops and a handful of other writer's workshops and classes over the years.  Love to write and share work, not necessarily looking to publish, but happy to complete some work that could be published.

Like many writers trying to kickstart, memoir is always a safe place to go to to write and expand from there.  Love essay and poetry, although I'm probably a better reader or poetry than writer.  Love to write with writers of all ages and have plenty of years of experience under my belt to write with a "mature set."

Hello out there!

I've been writing all my life and recently have begun to think about creating an auto-anthology. I have several hundred pages of original work in a variety of genres. Some of it I love and some of it I dont love. I'd like to shape the writing I've done into a cohesive memoir or even a collage of sorts. I earned an MFA much earlier in my life with an emphasis on contemporary poetry. At that time, in the mid-seventies, I published some poetry in local journals, wrote and self-published a lovely small book called Terrarium. I co-founded an interesting literary tabloid called Red Weather. I enjoyed many poetry reading opportunities and formed a trio called The Hard Rollers because, well, the seventies.  Later on, as my (non-literary) career took shape, I co-authored a book on lifelong career and personal management. The book was called The Best Work of Your Life and was published by Putnam-Perigee in 1998. The concepts became the foundation for a twenty year career in strategic management and workplace culture.

Now I'm 77 years old, fully retired and well into a process of re-emerging as a writer. I participated in the University of Chicago Writers Studio last year but am seeking opportunities through Poets and Writers excellent system for finding a tighter match. The filtering process seems very helpful already. Although I'm an elder writer, I have a strong interest in current literature and consider myself a "young" soul as contrasted with beloved peers who value age and wisdom as core identity. The personal content that interests me is experience from my earlier life and the dozens of memories that still bring me laughter, tears, and a continuing desire to share them.  My overall working title is HEAT but the concept that keeps driving me is my desire to reconnect with my younger self not to give advice, but to get advice. So, the working title for that area of my writing is called ASK HER.

Thanks for reading/listening!

Pat Alea