From Heart to Paper Writing Workshop, Press Release

From Heart to Paper Writing Workshop Live!

“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”
Vincent Van Gogh

You’re invited!

Spring 2023 From Heart to Paper Writing Workshop Live!

 

Classes:       9 Saturday Mornings
Location:    West Contra Costa Adult Education
                     Alvarado School
                     5625 Sutter Ave
                     Richmond, CA 94804
Dates:         April 15, 2023 —June 24, 2023*
Time:          10:00AM to 12:00PM Pacific Time
Fee:             $119   

Register online or in person. See :

  WWW.WCCADULTEDUCATION.COM

  Please note: *No Class 5/27, 6/17

Margaret C. Murray has been leading From Heart to Paper Writing Workshops for over a decade.  A professional author and teacher, Margaret is presently preparing her most recent novel, Deer Xing, for publication.  She is also the publisher of Writewords Press.

To read what her students say about the workshop, see Testamonials.  

Read more about Margaret C. Murray’s From Heart to Paper Writing Workshop below.

Create Your Own World, Events, From Heart to Paper Writing Workshop, General

A flower is never opened with a hammer

“A flower is never opened with a hammer.”  — motto of From Heart to Paper Writing Workshops

I have been teaching From Heart to Paper Writing Workshops for over seven years here in the San Francisco East Bay and begin each session with this motto.

You’d think I’d be tired of it by now, considering it old and worn out. Yet each time I say “A flower is never opened with a hammer”,  I feel the power of the words, the exquisite truth of flowers, and the awe of seeing a flower open. I feel my heart leap with possibility— for myself and for my students who are like flowers too.

Writing workshops are upcoming in Winter and Spring, 2020.

Would you like to know more about From Heart to Paper Writing Workshops? Do you want to register? Please click here.

Book to Read, From Heart to Paper Writing Workshop

Are we all “Enemy Women”?

Enemy Women
by Paulette Jiles

I picked up Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles because of the intriguing title. The cover shows a photo of a woman on a horse photographed from behind, her long black hair flying. I wondered if this was a Native American story. Perhaps a fantasy adventure? In the first pages I discover these “enemy women” were mainly white and poor, living in the southeastern Ozarks of Missouri during the American Civil War.

I couldn’t put the book down because of Adele Colley, eighteen years old and first person narrator.  A Huck Finn type character, Adele speaks her mind, is eager to know her future. She shuns domesticity, knows she’ll likely be imprisoned by marriage, and worried it might be to the wrong man.

Adele’s father gives her a dun horse she names Whiskey, of mixed straw color, grey and gold with black legs, tail and mane. Whiskey is Adele’s beloved familiar, her best friend and true companion. Adele’s mother died of the fever five years before and her brother, with his withered arm, has fled to the hills to avoid being arrested and shot as the Federal Militia arrest Southern men they consider to be “weeds in the garden of humanity” and punish anyone with Southern sympathies.

Even though the Colley’s are officially “non-partisan”, with regard to the North and South, her father, a justice of the peace, is arrested by the Militia as Adele and her two little sisters watch. The Militia then set their house on fire, burning everything, even food and valuables, and beat her father up before taking him off along with Whiskey, who looks back at Adele as he is led away.

It’s hard to read Enemy Women  and pass it off as “just a story” because author Paulette Jiles prefaces each chapter with factual, primary source documents from the Civil War era, thus magnifying the power (and horror) of Adele’s story.  I experience every woman’s grief during the American Civil War as if it were happening now, in present time, and not a just as a subject of history. Are we all still stereotyped as “enemy women” now?

This book deserves the five stars I gave it on Goodreads.

 and MORE . . .

Like to know more about my writing?  Read my Smashwords’ profile and interview. 

My latest novel, Pillow Prayers, Love ruined, love reborn after the Summer of Love, is now available as an ebook as well as in paperback.

Buy the eBook of Pillow Prayers!

Read a sample and purchase the ebook of Pillow Prayers on the Smashwordspage.  Pillow Prayers is available in epub, mobi, pdf, lrf, pdb, txt and html formats. Buy the eBook of Pillow Prayers!

You too can be the calm cat writing on a red chair.

Live in the San Francisco Bay Area? Here’s your chance to write your heart out.

 Check out my  upcoming  Summer 2019 From Heart to Paper Workshops. There’s a place waiting for you.

 

 

 

Events, From Heart to Paper Writing Workshop, General, Press Release

New Dates! Summer From Heart to Paper Writing Workshops

 

Calm cat writing on a red chair

Imagine you are the calm cat writing at your table. Now you can make this happen. Two summer From Heart to Paper Writing Workshops are coming up.

Click here for  workshop testimonials.

 From Heart to Paper Writing Workshop
Four  sessions:
Monday evenings:  6:30PM – 8:30PM
Dates: 7/8/19 – 7/29/19
Find out more.
To Register, click on the Writing is Easy button.

Plus a 5-Day Intensive 

 

From Heart to Paper Intensive Writing Workshop 
Five sessions:
Two Monday & Wednesday evenings:  6:30PM – 8:30PM
plus one Saturday morning: 10AM – 12PM
Dates: 8/5/19 – 8/17/19
Find out more. 

To Register, click on the Writing is Easy button.

Click here for recent From Heart to Paper workshop testimonials.

Expressing yourself in words is a wonder and a joy.

 —Margaret