Why Every Story is a Love Story – New class added to schedule on Wednesday evening

Love is the most powerful, all encompassing human emotion, and yet so often difficult to capture in story. It’s a primary as oxygen to our survival and as expansive as the ocean. As writers, we are Love Warriors – and it’s our duty to bring love into our stories – not just romantic love, but love of earth, love of self, love of our animal families and love of each other. Without love, we have no hope – without hope, we have no story.

I meditate by walking. While walking, I listen – not to podcasts, but to the wings of a bird, to the ocean against lava rock, to the howling of coyote. By doing this, I listen deeper and deeper, until all my ancestors are walking behind me and beside me. That’s it, they say, in clothing from the old country – corsets and work boots and wool jackets, clothing not fit for this tropical climate inhabited by me. They remind me to learn to love everything. They tell me I am the result of all of our love 0f all the thousands who were learning to love before me, and it’s my job to carry on inside story.

“Love takes off the masks

that we fear we cannot live without

and know we cannot live within.

I use the word love here not merely in a personal sense

but as a state of being, or a state of grace –

not in the infantile American sense of being made happy,

but in the tough and universal sense

of quest and daring and growth.”

-James Baldwin

Inspiration From Memoir & Poetry

In this next 6-week workshop, students will receive work from memoirists and poets around each theme in the course – and writers will also learn to play with craft – odes, metaphor, naming things and places, questions, and repetition – to enrich their stories and enhance the connection between author and reader. There is nothing more daring than writing about love – inside love we find our sparkling truths and our fears become so small they are a marble in our hands, then slip through our fingers and are gone. Writers will create their life stories using a fresh, new perspective, pulling inspiration from poetry, philosophy and contemporary writers who are changing the literary landscape.

The reward of loving is in the loving.

Loving is itself the great outcome of loving.

The success of loving is in how we change

because we kept on loving

regardless of anything changing.

Literature used for this course include the following books:

**Love Topics explored in the next six-week course include*:**

BLOODLINE

Our ancestors continue to love us and inform us if we let them. In this week we will explore American Indian literature and the honoring of those who came before us, and how they inform our stories and our lives, how we carry their memories in our DNA, a continuing love story.

Craft explored in Week One: Odes

HEART-BEATS

At the center of love is our heart – we can’t survive without a well functioning heart. Besides generating the strongest electromagnetic field, the heart has an intelligence of its own, which is why certain neurocardiologists refer to it as the heart-brain. The heart is not only made of muscle cells but also neurons – in this class we will allow the stories to flow through the rhythm of the heart while inviting our body and our heart into our stories.

Craft explored in Week Two: Repetition

SELF LOVE

Self Love starts when we see the all of ourself, the flaws, the mistakes, the successes and the failures, when we forgive our younger self and let go of the mistakes and successes to come. In the class we will do exercises to tap into our younger and older selves, and merge them into a literary portrait of who we are today.

Craft explored in Week Three: Time

BODIES: CRAVINGS & DESIRES

The body craves love in the form of a new landscape, a new lover, a child, sex, or even a special food from the old country once made by our ancestors. Cravings sometimes become our compass and our Love Indicator. What do we want now more than anything in the world? How will our cravings and desires lead us to a new love or a new way of loving. Stories of craving and desire are the foundation of every memoir.

Craft explored in Week Three: Writing through the Senses

LOVE OF EARTH

Edward Abbey wrote “The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need, if only we had the eyes to see.” Mary Oliver found love and wonder in owls at dusk, in beach roses, in the breathing forest, and and in the tracks of bears. John Muir said “into the forest I go to, to lose my mind and find my soul.” Place informs our stories – our greatest love affair may be with the natural world.

Craft explored in Week Four: the Power of Naming / Place

LOVE & MUSIC

Many historians have used song lyrics to help understand the culture and consciousness of the people who sang and listened to them. When writing our memoirs, music plays an important role to drop us into an era. Music and accompanying lyrics have become the soundtrack to our lives, igniting our emotional landscape, and taking us back in time with a chord or a refrain. All love – whether friendship, family or lover, has music associated with the experience of love. We will explore the songs that shaped us – the soundtracks of our lives.

Craft explored in Week Five: Refrains

*Topics subject to change

Writing deeper into Love through Craft

The way we experience story is evolving with the language needed for the world we live inside. By participating in this live 6-week class series, you will have the opportunity to explore your story through the lens of love.

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LEARN IN A SMALL, LIVE GROUPS

Meaning comes through participation. First, you must participate fully in life – deeply and as fully as possible. You must risk to participate fully. If you want to know what good writing is, join a group of good writers, don’t just read a book, come into community and watch writers improve and birth stories. By writing beside them, you will learn to write. Don’t just go see a book reading, write your own stories, and do your own reading. To learn writing, be a writer. Joining this writing community is like joining a family of writers who support and nourish your creative process. Each week, writers take the live online (in in person on Kauai) class with the same 8-10 writers from all over the world, writing together and sharing stories in a 2 1/2 hour class.

Writers work closely together for six weeks, deeply bonding and supporting each other’s creative growth.

If anyone has to miss a week, they can audit the class with another live group on another day, or receive the class via Power Point. Writers learn from the curriculum, but also from the positive feedback received from other writers. When we focus on what is good in writing, we develop an ear for inviting more of what is good.

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CREATE CONTENT FOR A BODY OF WORK

This six-week course is especially compelling if you are working on a book, blog, poetry or a series of essays. It’s a wonderful way to explore an event and learn how step by step to be in a deeper discovery for yourself and the readers.

Every writer in this group is respected and honored, so that not just the story is honored, but the whole process of writing a story or poem is honored.

Many of our students have gone on to publication through this process of writing every week, and many of our writers are authors writing beside writers who are new to the practice. We all learn from each other’s work each week, and this course will help every writer go deeper to gain new perspectives for the sake of creating compelling work and upleveling the craft of storytelling and poetry.

Abraham Lincoln said “I am very grateful to you for reminding me of my father. My father was so beautiful, and such a creative artist – there was no other man who could make such beautiful shoes. I know perfectly well that whatever I do, I will never be such a great president as he was a great creator. I cannot surpass him.”

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INSPIRATION TO WRITE BOLD

This six- week series has been developed to inspire writers to go deepear into their personal truths and philosophies, by looking at memoirs breaking literary rules and inspiring us to explore the canvas of our stories through inspiring techniques and writing prompts.

Writers receive literary inspiration, followed by writing warmups in the form of list making. Pre-writing exercises lead us into a longer thirteen minute write.

After we write, we share our stories and deeply listen with positive feedback. Writers become part of a private Facebook writing community with other writers taking the same curriculum, where all writers have the opportunity to post their work and receive and offer feedback throughout the six week course.

Osho says, “When you listen attentively to somebody, you forget yourself. If you cannot forget yourself, you never listen. When you listen, you become just a passage, a passivity, a receptivity, a womb.”

By learning deep listening in our classes, writing gets more bold, more daring, and just more.

Reserve My Spot - Sign Up Now

Educator: Laura Lentz, author

Laura Lentz is the author of Freeing the Turkeys and STORYquest, the Writer, the Hero, the Journey. Laura teaches creative writing workshops online and on the north shore of Kauai for over a decade. Her workbook helps writers write to every stage of their story inspired by the Hero’s Journey through 12-weeks of writing prompts and examples out of best selling memoirs and poetry. Laura helps writers create content and expand their body of work through unique methods – offering challenging and thought provoking writing prompts inspired by list making, poetry, mythology and segments from literature.

Laura creates the curriculum for the 6-week writing workshops also taught by Guest Teachers.

Laura’s 6-week workshops are online and on the north shore of Kauai. Laura serves on the faculty of The Kauai Writers Conference, and is conducting a Master Class for writers who want to write in sacred places on Kauai and allow Kauai’s beauty to influence their work.

Educator: Robin Gadient, Poet

Meet Robin – Teaching Friday and Saturday

Robin Gadient, teacher of STORYquest, the Writer, the Hero, the Journey has developed a following as both a writer and a teacher. Robin has been writing in Laura’s writing groups creating poetry and heart opening stories for several series. Sometimes the student becomes the teacher right before your eyes. Robin graduated from UCSB with a BA in literature. Robin has the uncanny ability to hold space for all writers and respond in a way that creates the needed energy to create her community within a larger community.

Laura creates the curriculum for the six week series taught by Robin.

Educator: Chris Armstrong – New Class Added!

Chris Armstrong Chris wants to know what you are reading, especially anything that expands our minds and hearts, which is almost everything! Her favorite genre is magical realism as those authors help us expand what we see all around us, and our own possibilities. Chris reads good books twice — once for plot, and again for craft. Chris’ avid listening skills and responding help writers create new content, gain confidence and share their stories out loud each week, growing the writing community at LITerati Academy.

Her vocations have always included words along with helping people step into their own power. After writing with Laura for almost three years, she sees now more than ever how stories connect us and lift us all up. She wants to hear the stories only you can tell!

Laura creates the curriculum for the 6-week writing workshop taught by Chris.

NEW WEDNESDAY CLASS ADDED WITH CHRIS ARMSTRONG –

$247.00

Weds. REGISTER

Saturday Online

with Robin Gadient

10:30 a.m. PST / 1:30 p.m. EST

. Class is 2 1/2 hours

6-week session:

August 5, 19, 26,

September 9, 16

$247.00

Sat. REGISTER

Friday Online

with Robin Gadient

11:00 am PST / 2 p.m. EST

Class is 2 1/2 hours –

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6-week session:

August 4, 18, 25,

September 8, 15

$247.00

Fri. REGISTER

Wednesday Online

with Chris Armstrong – NEW CLASS!

4 pm PST / p.m. EST

Class is 2 1/2 hours –

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6-week session:

August 9, 16, 23, 30

September 6, 13

$247.00

WED REGISTER