The Real Writer is me, writing instructor Chris Stewart. I cut through the myths and delusions about the writing process, while honoring your unique vision and voice. I mentor, teach, edit, critique, inspire, challenge--sometimes nag if you need it--always support, writers of all abilities.
The right client for me is someone who wants to have a writing practice and writing life. I help you define what that is--what you need--and help you develop and maintain it.
You should be passionate about writing, excited to learn some craft, celebrate both strengths and weaknesses (weaknesses point you in the right direction!), and have a sense of adventure and wonder. And I hope you love to read!
You don't have to have written anything in the past or have a degree or have published anything. You can sample various types of writing or have a specific project in mind, perhaps a portfolio for M.F.A. application, a story to submit to magazine, a poem for someone's birthday. Maybe you're just looking for a deeper and more lyrical way to journal.
It's all good!
Writing is as necessary to me as chocolate and breathing (in that order). There is nothing better than wandering through this world with a story going on in the back of your mind or a poem composing itself. I hate to be one of those annoying people, but I honestly can't remember not writing. As a child I wrote little stories, as a teenager terrible poems, then better ones, then tried novel writing and the ten minute play.
But I really learned how much writing meant to me when it saved my life.
Okay, I'm speaking metaphorically here, but isn't that exactly right? Metaphor is where it's at.
In 1997 I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder after several months of panic attacks. These occurred practically daily - it got to the point where I had to ask friends to grocery shop for me. I couldn't handle being in line with even one person. What if I freaked out? They'd cart me away. I remember trying to go see Titanic with friends at Christmas when it came out and having an attack in the theater. I had to leave. They thought I went to the bathroom, but I never came back. They found me shaking in my car in the parking lot, trying to pull it together to drive home.
I barely ate anything, barely slept. I was constantly tense and fatigued and felt an overwhelming dread and depression all the time. I was going to school full time and working full time and thought I'd have to drop out. Just sitting in class with 35 other people and not being able to leave the room (well, except for the bathroom, but you can't do that every five minutes because you are having anxiety) made classes a nightmare.
Fortunately, a friend recommended a cognitive behavioral therapist and I started getting acupuncture. I spoke to a couple of my professors who encouraged me to stay in school and offered to help however they could, making exceptions about absences, having extra meetings with me. One of them was my poetry professor, with whom I was doing an independent study. We turned that semester into 'Chris writing poetry to cope with anxiety' rather than towards a specific academic end.
But what came out was pretty good poetry! Good enough for my professor to nominate me for and for me to win a national fellowship for $15,000 (Ruth Lilly Fellowship for two students, undergraduate and graduate, annually). When Joseph Parisi from The Poetry Foundation called me to tell me I'd won, I burst into tears. Poor man. He was so nice about it. He had no idea what it really meant to me.
It meant everything. Seven months after leaving that movie theater in panic, I had my life back. And I did it through writing.
It didn't instantly become perfect after that phone call. I continued in therapy for two years. I started doing yoga. I learned breathing exercises and journaling techniques to deal with anxiety and panic when it came up.
I still experience anxiety sometimes, but now it's a tool I use to propel my creative work rather than a condition that wears me out and weighs me down. Artists often have or have had some experience with anxiety or depression because we are so sensitive to the world around us.
We are seeing, hearing, feeling, absorbing and channeling what we take in into our art. It can be exhilarating and exhausting. I learned to enhance the first one and pretty much eliminate the other.
Now I don't mean that your story about writing and what it means to you has to be so dramatic. It doesn't. But is your writing practice life giving? Does it make you happy? Excited? Recharge you? Does it make your life feel more expansive, sparkly, deep, intense (in a good way)?
If so, excellent. Keep on keeping on. If not, it can!
I've tried a lot of cool stuff that I share with you on this site - an artist residency, big name conferences (yes, Bread Loaf), meetings with editors, collaborations with artists in other mediums (I once wrote poems to be read during an aerial performance with trapezes and hoops), a pilgrimage to sites related to one of my favorite authors (www.embarkingonacourseofstudy.com).
I've hosted poetry and performance marathons (6 hours!) and readings at book festivals. I've taught interesting classes (animations from poems, flash fiction, ten minute plays, ekphrastic and visual poetry) and I'm always looking for more to try. More to experience and share with you, more to challenge you with to try yourself.
And I've done it long past the time when most do. In my thirties and forties. You are never too old to do anything. Never.
So read on for the credentials part below. And sign up for my posts. I took a break from them to write but will be posting more insights, exercises, and tips now. Don't miss out!
Fill out the email subscription form in the top right hand portion of this page and receive a free audio, a visualization to help you break through writing blocks.
And now for the serious stuff:
Christine Stewart is program director for literary arts with the Maryland State Arts Council. She also directs the National Endowment for the Arts' Poetry Out Loud program for Maryland.
A former artist-in-residence with Creative Alliance in Baltimore, she is the founding director of the wildly successful Write Here, Write Now workshops co-sponsored by CityLit Project. She has a M.A. and M.F.A. in creative writing and poetry, is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and has been published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Blackbird, The Cortland Review and other literary magazines. Her ten minute plays, Anesthesia (about where we 'go' under anesthesia--the surprising world and choices we find there), and Literary Land (inspired by Shannon Hale's novel 'Austenland,' about what happens when one takes a 'literary' vacation and plays the role of a heroine in a novel) have been performed in showcases for local playwrights.
Besides hosting the annual poetry marathon tradition, 'First Day,' a cavalcade of 50 poets, performers, and musicians at Creative Alliance, she has led workshops for the Odyssey Program at Johns Hopkins, and at Carver Center for Arts and Technology and The Baltimore Museum of Art, where her poetry, and that of her students was recorded and added to the audio tour for the permanent collection. She is the editor for the first Write Here, Write Now Workshops anthology, Freshly Squeezed, published by Apprentice House Press.
Chris will be teaching a one day seminar on delivering a pitch to agents and editors for the Johns Hopkins Odyssey program on March 31st, 2012.
Her next reading is at the Minas Gallery for Poetry In Baltimore's Essential Sundays series on December 11, 2011 at 4 p.m.
Poems are forthcoming in Baltimore Fishbowl.
Interested in private mentoring or critique services? Email Chris at therealwriter@gmail.com.
