Zen Writing

I have been writing off and on for as long as I can remember, but discovered how much I truly loved writing in a creative writing class my freshman year in college. I dabbled in short stories and poetry for several years after that. When I was 23 I discovered the Zen Writing Group. It was a group of people who met once a week. We would read a short piece, often from Natalie Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones" or Dainan Katagiri's "You Have to Say Something." Then we did a timed writing, usually 7 or 8 minutes, and shared what we had written. I came and went for 4 years, and for a time wrote only sporadically. After a while I realized how much I missed the group, and writing. When I returned, I found the group had evolved into a core of 4 women who were all at various stages of writing a novel. I felt lost. I had no novel. I couldn't even imagine attempting to write a full novel. But they welcomed me back anyway, with my short stories and essays.

After a few months, I came across a short story I had written in my college creative writing class. I realized it would make a great young adult novel, so I set off to expand the story. With the support of the Zen Writing Group, I had a first draft complete in 6 months, and the rest is history.

I am excited about my writing group's first publication, In the Moment: Writing from a Spacious Mind. This is a collection of some of the essays and poems we wrote during our weekly timed writings. See the books page of my site for information on where to purchase this collection. We are already talking about putting together a second anthology, in between working on our individual novels, so stay tuned for more!

I grew up in St. Louis, MO, and still live in the area with my Black Lab mix, Tiberius. I've been told that I have become "one of those dog people everyone hates." But I'm okay with that, and so is Tiberius. You can also check out my MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/jenniferksights.