Writing is a spiritual act, but most writing courses and workshops shy from embracing this truth. They focus exclusively on craft and marketability, ignoring the parallel spiritual development that must take place if an artist is to create works of true value and insight. As a result of the imbalance, artists become stuck, jaded, cynical, entitled. They suffer because their relationship to their work is imbalanced and unhealthy.
"Healing Your Relationship To The Work" is a course that will help transform your art practice into a sustainable way of life. This does not mean we will not struggle with frustration or blocks! Instead we will reframe our notion of “progress” and learn to see that the eddies and torrents of creativity are all necessary and meaningful parts of the process. In the course we combine craft and workshop elements, and address spiritual approaches to art making, with a diverse and flexible interfaith framework.
To benefit, your writing does not have to be overtly spiritual. In fact, many of the world’s most powerful artworks are imbued with the unstated presence of the divine. You need only the conviction that you have stories and poems that must be birthed, and the desire to establish a healthy and balanced art practice necessary to tell them well.
Mary Volmer is the author of two novels: Crown of Dust and Reliance, Illinois. Her essays, reviews, and short stories have appeared in various publications, including Mutha Magazine, The Common Politic, Women’s Basketball Magazine, Fiction Writers Review, Brevity, The New Orleans Review, and Ploughshares (online).
After earning a master’s degree at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where she was a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, Mary earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College (CA). She has been awarded residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Hedgebrook and was the spring 2015 Distinguished Visiting Writer in Residence at Saint Mary’s College.