The world doesn't want you to be a writer. That's the starting point. The world wants you to consume: fossil fuels, french fries, faux furs, violent films, well-spun “facts” and unspeakable acts.
The world doesn't want you to be an artist of any kind. The world wants you to be like everyone else. That's the starting point.
So what are you going to do about it?

What are you going to do about it?

It's a given: You don't have place, means, time for a month in the country. You have a hideous father, devouring mother, demanding child, tyrannical spouse, horrible boss. If only for them, if only they were different, you might . . . or you have a generous father, lovely mother, perfect children, and you couldn't possibly do something as selfish as to find solitude or quiet or a notebook and a pen. Either way, you find blame.

You don't have to have the place, means, and time for an unburdened month in the country. So what? Writers write. You must try, as Zen Buddhists say, to eat the blame.

You commit. It's as simple as that. You make commitments every hour of the day, every day of the week, all month, all year. You let the phone ring. An hour? Forty minutes? Ten? You commit. And what might happen if the phone rings and electronic mail goes unread and unanswered and the television is dark and the radio silenced? I often think: earthquake, fire, death, injury, grief, misery, war, or, forgotten lunch, lost jacket, skinned knee, missing homework, broken bone . . . earthquake, fire, death . . . It never ends.

Other things trouble, though. What if I do spend those ten minutes, or forty --- what might come up? The sky will fall and the earth will crack if I tell the truth. And usually what new writers mean is cracking the world not with horrific and cataclysmic truth but with a plain, unvarnished sort of truth: This is my take on this --- life --- and it is not what it seems, nor am I what I seem.

It's hard to find our way as writers, no matter if we want to write fiction or essays or memoir or plays or screenplays or poetry. It takes a long time. Maybe years. Maybe not. There's no blame to take as long as it takes. Writers write. That's it. Skill serves readiness. If there's no skill, there's none to serve when readiness comes.

No matter where you went to school, what you've read, who you know, what you've written before, what you've dreamed of writing, what you've published, how you've been praised or not praised, you stand in front of that blank page naked, and in terror. You have that in common with every other writer who has ever put words to paper. Every one.

And what you do when you're there, shivering with cold and fear is: eat the blame.

Eat it. It's your time to do it, to write. If you don't write, how can you be a writer? If you aren't a writer, then you are someone else. There's no blame in that, either. But if your inner self directs you to the page, and you honor that self, then you are someone who writes – no matter what anyone says, or, which is more often the case, doesn't say. The point, as one of my writing teachers always said: Sit in the chair not knowing where you are going, be strong, and write until you find out.

 - Paula Panich, Fall, 2006

Who is Paula Panich & how much will it cost me to hire her?

Paula Panich, M.F.A., has taught writing at places ranging from Boston University and the New York Botanical Garden to the Huntington Library, and to people from ages eight to eighty. Coaching new and continuing writers is one of the most satisfying parts of her life. She has no agenda or preconceived idea as to how a writer should write. She works intuitively with each person based on her long teaching experience and her own inner work as a writer.

Her hourly fee is $150. She often works by telephone with students, speaking with them for twenty minutes a week. If students are in Southern California, she would like to have an initial face-to-face meeting. Please enquire

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