About Marlee Ledai
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Classes
Women's Spiritual Writing through the Ages (4 weeks)
We trace the legacy of the spiritual/devotional writing of women through the ages, from Greek poet Sappho through Sufi and Hindu writers, Christian mystics of the middle ages, Jewish writers of their time, to contemporary writers. Exploring samples of other women's work, we will write our own stories, poems or memoir, and knead them as bread to serve the world. Spirited class interaction and positive feedback is key to our community writing experience. This class is offered as a connection between women who understand God as called by many names.
Class Outline
Week One: Poetic Expression of Long Ago
Sappho (Greek), Rabi'a (Sufi), MiraBai (Hindu)
Week Two: Christian Mystics of the Middle Ages
Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, Hildegard of Bingen.
Week Three: Jewish Writers
A Potpourri of Poets
Week Four: Contemporary Writers
Pema Chodron, Maya Angelou, Kathleen Norris + more.
[Suggestions regarding writers and their works are welcome in this class.]
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Write From Your Spirit: For Writing Women (10 weeks)
This class emphasizes priming your creative pump. Let go of contrived feelings about writing along with rigid rules. Write juicy and write real to explore interior terrain and discover what you really have to say. No reading syllabus or one-size-fits-all assignments; our purpose is to initiate personal writing goals that advance connection with your intuition and spiritual sensitivities.
This class is an intimate journey that will prepare you to initiate a consistent writing life. Use it to further your dream to publish or to journal your heart out, create legacies of memoir, or simply to discover what you have to say to yourself. We will accelerate momentum toward a defined personal goal or project identified through clarifying and compelling questions formulated together through class discussion.
Think about it:
Do you want to document a piece of your life experience?
Do you want to explore a specific writing goal through interaction that compels you forward?
Do you want tips on creatively expressing your own moxie, soulfulness, or whimsy?
Do you want to get unstuck and jump-start the discipline of writing?
Do you just want to find out what you have to say to yourself?
Most important, do you want to have fun doing it?
If you answer yes to any one of these questions, this writing class is for you!
Class Outline
Week 1: Your Message is Your Mission
Class mission: to motivate and inspire your personal writing mission.
Short reads and discussion on creating your own mission statement.
Explain individual projects that weŽll develop as class progresses.
Grow your mission by fertilizing it with visuals and latent emotions.
Week 2: Identify Your Soulful Longings
Create your own soul profile as your resume for a writing career.
Ask yourself open-ended questions to kick-start the process.
Work smarter, not harder: put personal passion to work for you.
What is your one-hundred percent dream for writing?
Week 3: Clarify Your Values
Look to yourself for leadership; take charge of what you want.
Discover your values through a class exercise.
Orient your writing around your values to empower your writing.
Create priorities for what you want to accomplish motivated by your values.
Week 4: Crystallize Your Voice
Why your voice is an expression of your values.
Discover and refine, or redefine your voice.
Create a "brand" around your voice in the marketplace.
Use your voice to enhance powerful writing.
Week 5: Connect with Your Intuition
What intuition is and is not in the art and craft of writing.
How to listen to what your spirit has to say through you.
Recognize inspiration as it rises through your unconscious.
Take yourself lightly through the process and have fun with it.
Week 6: Prime Your Creative Pump
Be your own creative catalyst.
How we prime ourselves for everything else.
Excel at priming your creativity on purpose.
Exercises and humor that dissolve writers block.
Week 7: Connect with Your Highest Self.
Be enthusiastic, let positive energy lead you into new places.
What to do with writing distractions. (Arrrgh!)
Being productive even when youŽre not at a keyboard.
Say Bah-Hum-Bug to nay-sayers; banish "bad mind" forever.
Week 8: Experiment with Your Writing
How playfulness influences "flow."
What do you have to lose?
Stay juicy at all times.
Follow the yellow brick road: this way, that way, both ways.
Week 9: Develop Consistency in Your Writing
Consistency of place: where you write and the sense of place in your writing.
Consistency of patterns: your work habits and daily routine as a way forward.
Consistency of purpose: weaving values, voice, intuition and creativity.
Consistency of poise: project your best and brightest in every project.
Week 10: Accelerate Momentum
Float your work out there.
Activate your own artfulness by practicing, practicing.
Keep tweaking the way you think, the way you see, the way you feel.
Share class projects with each other.
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Writing the First-Person Inspirational Story (10 weeks)
Are you interested in inspiring people by giving them a story that will embolden their own lives? Your own experience shared with expertise is one of the simplest and most powerful ways to influence, encourage or energize a reader.
Magazines and many online sites must fill a quota of 1200-2200- word stories each cycle;. the marketplace is ripe with possibilities to publish for profit. Even if you're starting a personal blog or writing a family memoir, this class will prepare you for that with professional flair.
Suitable for beginning writers as well as experienced writers who wish to master techniques, positive encouragement is offered alongside a wealth of skill-building. Class material includes creating a provocative hook, flow of material, use of dialogue, self-editing, efficiency of practice, tips for submission for publication, and most importantly, shaping an effective and conclusive "take-away" for the reader.
Participants will finish at least one finished article and one finished query letter ready for submission to an appropriate market. Experienced writers may want to polish several.
CLASS OUTLINE
Week 1: Stories are Medicine
Writing your story as an article or a book will inspire both you and your reader. Make it a successful experience by being present with yourself to create a state of grace for your reader.
Week 2: Show, Don't Tell: Make Your Experience Irresistible
Master "show, not-tell" writing by using your five senses in a context of defining your voice. This and each following week, practice exercises will receive feedback from Marlee and classmates.
Week 3: Rhetoric: Stage the Effect You Want
Study the art of rhetoric to effectively use language. Learn more about metaphors, similes, sentences vocabulary and rhythm.
Week 4: Shape Your Ideas
Lead readers through organization of material to experience a personal epiphany in your story. Write for a coherent flow of idea and emotion toward your climax and conclusion.
Week 5: Craft Effective Leads and Satisfying Conclusions
Practice techniques for enticing leads and openings. Cue the reader for what's next. Discover what you have to say to yourself as a "takeaway" for your reader. Learn to craft an unpredictable conclusion.
Week 6: Write Your Article: First Draft
Write what Anne Lamott has phrased a "shitty first draft" of your story. Notice what happens as you open your heart and bleed. Move toward a conclusion with expectations wide open.
Week 7: Research The Market
Leg-work to the basics: Who is your market? What motivates your reader? Who are the publications/editors representing this market? What criteria differentiate each publication? How will you reach the reader/editors?
Week 8: Rewrite, Hone and Polish Your Article
Refine your prose to further define your message and take-away. Correct grammatical flaws. Learn to self-edit. Enhance readability.
Week 9: Write A Query Letter With Panache
Write a query letter to the editor you've chosen as your primary market. Tweak this query for 2-3 other publications/editors with a twist for each particular audience. Receive final feedback from Marlee and fellow class members.
Week 10: Send Off Your Queries: Celebrate
Email or drop your queries in the mailbox! Celebrate what will happen when your piece enters the life and emotions of each person who reads it. Ride momentum created by this class to prepare your next story.
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Write Your Own Fairy Tale (5 weeks)
Have you ever wanted to go back and edit the script of your life -- or even just a segment of it? Got imagination? What would it look like if you envisioned your own story as a "happily ever after" or at least a more powerful version of what may, in fact, only appear as "real"? In retelling our own lifes as myths and fairy tales - our beginnings, environment, family and past choices - might we become stronger, more capable or at least more at peace?
Fairy tales enable us to pass through the dark and shadowy, even frightening times and transitions of our lives. They make us aware of the unseen and are fodder for our personal growth. They are fertilizer for our dreams. We'll follow the imagination of great fairy tale writers like Hans Christian Andersen and C.S. Lewis, and peer into the traditions of Original Peoples to re-imagine, re-shape or embellish our so-called "real" stories. We'll look at the work of Clarissa Estes, author of Women Who Run with the Wolves, to inspire us to dare our way forward. She says, "stories are medicine." How might your life stories, as grist for your mill, be reframed to give you healing, courage or faith?
Class Outline
Week 1: Re-Frame a Story in Many colors.
Are you bewildered, but brave? In this class, you'll find yourself wearing the Ruby slippers and flourishing a writing pen. Together, we learn to recognize fairy tales that have influenced us, see personal archetypes present in myth and folklore. We begin to write from our own mythic imagination/ emotion.
Week 2: Embrace Your Shadow Side.
Every story has a "problem." (No problem, no story.) What's less-than, hurting, dark, or menacing in your story? Of what are you most fearful? Who is your villain? What sinister characters do you meet on the yellow brick road? In what divergent ways might you respond? Find out as you write yourself forward.
Week 3: Shed New Light on It
Your story will be influenced by the quality of the light in your picture. As the light changes, so does the way you see. Images may shift from murky to textured, to magical or mystical. In darkness, infrared photographic "filters" induce night-vision illumination. Are you looking deep, deeper, deepest?
Week 4: Become the Hero of Your Own Life.
How will you engage your heroic moment? Once you commit, you experience things that otherwise never would occur. What ups-and- downs unfold to test your dreams and intentions? Casting fears aside, use the climax to see yourself in an entirely new way, or merely tweak the past to vitalize your dreams.
Week 5: Write a renewed "ever-after".
Complete your story; it is your gift to yourself. How did chance, or destiny, play a part in your fairy tale? In what ways did you enable your own heroic ever-after? What symbol or archetype has arisen for you? How might you enable a stream of wisdom/healing to flow through you in other fairy tales?
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Re-Visioning Aging: Writing about the Second Half of Life (10 weeks)
Class mission:
Ready for a cultural "hip" replacement? Sample writing from people over 50 who are influencing the world, then document your own experience to explore and transform the journey. "There is a freedom inherent in getting older, and young people sense it," says AARP magazine. "Eldercool is an effortless byproduct of the life being lived."
Class reading will inspire fresh thinking and a variety of perspective from authors James Hillman, Gail Sheehy, Depak Chopra, Christiane Northrup as well as vintage icons like Johnny Cash, Goldie Hawn, Gloria Steinem and Paul Newman.
Included in assignments will be memoir writing, documentary journalism, life reviews, fiction, poetry and human-interest non-fiction. Rev up your creative self-renewal; this class will focus on honesty of feeling and simplicity of delivery. We may not win film cameos, but we can still marvel at our own lives-and create our own souvenirs.
Weekly class assignments:
Emphasis will be on positive reinforcement in a format of mutual admiration
1. Write in response to a specific question for class discussion. Class members provide feedback on each other?s ideas through online discussion.
2. Write a short piece for potential publication (your choice: 200-1000 words) in order to practice your craft and prepare a body of work. In an environment of encouragement, class members will offer technical feedback, idea-shaping concepts to hone and polish the work, and info on potential markets.
Weeks 1 & 2: Aging in Literature, Art and Film: an overview of pop culture
Brief overview of cultural, spiritual, and scientific resources/perspectives on aging: what these mean and how they impact our lives and our culture.
What do you and I have to add to these attitudes and perspectives? What do you want to say? How does your experience shed light and wisdom on the aging process?and life itself? Validate the process for those who are impacted by negative cultural mores?
Assignments:
Each week write about one specific personal experience in your aging process. Use this practice to clarify your values and attitudes, and elicit emotions about your own life. (Emphasis on non-fiction, or fictionalize an account.)
Weeks 3 & 4: How We Remember: writing memoir or autobiographical articles and books
We'll explore the different ways we remember, philosophies behind remembering, books and movies illustrating how these are used and expressed. We create a visual life map to explore what you want to remember and what you don't. (History is not linear and neither are our lives.)
Assignments:
Each week write 1-2 vignettes about an illusive or fading memory still important to you. (Emphasis on visual writing.)
Weeks 5 & 6: Preserving our Legacy: writing ethical wills and life reviews
Documenting what moved the story-teller, what is meaningful, and helping him/her to see the minor details as significant and important. Learning to write "dribs and drabs" as coherent pieces, a microcosm of reality.
Assignments:
Write a short piece each week about a childhood or young adult experience you would like your family to know about. Choose your favorite genre. Or interview a loved one and write a piece of their story. (Emphasis on interview technique.)
Weeks 7 & 8: Redeeming the Losses through Writing: aging as a subversive activity
Going counter-culture: Identify the sacred in the ordinary, find the humor in pain, dare to raise your "aging" voice or raise your voice on aging, become a child again, enact your own writing style, design your writing career to suit yourself. Earn your right to forget, or to reframe your memories through writing. Earn every wrinkle you get by wrestling with words.
Assignments:
What do you personally dream of writing? Magazine articles? A book? A written family heirloom, documenting your own or a loved one's life? Choose what makes you feel juicy and start working on it. (Emphasis on inspirational writing and/or poetry.)
Weeks 9 & 10: Applying Stories as Salve: activate latent dreams, facilitate healing, reinvent attitudes.
Writing for today's burgeoning home caregiving industry, popular memoir market, or an increasing number of magazines and publications for an over-40 population: where will you go? Explore possibilities for becoming an expert in writing for the aging, starting your own related business, or consistently working on your own pet project.
Assignments:
Write-to-sell a piece for publication (partial piece okay for assignment). Use quotes from experts, informational data, and at least one very clear take-away. (Emphasis on documentation journalism.)
Concept questions that will lead you to clarify what you really want to do with what you've gained from this class. What's your 100 percent? Make your intention measurable. Break it down into action steps. Make a request of yourself. Hold yourself accountable and offer yourself a reward.
Just do it. Just write.
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Polish Your Project (10 weeks)
Polish Your Project is open to anyone who has completed a class with Marlee LeDai. If you haven't
taken a class with Marlee but would like to enroll, write to us.
We will either complete a project begun in an earlier class or begin a project that springs from your well of spirited life. No reading required except as you chose to water your own soulful writing or make suggestions for others. We will focus on accomplishing a body of work. Feedback from classmates and facilitation by Marlee are meant to inspire ideas and themes as well as improve writing technique.
The class is appropriate if you are writing to publish, writing to document a family/personal story, or writing for your own pleasure and sustenance.
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Imperfectly Simple: Write Wabi Sabi (4 weeks)
Write to see the light shine through the cracks in your life. Wabi Sabi is a hip alternative to measuring value solely by degrees of perfection or profit. Originating in Japan, it celebrates intrinsic value in what is lean, spare and rough hewn.
Do you appreciate vintage patinas? Do you want to make peace with your life's cracked pots or ragged edges - even your penchant for messiness? This class is for anyone who sees value-added in simply what is - and wants to write about it.
We'll write from a Wabi Sabi perspective (and technique) in short essays, stories, poetry, or journal entries. We'll even get visual to create an "altered book" documenting class experience.
Bring your flaws to class. We're going to write from the space between the lines.
Class theme will be the following quote by Leonard Cohen:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
OUTLINE
Week 1: Imperfect & Uncertain
Learning what Wabi Sabi is, I'm beginning to appreciate its value for my life and work.
I question the drive to be certain, competent and confident about my writing.
Week 2: Quirky & Transient
I celebrate what's offbeat about my work, my home, my family, my life.
I look more closely at the immaterial and what is not seen with the eye.
Week 3: Simple & Rustic
I write simple, spare and lean in form and/or content.
I explore the rugged patina of my experience and my writing practice.
Week 4: Broken & Incomplete
I allow what's wrong to be wrong - and understand that's all right.
I make sense of the "end" of things, and value what's left unfinished.
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About Marlee Ledai
MARLEE LEDAI is the author of 25 books and nearly 200 magazine/web articles. She is an independent editorial consultant and previously the editor of an award-winning magazine. Working with dozens of writers, publishers and organizations, she loves listening to people's stories and helping them identify what sparkles in their creative projects. Travel across Europe and the Middle East was an education in human sensitivities, eventually leading Marlee to become a life coach and writing coach. Today, she writes and coaches from Silverton, Oregon, Christmas tree capital of North America, where she also loves to hike and snow board with her husband, Chip O'Brien, and to garden with her very small granddaughters next door.
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Comments from Students
[The class] went beyond what I had expected. The assignments were innovative. My favorite part of the assignments were the teacher's comments on the text . They often jolted me into a new perspective... I was ecstatic over having this teacher. I could not believe how much depth she brought to her subject and how much she gave of herself during the class. Her critiques were on the mark and turned us in the right direction without being harsh. This class was obviously taught from the heart. I was also impressed wth her writing credentials. -- Deborah Klingbeil
The class was great. Marlee did a very thorough, thought provoking job. I was more and more impressed as we went along. It wasn't so much a writing class as spiritual autobiography...with the women writers of yore as jumping off points. I always recommend your classes to my friends. -- Kate Aquilino
The lessons were much more than I expected! Each week we received a treasure trove of material - Quotations, Marlee's writings on various aspects pertaining to the subject, a discussion on how to approach the assignment and Fun Friday communication. The assignments were always thought provoking and appropriate to our writing goals... Marlee is outstanding! Her depth of knowledge and expertise were only exceeded by her confidence-building skills, authenticity, and caring that came through in all her communcation with the other students and myself. As a new writer I felt safe in her hands... I would definitely recommend your classes and I am already taking another class.- Beth Reilly
[Marlee] was wonderful. I find taking classses with your company makes all the difference in my
writing. Keeps me focused and eager to write.- Joanna Johns
Marlee really had a thoughtful series of assignments that built on one another... The supportive quotations, and other references that she pulled in to support each week's assignments deepened the class for me.. Marlee was the best thing about the class! Her encouragement to try hard, to keep going, to not give up in my writing is something that I carry with me. I pushed myself to finish a piece that I didn't think I had "the time" to finish, and it was a profound experience. You could not ask for a better teacher! She kept the flow of the group going when people were stuck, or busy, or not communicating much, and still made us feel like we were all in this together... A great experience, my second online class and very well done!- Diane Scott
Not knowing exactly what to expect.. I found the content challenging and inspiring. So much so, that I'm considering doing it again at a later stage. [And about Marlee:] Ecstatic! She is SO inspiring, supportive and a terrific guide... I wanted the course to go on and on! ... I thoroughly enjoyed the entire course and am working on The Book that emerged from the course. If it becomes a best seller (!) I'll have to send Marlee some sort of reward! - Maria Etheridge
Marlee put so much time, and love, and care into not only giving us excellent lectures a week, but extra stuff... quotes to think about and inspire us to keep going, when the temptation was to get too busy to write.... Being a teacher, I know when a person has been gifted in teaching, coaching, encouraging - and not just on the page, but in life itself. [Marlee] gives her all to the class, on a professional level, and yet a personal friendly level that kept me trusting I really could write, I really can write, and I really want to write. For me, this was huge, as I can so easily talk myself into quitting, when I compare myself with others. Marlee kept me going through those times... I feel for the first time I really can submit something I wrote, without shame or fear or embarrassment. Even if I never get published, I know for sure I am a writer and I celebrate that with the others in our class...Can I recommend this class?? HIGHLY recommmended... can I recommend her? YES YES AND YES! It was one of the best classes I have had in all my years ( and I am not a spring chicken) She is a blessing, so real, so loving, kind, and yet intelligent, gifted, experienced and full of great profound truths. I could go on and on. - Dianne Janak
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