On Seeing Beyond Seeing

By far the most life-changing practice of all

I say, “writing saved my life, so I teach writing as if it might save yours.”

This means I teach writing as more than writing. More than a way to publish, earn respect, make money, etc. I do those things with my own writing, and you strive for that, too, what I teach will surely be valuable to you on that path. But I teach writing as more than these “outcomes.” I teach writing as a way of living. A richer, more electric way of living, one that can bring your pages to life, while also bringing you to life, or back to life.

Above all, if you want to write, you have to see—and not only (if at all) with your eyes.

Helen Keller understood this and expressed it unabashedly:

I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light, but who see nothing in wood, sea, or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in books.  What a witless masquerade is this seeing!  It were better far to sail forever in the night of blindness, with sense and feeling and mind, than to be thus content with the mere act of…