I know, I know. ” Have I got a deal for you!” sounds like a line from a late night TV infomercial.  But I do have a deal.  I also know that there are lots of wannabe/would be/could be writers out there who want to write and have yet summon enough internal fortitude to put their butts in a chair, their fingers on a keyboard, and START.

My intention here is to be the catalyst that will get some of those folks who have been talking about writing to stop talking and start doing!!!  And that’s my deal.

The last two weeks in May, I’ll be leading a writing workshop on the University of Arizona campus in Tucson.  You can learn more about the course and find registration information here:  http://www.library.arizona.edu/news/entries/view/2852

You may be saying, wait a minute, the U of A.  Isn’t that where she wasn’t allowed to TAKE a Creative Writing class, and now she’s going to be TEACHING one?  That’s all true, but that ancient history also water under the bridge in a writing career that spans thirty years and now includes my having written more than 50!!! books.  I believe it’s safe to say that I’m over it.  As you can see, just because that one guy wouldn’t let me into his class didn’t automatically preclude me from becoming a writer.

About ten books into my writing life, I realized there was now a new guy running the U of A’s Creative Writing Program.  I called him up, asking if he didn’t want me to come down to Arizona from Seattle to be Writer in Residence for a semester in the sun.  His response?  Here it is, verbatim:  Oh, we don’t do ANYTHING with popular fiction here!  We only do LITERARY fiction!  (Emphasis his.)  By the way, that conversation was the real reason a former professor of Creative Writing from the University of Arizona ended up as the crazed killer in my next book and first hardback, Hour of the Hunter.

Undaunted, I took my non-literary little self back to my computer and continued whaling away at my non-literary but reasonably popular books.

Over the years, I’ve met more than a few folks who have graduated with MFAs in Creative Writing from any number of different schools.  What I’ve found shocking is that the vast majority of them are not writing!  Rather than encouraging people to write, the unrelenting focus on “literary fiction” strangled their creativity and stifled their ambitions.

And that’s the whole point of my course. I want the people who come to that class to come prepared to WRITE!!!  I want them to find something they really care about and then I expect to give them both the permission and focus to actually do it.

In 1982, a woman in my Dale Carnegie class, Carol Erickson, in a single sentence, gave me the impetus to sit down and write my first book.  And I’d like my course, The Art and Business of Writing, to do the same thing for people who have always wanted to write but who have yet to give themselves permission to start.

I know that there are almost 300 people in my database with the word “wannabe” in the note section of their records.  Even if you’re from out of town or out of state, you might consider coming to Arizona and sending yourself to “summer school” for two weeks.  Yes, it’ll be hot in Tucson at the end of May, but a little heat won’t kill you.  Besides, with summer coming on, you should be able to find reasonably priced hotel accommodations near the campus.

But wait, there’s more…

For those of you who think you’re “too old” to start now, let me refer you to And Ladies of The Club. That was a mega-bestseller in the mid-eighties written by a first time novelist, Helen Hooven Santmyer who also happened to be in her eighties when her first book was published.

Come to the class.  Get to work.  How old will you be if you don’t?