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If you write, if you want to write, if you dream of writing, this workshop can help you discover ideas, dreams, emotions, images and stories of profound significance, and recall them in tranquility, in their original voice, with all their original brilliance and luminosity. And it can give you the structure and support you need to make those stories, poems and memories as good and true as they can be.

I invite you to join us. I also suggest you watch this video. (This is me, Cary, reading a piece I call "The Method, the Sacred Space, the Incubator and the Cradle" at The Booksmith in San Francisco in November 2007.)

I am a professional writer and have been for many years. I studied literature and journalism in undergraduate school and attended the masters program in creative writing at San Francisco State, concentrating on the novelists William Faulkner and Vladimir Nabokov, and the poet Wallace Stevens. My thesis was a collection of short stories called The Riverwood House and Other Stories. I am currently working on a novel called Burning the Rain Girl, which is about, among other things, how the world of the imagination is interwoven with "daily life." In my attempts to be a living, working writer, I have mostly done journalism for the past 20 years, though I was a key part of the early 1990s spoken word movement in San Francisco, and I also play music and have written many songs. The Amherst Writers and Artists workshop method has helped me immensely in my attempts to forge a deeper and more complex relationship with the sources of language, myth and imagination, and, based on my experience, I believe it can help you, too.

In my column on Salon.com I have written often about the challenges that face writers and artists. Here are some of those columns.

Dear Sir, I write today to say that I cannot write.
I'm not afraid of writing, but I am afraid of publishing.
I'm an interesting, talented artist but I can't take the rejection!
I don't feel like writing. Does that mean I'm not a writer?
Can I write? I want to write. But I'm afraid to write.
What am I doing here? I got into the hot creative writing MFA program I dreamed of, but now I feel I don't belong.
I wrote a good book but see nothing but the flaws in it.
I'm scattered and have no ambition -- what's wrong with me? I could be an actor or a writer or even a therapist, but nothing seems to be worth all the work and commitment.
I love journalism but hate asking uncomfortable questions.
I'm an artist terrified of the vast, blank canvas.

The foundation of the Amherst Writers and Artists workshop lies in five simple principles and five simple practices, quoted here as they appear in the book that acts as a guide for this workshop, Writing Alone and With Others, by Pat Schneider:

"The Five Essential Affirmations:
These affirmations rest on a definition of personhood that is nonhierarchical, and a definition of writing as an art form available to all persons.
1. Everyone has a strong, unique voice.
2. Everyone is born with creative genius.
3. Writing as an art form belongs to all people, regardless of economic class or educational level.
4. The teaching of craft can be done without damage to a writer's original voice or artistic self-esteem.
5. A writer is someone who writes.

The Five Essential Practices:
1. A nonhierarchical spirit (how we treat writing) in the workshop is maintained while at the same time an appropriate discipline (how we interact as a group) keeps writers safe.
2. Confidentiality about what is written in the workshop is maintained, and the privacy of the writer is protected. All writing is treated as fiction unless the writer requests that it be treated as autobiography. At all times writers are free to refrain from reading their work aloud.
3. Absolutely no criticism, suggestion, or question is directed toward the writer in response to first-draft, just-written work. A thorough critique is offered only when the writer asks for it and distributes work in manuscript form. Critique is balanced; there is as much affirmation as suggestion for change.
4. The teaching of craft is taken seriously and is conducted through exercises that invite experimentation and growth as well as through response to manuscripts and in private conferences.
5. The leader writes along with the participants and reads that work aloud at least once in each writing session. This practice is absolutely necessary, for only in this way is there equality of risk taking and mutuality of trust."

I have taken to reading these simple statements every session. It has a nice effect on the mind. It seems to remind the creative engine: OK, you can get to work now, there is a good structure here, it's time to open up and reveal your mysteries.