Featured Student: Dana Zed

You’ve taken many generative writing classes with us, including multiple sessions of the Daily Write Round Robin. What are some of your recent writing goals and how has The Writing Salon helped you to achieve them?

The wisdom of Kathy Garlick’s guidance and the accountability inherent in Round Robin has helped me write hundreds of pages. In the past, I’ve had no other goals but to write. I do this easily. In college I wrote my first book about cycling from San Francisco to Washington DC and since then have written an ongoing blog about subsequent bike trips (www.bikingacrosstheusa.com). I’d like to get the bike blog into a real story worth publishing.

Also when I had a de Young museum residency drawing digital portraits, I started another blog (www.betweenstops.blog) to tell stories about the people I drew. In the course of over a decade, that has morphed into short stories. I could take a lot of Round Robin writes and put them in the blog and get more serious about the illustrations that go with the stories and perhaps turn that into something. The Writing Salon has helped me write more stories and think more seriously about writing and publishing.

You became a member of The Writing Salon this year — welcome! What do you enjoy most about our classes and community?

Everything I have done at The Writing Salon has been beneficial, including the Saturday meetups (last one in person in Berkeley was great). Shelby Hinte’s brilliant, enthusiastic teaching has been a treasure. I am looking forward to going to her book launch. I also appreciate the member discount, and once I got some financial aid, which was helpful. I appreciate especially the positive aspect of The Writing Salon. I have received kindness which encouraged me and I have learned how to be more positive when looking at another’s work.

In addition to writing, you’re an artist working in many different mediums. In your experience, how are visual arts and writing similar and different? What draws you to each?

Right. First and foremost I am a visual artist (www.danazed.com). However: Creativity is creativity. Ideas are ideas. They come easily to me. I teach creativity as well. Actually, it can’t be taught but it can be encouraged and nurtured. I want to express myself and my students want to express themselves. I don’t know why people get so bogged down and can’t start. Clearly it’s just their fight with themselves. I’m like, “Hey! why fight? Let’s get the party started. First of all, it doesn’t really matter what you say and, second, you have nothing to lose!”

Do you have any writing projects right now? What classes or services are you looking for at The Writing Salon to help you develop and complete them?

Yes, the two projects I mentioned. My Round Robin shorts: I’d like to put together into something. And I’d like to get the Bike Blog into book form. I have self published parts of it but I want to put it all together in some sort of memoir. I find writing cathartic, therapeutic and even sometimes I learn more about myself through writing. Maybe this is enough or maybe others might benefit from what I write. If I decide the latter, then I have a lot of work to do. Kathy Garlick has a class on how to turn projects into finished works (Turn Your Fragments into Finished Works) and also Ben Jackson (who expertly facilitated Berkeley’s last meetup) told me about The Writing Salon‘s mentor program. These could be my next steps.