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The first time, I heard anything about Terry Tempest Williams was many years ago, when I was about to go to New Mexico for a writing workshop with Natalie Goldberg at  Ghost Ranch , Georgia O'Keeffes former home. A little while, before the workshop started, Natalie sent us a list with things to bring and how to prepare ourselves. Among pen & paper, there was also the book " An Unspoken Hunger " by Terry Tempest Williams on that list, and the unambiguous order: READ! I did not understand the book back then, only that it was really good, and that Terry Tempest Williams was a great writer. I could taste the quality and depth of her words. But I guess, somehow, I was too young to fully grasp it. I still had my first very spiritual experiences in nature back during this workshop, walking the O'Keeffe landscape in combination with writing with Natalie and meditating with a zen-nun, brought me insights and joy, peace of mind really in an intensity, I had never exper...

is a wonderful person I have met about 18 or so years ago during a creative writing workshop in New Mexico. It actually took place on Ghost Ranch, the former home of Georgia O'Keeffe and was taught by Natalie Goldberg. I adored Natalie Goldberg at the time. And I must say, I've learned a lot from her in regard to just writing, keeping my pen moving, filling one notebook after the other. I learned there to trust my own voice. What intrigued me most though wasn't Natalie, but Sheridan, who got really really excited about everything I wrote there. I was german. I just dared writing in english, just like I still do, and she gave me sooo much positive feedback. We have been in touch ever since, though we actually never ever met again in person. Sometimes we exchange our writing, we comment on our blogs or just tell each other, what is going on in our lifes. She still is a writer and besides writing her own stuff, she does biographies for people, who can hire her. Just recent...

Dainin Katagiri Roshi " You have to say something " I thought this was a great book and it brought me back to meditate every day and see, that the day to day practice of ordinary things is important and the core of all spiritual practice. Dainin Katagiri is clear and uncomplicated - my favourite quote: "The changes that occur through spiritual practice are not really your business, if you make them your business, you will try to change your life directly. If you try to change your life directly, no matter how long you work at it, you will not satisfy yourself. So if you truly want to change your life, you should just form the routine of doing small things day by day. Then your life will be changed beyond your expectations . If you practice continuously, day after day, you will become a peaceful, gentle and harmonious person. There is no explanation for this."  I always meant to read one of his books since I first heard about him via Natalie Goldberg, one of m...

I said I would publish lists now, and I keep my promises usually. Here comes a list of books that did not exactly change my life (though a bit they all did) but helped me shape my perspective on life and myself immensely over the past twenty years. Each of those books put a major impact into my life. and funny enough each of those books came to me by chance, by coincidence and each time it felt like stumbling over something meaningful, the universe presented to me to make me learn something, to wake me up really to what was possible for me, how much more depth and choices I was allowed to look for. Suzuki Roshi  Zen Mind Beginners Mind  I mentioned this before. It was the first book I ever read about  buddhism and after this I was basically hooked. The minute I started reading it I also started to meditate on my friends sofa. It opened for me, a girl coming from the catholic german narrowminded smalltown world, a whole different world of how I could be. It opened a r...

This is my list of  some of my favourite books on writing to which I return again and again whenever I am stuck with my writing and need some inspiration, or just feel like I need to contact with a soulmate in writing: Dillard, Annie,  The writing life  (a beautiful meditation on life and writing) Goldberg, Natalie  Writing Down the Bones  (gets you started) Goldberg, Natalie  Wild Mind  (helps you to find your voice and writing her exercises is sooo much fun) Goldberg, Natalie,  Long Quiet Highway  (memoir, inspiring) Natalie Goldberg is just a great person. Reading her book is a bit like meeting this great person - which I once did, in real. I attended a writing workshop with her at  Ghost Ranch  in Abiquiu/New Mexico and I swear it was one of the great experiences in my life so far! Lamott, Anne,  Bird by Bird  (a book I loved to read) Burroway, Janet Writing Fiction  (lots of information, theory, exerci...

“I write only because There is a voice within me That will not be still.” — Sylvia Plath, “You Ask Me Why I Spend My Life Writing” That pretty much sums everything up for me. NOW. But until I was able to sum everything up in this sentence, which I gladly steal from Sylvia Plath, it was a long and winding road. I started writing, when I was 12 years old, and I believe, I did it to escape my unhappy childhood home. It opened a room for me, in which I could be somebody else. So I started writing basically, because I wanted to be a writer, which was basically somebody, or maybe even some thing, nobody in my entire family of workers, drinkers, housewifes and farmers had ever been in touch with. Writers were probably not even people. But if they were, they lived far far away from our home, indulged in a lazy and worthless lifestyle. I loved it, and definitely wanted to be just that. There was no book in our house, but the ones, I started buying with my pocket money. I spent all my pock...

Rosary                                                                                                                       A golden string many years long a golden string many decades long hopefully - red pearls, small and big ones, dark and light red, so many shades – MY LIFE! I live along the string like a blind woman with an inner eye reading and writing with my inner eye guided. Each pearl...