Farewell
The Writing Life
Sunday, July 26, 2026
Handouts & Worksheets
Main Points of the Closing Meditation
- What it means to live as a person who writes.
- Practice, reading habits, the long view.
- A reading life sustains a writing life. Notice what you admire and figure out how it was done.
- Read more poetry than you think you should. Read older books than the bestseller list. Read translations. Read writers who write nothing like you.
- A bookshelf is a long-term investment in your own voice.
Reading for Class — Click to Open
- Henry David Thoreau, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” (Chapter 2 of Walden) — Project Gutenberg (public domain). The classic American meditation on the chosen life of attention — what it costs to live deliberately, and why a writing life is one form of that choosing.
In-Class Practice
Each person reads aloud one sentence from something they wrote during the course. Just one sentence. Around the circle. Applause is fine. Bring tissues.
What happens with this: the one sentence is shared aloud with the room as the closing act of our ten Sundays. Nothing is collected. Nothing is recorded. The room listens; the room thanks you; the room turns the page.
The work of telling is one of the most generous things a person can do.