6. Lifetime membership of Diving Deeper writing group

ITEM: I am offering two lifetime memberships to my online writing group, Diving Deeper (or for as long as the group exists). Members must agree to the guidelines before bidding. See http://www.divingdeeper.net

DETAILS: Diving Deeper is an online writer’s workshop/support group run by Sandra Jensen. The group has been online for nearly four years.

Sandra says: “The main aspect of the Diving Deeper community is that it is a workshop – meaning it’s not a place to simply publish our work, and have people say nice things about it, but rather a place to get inspiration and feedback and support to ‘go deeper’ with our writing and therefore our lives.

“This is not a place to sell ourselves or our writing, but a place to fine tune our craft and our way of being with ourselves and each other. It is also a community of fellow writer and seekers and people who believe in giving back, so a huge part of being in the community is actually reading other people’s creative work and sharing our response, and of sharing any tips about what supports the process or where or how to publish work in the ‘outside’ world. Members range from brand new writers to experienced, published writers. The moderators include teachers of creative writing.

“The Diving Deeper approach is one I teach in workshops. I teach because I want to learn. Diving Deeper is a method developed out of the Freefall technique taught to me by Barbara Turner Vesselago.Freefall is an extraordinary process, one which has turned many from “I want to be a writer” to published writers.

“Because the method so beautifully mirrors the spiritual and meditative journey I am on, for me the process is not just about writing, but about living: in the moment, honest and direct as we know how, as risk taking as we can be, deeply alive with all our senses to the world inside and outside.”

BIO: Sandra’s writing has been published in a number of literary magazines in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland and New Zealand. She has been awarded honourable mentions from Glimmer Train and was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize among others.

Her short story manuscript, A SORT OF WALKING MIRACLE, was shortlisted for The Scott Prize. She won Redroom’s 2010 Scandalously Short Story Contest. Also in 2010, she was awarded a professional writer’s grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to work on her first novel. She currently lives in Ireland.