About Us

I’m Yeşim (Yeahsheem) Cimcoz (Jimjoes) and I will be with you on this writing journey. At around fifty, I understood that for years writing had kept me sane. When life became meaningless, confusing and chaotic, writing was what centered me. It not only kept me sane, it in many ways created me, helped me let go of, hold on to, shape and accept who I was. 

Today writing is my career path. I have been teaching creative writing for over 17 years. Mostly, I teach online now. For 30 years I taught both in person workshops and online in Istanbul. Now I live in Wiesbaden, Germany and this is going to be home for a while.

I believe any form of writing begins in a place within, a place where your soul cracked. It may be a small crack or a large one, you may or may not be aware of it but that is the place from which the stories you’ve gathered all your life, begin to seep out.  Whether you want to write fiction, non-fiction, a poem, a novel or a short story…no matter what shape you want your stories to come out, they have to travel through you. Writing helps us give meaning to what is happening around us, outside us and when we try to put it down into words, our initial attempt is only to understand: what we are trying to say, what we have understood, why it interests us, what it all means. And that usually means writing in a journal.  

In “Leaving a Trace,” Alexandra Johnson speaks of many journals. One in particular stays with me – a husband and wife whose marriage seemed to be falling apart, decided to part ways. They were going to sell their home and decided to work on the garden before they sold it. Their communication had been poor for quite a while and  there wasn’t much conversation between them as they worked on the garden. Eventhough they worked separately, they had to tell eachother what had been accomplished that day. Their solution was a notebook they kept at the entrance to the garden; and in that notebook they would would write what they had done. He would write on one side, she on the other. In time, they started making notes and putting down comments on what the other had written. Eventually, the journal brought them together. Writing is dynamic, powerful and healing. Writing begins to work on you before you grow your stories and put them out into the world for others. And those are generally the best stories I’ve seen, the ones that travel through us and come out as art. 

I know that writing from a deeper place within seems like so much work. It would be so much easier if there was a structure you could work with, some rules you could follow and everything would fall into place on its own. But really good, deep, meaningful writing rarely comes from that. Writing is process not product. Somewhere along that process it is highly possible that something will present itself to you as a product. My hope is that as you do the small self paced workshops on this site you will forget time, embark on a journey of discovery and surprise and everything that comes from this will have sown the seeds for stories you are excited to write. Then all the technical stuff, all the rules, the rights and the wrongs will become suggestions not musts. 

There is nothing new to write about in life. Life is pretty much the same for all of us and eventhough the events we experience may be different, the emotions they take us through and bring out in us are the same. I think telling stories is a way to create bridges of emotions that connect us. What makes your stories unique, brings them to life and touches others when they read them is your experience of life. If you allow your stories to come out of the cracks, it will be the first time anyone has ever written about whatever you are writing about, from that perspective. We will read about love, for example only as you can write about it. And we have probably never heard it told that way. 

The workshops are self paced. Each workshop has a writing task. Sharing your work is not mandatory. I want you to write without fear, without anxiety about what someone will say about it and without any goal other than to write…so if that means you can’t share, that’s okay.

If you do want to share, you can use the groups page to do that. Each workshop has a group on the groups page. You can paste your work there and other participants will be able to comment on your work and share their thoughts. If you would like to get comments from other participants please read their work and post your comments as well. As most of what you share may be a very raw first draft, no comments should be made on punctuation, sentence structure, grammar, or the literary value of a piece. There shouldn’t be any commenting on the writer as a person or on his/her emotional state. This is not the place for that. Writing is frightening sometimes and we all need courage and the right kind of guidance to keep us going. I hope we can all be here for each other on this journey.

Please feel free to post questions you may have along the way in our FAQ group.  In each of the exercises I also suggest writing a reflective piece of a few sentences on what you felt as you wrote the piece, how you feel after having written it and whether there is something you are taking away from that piece of writing.  Studies have shown that commenting on the feelings you experienced while writing and after writing not only will help you in discovering yourself but can also help you map your journey as a writer and give you insight on how you work. 

I hope you lose yourself in the writing, that time flies by and you find you just want to keep writing all the time. And I hope you discover the power of stories that come from deep within because that those are the stories you don’t need to work so hard to create.

And finally before we start, I’d love to learn more about you. Why do you write? What writes itself through you? Why did you come to this website? What do you expect to find here? What do you feel you need? and of course anything else you’d like to share with the other participants about yourself would be wonderful to read. You can do that by writing an introduction in our Welcome group.

Welcome and I hope you have a good journey.
Yeşim