rouppgroupink and rouppwrites welcome you
Are you a writer?  No doubt about it.
You scribble down a few words - you think about writing and you wonder, am I good enough to write?  Sure you are.

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about:  University of Wisconsin/Madison Writers Institute:  2006, Poetry: won first, second and hon. mention; 2007; Poetry: won second place; 2008 Poetry:  won first place, Fiction: hon. mention.  2008:  highlandparkpoetry.org won first place for non-resident poetry, featured, with another winning poet, on a half hour Comcast local cable show, feted at a reception for winning poets at Highland Park Bank 4/5/08, invited to read at Cork and Canvas in Highland Park on 4/12/08.  2007 invited to bring in a funny long poem and direct three actors interspersing improv in poetry at Piven Theater Workshop, Evanston, IL, PUBLISHED:  Free Verse, Creativity Connection, Chicago Tribune, will hold discussion of Poetry Magazine April 2008  issue at Starbucks in Highland Park Renaissance Shopping Center on Central St.

Sue Roupp is devoted to helping writers achieve their true poetential.  and her poetry has won many awards.  She also has a New York agent waiting for revisions to her book, is VP of Off Campus Writers Workshop (about 200 members, 60 year old writers group located in Winnetka, IL). 
For years she has taken classes at Piven Theater Workshop in Evanston, IL.  and is now in the advanced classes at Piven. In 2007 she had the pleasure of being asked to bring in a poem to perform.  She brought in a silly performance poem and wound up slicing and dicing the stanzas into dialogure interspersed with improv and directing three actors in performing it.  She is a writing coach and gives workshops under rouppwrites These workshops are threefold: teaching poets and other writers how to perform their work; leading writers through exercises that allow them to identify what the underlying issues are they are writing about, then through use of poetry techniques writers are able to put these issues into concise, readable words with a deeper meaning and fun workshops talking about poetry and learning to write it - these are aimed at children and adults.  She also gives
interactive lectures on poetry and plays leaving participants revved up and excited about what they have heard and learned.

Robert Pinksy, former U.S. Poet Laureate, in his poem The Anniversary "Whence is our courage?  Is what holds us together a gluttonous dreamy thriving? Whence our being?" Louise Gluck in her poem "Retreating Light" tells us "Creation has brought you great excitement, as I knew it would, as it does in the beginning."  Frank Bidart in Advice to the Players goes on "Because existence is willy-nilly thrust into our hands, our fate is to make something - if nothing else, the shape cut by the arc of our lives."
  • Try taking some acting classes - they get writers to the other side of the page and you can feel what happens to characters and settings instead of just intellectually wondering about them.
  • Keep a journal - I know this is old advice but writing daily in a journal does clear out the deitrus drifting through your mind.
  • Write down images you see out your window. Then write one-word labels of each image. Like "silly" "old crab".
  • Write a very short story about your neighborhood.  Make up conflicts - imagine who the neighbors you don't know are.