Cover to Cover celebrates Women's History Month with Savannah author and writing teacher Rosemary Daniell. She joins St.John Flynn in the studio to talk and take listener calls about her latest book Secrets of the Zona Rosa: How Writing (and Sisterhood) Can Change Women's Lives (Owl Books, 2006).

From the Book Jacket

For twenty-five years, Rosemary Daniell – Southern belle, successful writer, and tireless champion of female empowerment – has led Zona Rosa, a writing workshop for women founded on the premise that writing can be not only a creative challenge but a tool for healing. Here, she shares the secrets of Zona Rosa: practical advice and home-grown "Exorcises" that help you face and think through writing issues and life in general.

You'll learn how to avoid the "13 (Possible) Boo Boos" that plague everyone's writing. You'll bring yourself to "Write About the Thing I Most Don't Want to Write About" and will learn how facing the difficult past can lead to breakthroughs. You'll discover "The Emotional Tai Chi of Getting Your Work Out There," with suggestions for painlessly sending your work into the world.

Along the way, you'll meet some of the many women who have improved their writing – and lives – through the sisterhood, constructive advice, and fun of Zona Rosa. And you'll be inspired by Rosemary Daniell herself, who's weathered personal tragedy, Bad Love, and her own writing issues to come out singing. Secrets of the Zona Rosa is essential reading for any woman who writes – and who's lived a life full of stories.

About the Author

Rosemary Daniell is the founder and leader of Zona Rosa, a series of creative life-changing writing workshops attended by thousands of women (and the occasional man) over the past twenty-five years. She is the author of The Woman Who Spilled Words All Over Herself, Fatal Flowers, Sleeping with Soldiers, and four other works of poetry and prose. She has appeared on many national television and radio shows, has been featured in People and Southern Living, and speaks at writers' conferences around the country. Her awards include the 1999 Palimpsest Prize and two NEA Fellowships. She lives in Savannah, Georgia.

For more information about Rosemary, visit her website, www.myzonarosa.com.

Praise for Rosemary Daniell and Secrets of the Zona Rosa

• "Rosemary Daniell is one of the great writing teachers I have seen at work in the country."-Pat Conroy, author of The Prince of Tides
• "One of the South's best and bravest writers."-Anne Rivers Siddons
• "No one surpasses Daniell in defining that irresistible and turbulent phenomenon, of which she is the very soul, Southern womanhood."-John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
• "Daniell is a first-rate talent."-New York Daily News
• "...this liberated and irrepressible belle assures her audience that it's possible to conquer writer's block and become less of a victim, simultaneously."-Library Journal

Secrets of the Zona Rosa Live Webchat with Rosemary Daniell

rosemary: Greetings
St.John: Rosemary and I are here and waiting for your comments and questions about tonight's program. Go ahead and send us a message
St.John: Rosemary, while we're waiting for some folks to join us online, let me ask you how you think the program went tonight.
rosemary: It was wonderful, St. John -- I only wish we had had more time. But I'm sure that's always the way, yes? Then we could have talked more about the tools we use in Zona Rosa to faciliate ourselves as writers, as well as some of the stories of the Zona Ros
rosemary: ans,
St.John: The Zona Rosans...these are the members of the Zona Rosa groups. In each chapter of the book you include some of the tools you use in the workshops and some of the "exorcises" or "pilates on paper" that help with developing writing skills.
rosemary: yes, we gave credos, such as "no guts, no story," "Use the F word - Focus," "Let the Chaos Flow" (in other words, write freely without judgment), and so on. And lots more.
rosemary: Also, "I dont' need therapy, I've got Zona Rosa" -- we're always coming
St.John: With a group of "mixed" writers, i.e. writers at different stages of their craft, do these "credos" speak to everyone, or just to novice writers?
rosemary: up with more of them. In addition, we have acronyms to help us with our writing, such as "Death to (excess) adverbs," with thanks to Mark Twain
St.John: Let me post this one again--With a group of "mixed" writers, i.e. writers at different stages of their craft, do these "credos" speak to everyone, or just to novice writers?
rosemary: Some, like "Let the chaos flow," are especially designed to help new writers who may be anxious about form and structure, and think they have to write well from the beginning. I sometimes tell them Philip Roth wrote 800 pages to get the first line of one
rosemary: of his books.
St.John: Do you have any exorcises for perseverance? This is one lesson that must be very difficult to learn for aspiring writers.
rosemary: Others, like "Revision revises us," are to help us work through resistence to the revision process.
rosemary: "Move out and draw fire" is a military term we adopted to say take risks with your writing.
rosemary: And as for those of us who are experienced writers -- we still need the reminders to keep us on track.
St.John: Generally speaking, when you're writing a book, how many drafts do you go through?
rosemary: As many as it takes -- that is, until I get it right. As Hemingway said when someone asked him why he'd had a hard time with a certain story, he said "I couldn't get the words right."
rosemary: But I had a deadline to write SECRETS, so I wrote it in one year while still leading Zona Rosa workshops. This meant working through every Sat and Sun, and using every scrap of time I could find.
St.John: Changing the subject somewhat, what is it about the act of writing that helps us work through emotional issues?
rosemary: The act of putting our feelings and experiences on paper, and putting them on paper has a distancing effect. And every time we revise that distance increases. That's the reason for our credo, "Revision revises us."
St.John: Has it been your experience that women in the group have been able to move beyond tragedies in their lives through the Zona Rosa process? What is their reaction to the outcome?
rosemary: Absolutely. Some of their stories are told in Chapter Six of SECRETS. Yet despite the devastation -- for example, Ann's son was killed in 9/11 -- the sound we hear most often in Zona Rosa is laughter. They have written through their pain to peace.
rosemary: And in the process, also written beautiful pieces of literature.
St.John: Although Zona Rosa is built around the "power of the pink," do you think the same healing can be achieved by an all male Zona Rosa group?
rosemary: We have a group with men in Savannah, and the men in it are wonderful I think a certain kind of man gravitates towards Zona Rosa -- a man who is into feeling as well as thinking -- and I don't see why such men shouldn't be able to have a wonderful Sub Ro
rosemary: sa group. It would have to be led in the right way, though.
St.John: Well, our time is up. Rosemary, thank you for being the guinea pig for the Cover to Cover live chat feature. I hope in months to come this chat time will allow us to continue the discussions begun during the broadcast and will also give listeners who do
St.John: n't want to call in the opportunity to ask questions without being on the air. Thank you for being with us Rosemary.
rosemary: What an interesting format, St. John. And thank you for inviting me to participate!
St.John: Good night. And remember, home is where your books are.