“To discipline something, in the proper sense of the word, does not mean to repress it, but to train it – to encourage it to grow, and act, and be fruitful, whether it is a peach tree or a human mind.”
Ursula Le Guin
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"Talk Story" Consultations
​and Coaching 

Talk story is a method I use to help writers discover and to deepen their stories and to overcome blocks. It's a simple, effective, and collaborative process that combines storytelling and deep listening and is useful at any time in the writing process. Sometimes, to hear your story clearly, you must be heard.  Writers schedule these sessions as needed. 

Developmental Coaching  is for writers who need personalized editorial support throughout the writing process. I help you conceptualize and clarify your artistic approach, identify your audience, and strengthen the dramatic structure of a story, be it long or short form, fiction or nonfiction. Each writer also receives developmental and structural editing on excerpts of their work and on guided writing exercises. The frequency of these sessions depends on the needs of the writer, but are typically monthly or bimonthly. 

A limited number of coaching sessions are available each month. Please contact me here or at maryvolmer(at)gmail.com to inquire or to schedule a free consultation.

Query Letter Coaching is for anyone preparing to submit to a literary agent or editor. I help you craft, refine, and edit your query letters so that they are irresistible to potential editors and agents.

Seminar Style Discussion Classes for Serious Readers ​

A series of facilitated discussion courses for anyone who craves the chance to read diverse and compelling texts and then to converse deeply on the ideas, philosophies, and cultural assumptions inherent within. This is not a lecture course. Your instructors - long-time faculty members of the renowned Collegiate Seminar Program at Saint Mary's College of California - will facilitate honest, open, and respectful discussions on a wide array of topics and texts. Never mind consensus or resounding agreement. Our goal is to gain a greater, more expansive and generous understanding of history, of ourselves as human beings, and of the living and nonliving world of which we are part.  

Click HERE to discover upcoming classes and to propose topics for study and discussion.   
This community welcomes people of all races, religions, genders, ethnicities, and economic circumstance.  And, yes, all genres! 

A Few Essays On Writing 


​​"Into The Lake"

"Writing as Laborious Play"

"The Tourist, the Expat, and the Native: A Traveler’s Approach to Crafting Historical Fiction"
Art is a Spiritual Act and a Human Right.

This community welcomes people of all races, religions, genders, ethnicities, and economic circumstance.  (And, yes, all genres!) ​

AMCA Reading Series

Join us online on the second Sunday of each month at 4:00pm (pacific). 
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November 12th at 4:00pm 
A reading and discussion featuring:

Juliet Patterson, 
author of Sinkhole: A Legacy of Suicide 
and 
Tobey Hiller 
author of Crow Mind 

REGISTER HERE FOR THIS FREE, ONLINE EVENT
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Maker, Mentor, Muse was founded in 2022 by Mary Volmer, Maw Shein Win, and Dawn Angelicca Barcelona. Hailing from three distinct cultural backgrounds, generations, and spiritual traditions, we believe community is essential to building a satisfying and sustainable literary life, and that true success requires balancing all three roles: maker, mentor, muse. We are building a place where artists embrace practices that honor process, spiritual growth, collaboration, and community. Join us this April for our first course offerings. Inquire here. 

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Upcoming Classes and Workshops 

HEALING YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO THE WORK

Date: Saturday, October 28   
Time: 10am - 3pm (w/1-hour lunch break) 
Instructor: Mary Volmer
Format: In Person at Left Margin LIT 
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REGISTER HERE​
​Writing is a spiritual act, but most writing courses and workshops shy from embracing this truth. They focus exclusively on craft and marketability, ignoring the parallel spiritual development that must take place if an artist is to create works of true value and insight. As a result of the imbalance, artists become stuck, jaded, cynical, entitled. They suffer because their relationship to their work is imbalanced and unhealthy.


"Healing Your Relationship To The Work" is a course that will help transform your art practice into a sustainable way of life. This does not mean we will not struggle with frustration or blocks! Instead we will reframe our notion of “progress” and learn to see that the eddies and torrents of creativity are all necessary and meaningful parts of the process. In the course we combine craft and workshop elements, and address spiritual approaches to art making, with a diverse and flexible interfaith framework. 


 To benefit, your writing does not have to be overtly spiritual. In fact, many of the world’s most powerful artworks are imbued with the unstated presence of the divine. You need only the conviction that you have stories and poems that must be birthed, and the desire to establish a healthy and balanced  art practice necessary to tell them well.