About me
Hi, I’m Cami Ostman
Cami is uniquely qualified to coach you into your best writing. With 20 years of experience helping people name and put words to their experiences, Cami can partner with you to help you do the best, most honest writing of your life.
Cami Ostman holds a B.Ed. in English from Western Washington University and an M. S. in Marriage and Family Therapy from Seattle Pacific University. She is the author of Second Wind: One Woman’s Midlife Quest to Run Seven Marathons on Seven Continents, co-editor of Beyond Belief: The Secret Lives of Women in Extreme Religions, a contributor to Adventures Northwest and to her own blog, 7marathons7continents.com. Cami is also the founder of Red Wheelbarrow Writers, a community of writers in Western Washington and a blogger for psychologtoday.com. She has been profiled in Fitness Magazine and her books have been reviewed in O Magazine, The Atlantic, and Washington Post. Having spent fifteen years as a psychotherapist, and now serving as a writing coach and editor, Cami specializes in helping authors “figure out what they really have to say.” She is currently working on a novel and on her second quest memoir.
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NaNo Rebels: A Walk on the Nonfiction Side
Writer and Teacher
I work with writers to bring their best work into the world, always keeping in mind that ultimately, we’re authoring our own lives!
My story:
A few years ago, I published my memoir, Second Wind: One Woman’s Midlife Quest to Run Seven Marathons on Seven Continents (Seal Press), and something interesting happened: the actual process of writing the book changed the way I thought of myself. As I wrote words like: “No one needed to give me permission to celebrate myself . . . I had my own internal locus of celebration,” they became true.
In fact while I was writing, I found myself repeatedly asking, “What do I wish to be true about my main character (me) in this chapter?”—and as I composed my manuscript, I discovered that I was able to inhabit the words I was writing.
I’ve long been interested in how the words we use to describe ourselves actually serve to CREATE our identities. My experience in writing supports this, as does my work as a psychotherapist for the past fifteen years. When I wrote about turning myself into a runner on a quest to do a marathon on every continent, I became a runner on a quest to do a marathon on every continent.
I’ve heard other writers describe how their own storytelling, whether fiction or nonfiction, changes their sense of self. For better or worse, as we write, we become! To me this principle feels powerful: By the words we choose to use in our writing, we influence the way we, and our lives, are defined.
