What would you write if you knew you would die soon? Today’s Guest Blogger, Rebecca Lawton, took the plunge and explored what it means for our work to be “so essential that we must complete it before we leave this earth.” Becca’s Cool Writing Tips during the month of August were such a success, she’s repeating the series in September. So, if you missed out in August, you have another chance to be inspired by Becca Lawton’s Cool Writing Tips. Becca opened the second week of Cool Writing Tips with this provocative quote from Annie Dillard: Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you write if you knew you would die soon? Becca responds as if she were having an intimate conversation with Annie: Ms. Dillard, I’m so…
Category: Guest Bloggers
Rubbing Aladdin’s Lamp
“The past,” Phillip Lopate says, “is an Aladdin’s lamp we never tire of rubbing.” Guest Blogger Norma Watkins studied with Phillip Lopate. The following is what she gleaned working with the master of the personal essay. The hallmark of personal essay and memoir is its intimacy. [Links below on memoir writing.] In a personal essay, the writer seems to be speaking directly into the reader’s ear, confiding everything from gossip to wisdom: thoughts, memories, desires, complaints, whimsies. The core of this kind of writing is the understanding that there is a certain unity to human experience. As Montaigne put it, “Every man has within himself the entire human condition.” This kind of informal writing, whether a short piece or a book of memoir, is characterized by: self-revelation individual tastes and experiences a confidential manner humor a graceful style rambling structure unconventionality novelty of theme freshness of form freedom from stiffness…
Joys and discoveries when re-reading books.
Do you feel guilty when you re-read a book (on purpose, not because you forgot you previously read it)? Juan Vidal wrote a thoughtful essay about the joys and discoveries one makes when re-reading. “Returning to a book you’ve read multiple times can feel like drinks with an old friend. There’s a welcome familiarity — but also sometimes a slight suspicion that time has changed you both, and thus the relationship. But books don’t change, people do. And that’s what makes the act of rereading so rich and transformative. The beauty of rereading lies in the idea that our engagement with the work is based on our current mental, emotional, and even spiritual register. It’s true, the older I get, the more I feel time has wings. But with reading, it’s all about the present. It’s about the now and what one contributes to the now, because reading is a…
What about “They?” Arlene Miller answers.
Guest Blogger Arlene Miller, The Grammar Diva, gives us a sneak preview into her recently published second edition of The Best Little Grammar Book Ever! If you are a member of the nerdy world of grammarians, you know that there are “controversial” grammar topics. One of those is the use of the Oxford comma. Another is the use of the singular they. I use the Oxford comma, and I don’t use the singular they. But both these issues are up to you. Let’s talk about the singular they. They is a pronoun. A pronoun is a word that stands in for a noun. We know that they is third person plural. Third person singular pronouns are he, she, and it. Now how many times have you said, or heard someone say, Everyone is bringing their book to the meeting or something similar? Let’s pick that sentence apart: This is an issue of…
Ingram Spark? Bookbaby? CreateSpace?
Guest Blogger Shirin Bridges sheds light on Ingram Spark, BookBaby, and CreateSpace. The following is an excerpt from Shirin Bridges’ June 24, 2016 blog post on Goose Tracks. I was recently asked for the pros and cons of Ingram Spark vs. BookBaby. The answer, I quickly realized, is a complex one, greatly dependent on the particular publishing goals for the book. I also thought that in any decision tree, Amazon’s CreateSpace would have to rate a mention. So what follows is my attempt to delineate the decision tree I would adopt in choosing between these three services . . . [Note from Marlene: For the full post, please go to Shirin’s informative blog, Goose Tracks]. How important are bookstores to your sales strategy? If NOT VERY, skip to 4. If VERY, keep reading. Self-published authors will find it almost impossible to get wide distribution in bookstores. Period. The reasons are legion but boil down to two words: workload and risk. Most self-published authors…
Call the Authorities!
Guest Blogger Elaine Silver: How to show your expertise in your writing. Think about any book that you have read that really grabbed you. Take some time to read parts of that book again with the idea in mind of writerly authority. Once you start looking for it, you will be dazzled at the facility with which the author commands the story. You can write like that too. Let’s examine the word authority. What feeling do you get reading the word “authority?” Do you feel rebellious, like you don’t want to listen to someone else? Do you feel like you want to immediately say “no” to a request? If you answered yes to these questions, then you think of authority as something that subjugates you. Or conversely, when you think of authority, do you feel secure knowing that someone else knows more than you do about something? Do you envision…
Ellen Sussman likes her world shaken.
Guest Blogger Ellen Sussman writes about the novelty of new places and how this opens interesting problems and possibilities for fictional characters. When I travel abroad I expect to be surprised. Life shouldn’t be the same in a foreign country. I want to shake up my world, to expose myself to new tastes and sounds and smells and voices. I want to see things that are so novel, so startling, that my eyes open wider. That experience – of expanding my horizons while traipsing across a new horizon – should not only transform me while I’m gone, but it should deliver me home again in some new, improved way. High demands for a little vacation. My sister travels to the same resort in Florida every year. She doesn’t want what I’m looking for. She wants food she’s familiar with, experiences that don’t challenge her, sheets with the same thread count…
Guest Blogger Margie Lawson: Give the reader a visual.
If you have written with me (Marlene), or if we have worked together on a writer/editor collaboration, you have heard me say “give the reader a visual.” I’m so excited to discover Margie Lawson and her thoughts about visuals. The following is an excerpt from her May 20, 2016 guest blog post on Writers In The Storm. Margie Lawson – Guest Blogger: Most writers know Show Don’t Tell, but sometimes they think they’re showing when they are telling. Here’s my oh-so-easy check. Read the sentence that you think SHOWS the reader something. Ask yourself —- What’s the Visual? You may be surprised that the sentence doesn’t provide a visual. Wondering why I care? Wondering why I think you should care? Most readers have a video playing in their mind of the scene they are reading. If a writer TELLS instead of SHOWS, the reader’s screen goes blank. No imagery. No power. When…
What are you telling yourself?
Guest Blogger Ted A. Moreno writes about description versus story and making up stories: Do you have a habit of making up stories? We know some people who have a tendency to exaggerate the truth. We think we know what is real. But do we really? Something that happened to me this morning: I was out for my morning walk when a police officer pulled up alongside of me in his car. He asked me my name and for my ID. He said that they had been looking for a missing person that had the potential of hurting themselves and that I fit the description. I gave him my ID, told him I wasn’t the one he was looking for and he drove away. Now, let me tell you a story. I was taking a walk, minding my own business, when a police car passed me. I nodded to the…
Components for a great story – by Guest Blogger Francis H. Powell
Guest Blogger Francis H. Powell writes about creating a great story. Confronted with a blank screen, poised to tap away, how to go about creating that great story. Perhaps one primary consideration is the theme. Maybe the theme should be a ghostly shadow within the confines of the story, not screaming at the reader, but there none the less. It may make the reader think about their own lives, there might be a moral to be learned, but a writer should not take on the role of a preacher. Then there has to be a plot, all the conflict or struggle that the main character or characters go through. The conflict should develop in intensity and excitement, reaching some kind of climax. If you are writing a novel there may be a number of conflicts interspersed, but a short story will have only one principal conflict. Moving onto story structure, …