Guest Blogger Ron Salisbury talks about MFA – Master of Fine Arts writing programs. “Everywhere I go, I’m asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”–Flannery O’Connor Flannery may be a little tough but not far wrong. What will you do with your MFA in poetry or fiction or non-fiction or children’s literature? Is it different from what you thought you would do before you started that MFA program? The proliferation of Master of Fine Arts Writing Programs in the United States (some 200 as of this writing) requires new crops of students every year; cannon fodder, inductees to charge over the lip of the trench into the guns of Admission Departments and Student Loans without much chance of becoming that famous author, a goal which…
Category: Guest Bloggers
The perfect evil character by Francis H. Powell
In this guest blog post, Powell discusses the perfect evil character. Readers love an evil character, literature is strewn with them. I would say an interesting evil character is often multi-faceted, never straight forward, they themselves are often in a way, victims. Who can forget the Stephen King character Jack Torrance, who has slipped into insanity, a danger to his wife and child as well as other people who cross his path. He is interesting in that he himself has been victim, having watched his father, who he adored, abuse his mother. There is this baggage, along with the fact that the hotel where he and his family reside over a bleak winter is slowly taking control of him. Evil characters are full of character flaws, Jack Torrance, for example, has a major problem with alcohol. There are a whole range of character flaws a writer can imagine. Many evil…
Guest Blogger Pat Tyler: About writing, a writer, and freewrite workshops
Guest Blogger Pat Tyler: About writing, a writer, and freewriting workshops For me, writing is like a shot in the arm. When I write alone, my mind becomes infused with new ideas. When I write with others, I’m included in a circle of writers who inspire me, enlighten me, challenge me, beckon me to take up the gauntlet, put on the gloves, step away from the ropes, dance my strategic dance of words, and punch my critic until he stays down at the count of ten, knocked out by my knuckle-punch of powerful, gutsy words. In recent years I became interested in publishing, but I soon learned that it’s not publishing that makes a writer – it’s writing that makes a writer. It may sound over-simplified, but I know this for sure: it’s the physical act of placing pen to paper and refusing to remove it until blood seeps from…
Become The Writer You Want To Be
“Writing is an act of courage.” — Ta-Nehisi Coates “I always consider the entire [writing] process about failure, and I think that’s the reason why more people don’t write.” — Ta-Nehisi Coates Ta-Nehisi Coates’s latest book, Between the World and Me, is a “searing meditation on what it means to be black in America today.” The New York Times Review Upon receiving the 2015 MacArthur ‘Genius’ Award Winners, Coates said, “When I first got the call from the MacArthur foundation I was ecstatic. . . if anybody even reads what I’m doing, that’s a great day.” Between the World and Me is a finalist for the Kirkus Prize for nonfiction. Between the World and Me is in the form of a letter to Ta-Nehisi’s 14-year-old son. He speaks of the dangers of living in a country where unarmed black men and boys are dying at the hands of police officers….
Guest Blogger Rayne Wolfe: Trust your first readers.
Guest Blogger Rayne Wolfe, Author of Toxic Mom Toolkit, talks about the pain and acceptance of comments and criticism when others critique your writing. “Listening to criticism with an open heart is hard, but it always pays off.” Learning to Love Our First Readers I was in a classroom at the Catamaran Literary Conference in Pebble Beach, my first writing conference ever, and a fellow writer was ripping my work apart. I could feel the shame rise up in my chest, coloring my neck and face with a dark blush. Sitting there among very accomplished writers, including literary prizewinners, even college professors who were all certainly better writers than me, my ears began to ring. Nerves. This fellow writer, who ran her own popular writing conference each summer, was picking apart a chapter from my new book. After publishing my memoir, Toxic Mom Toolkit in 2013, I was tackling a…
Is pre-writing for you?
Guest Blogger Becca Lawton writes about pre-writing. Excerpt from Becca Lawton’s 8/31/15 blog post, about her time in Canada on a Fullbright Scholarship to research her book: Writing a novel is such a huge undertaking that I’m amazed anyone writes more than one . . . I’m completing a submittable draft of my second novel . . . Now that I’m dragging my sorry carcass to the finish line, it’s fun to look back at this post written September 29, 2014, soon after the start of the project, when I was just starting to pour all my hope and energy and learning into it: I just completed sixty pages of prewriting for a second novel . . . They’re filled with answers to questions like, “Who are the main characters in your book?” and “What are their wants in every scene?” and “Is the setting recognizable yet unique?” I’ve modified the questions…
Jennifer Lynn Alvarez: The Book You Were Born to Write
Guest Blogger Jennifer Lynn Alvarez writes about The Book You Were Born to Write. I recently read The Martian, by Andy Weir. It’s a unique, thrilling, and detailed survival story described as “Apollo 13 meets Cast Away.” I thoroughly enjoyed the book, in spite of all the math equations and the use of the metric system (English Lit. major here). But I’m not writing about Andy Weir to review his wonderful book, I’m writing about him because of something he said in an interview: “I love reading up on current space research. At some point I came up with the idea of an astronaut stranded on Mars. The more I worked on it, the more I realized I had accidentally spent my life researching for this story.” Andy Weir (Book Browse online interview) You see, Mr. Weir is a self-proclaimed space and science fanatic inspired by the idea of humans…
Guest Blogger Steve Fisher writes about Musical Writing
Guest Blogger Steve Fisher writes about Musical Writing Writing is a mysterious craft. Part inspiration, part perspiration. This is about inspiration. Or rather one form of it. Music. When I’m looking for a magic tonic of creativity, I turn to motion picture soundtracks. Think about some of the most effective films you have seen. Chances are they started with a great script, added competent and creative direction, exceptional performances, sublime cinematography and brilliant editing. But perhaps the crowning element was the evocative score. What would Star Wars be like without John Williams’ majestic symphonic score? How effective would Titanic be without James Horner’s haunting themes? How chilling would Psycho be without Bernard Herrmann’s staccato strings? A good film can be made great by the music. A film can also be ruined by a bland or misguided score. In deference to the filmmakers, I won’t cite examples. So what does that…
The Often Over-looked Magic of the Nose
Guest Blogger Hoby Wedler writes about: The Often Over-looked Magic of the Nose: Exploring Smells Around You I was born blind. Growing up as a blind child forced me to pay closer attention to my nose than perhaps most people learn as children. I use my nose as a method of observing my surroundings, for navigation, to note whether or not food has spoiled, and most importantly to smell, taste and describe food and wine. It is important to note that not all blind people pay as close attention to their noses as I do. Many of my blind friends walk right past unique aromas that I easily pick up on. Thus, my love for thinking about aroma certainly does not stem specifically from my blindness. While I love describing aromas of many things, I notice whether they are pleasant, unique, off-putting, etc. I will use this opportunity to describe…
There was a smell of Time in the air . . .
Excerpt from The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury:There was a smell of Time in the air tonight. What did Time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you wondered what Time sounded like, it sounded like water running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down upon hollow box lids, and rain. Time looked like snow dropping silently into a black room or it looked like a silent film in an ancient theatre one hundred billion faces falling like those New Year balloons down and down into nothing. That was how Time smelled and looked and sounded. Marlene’s Musings: I love the idea of writing what Time smells like. . . sounds like . . . looks like. . . Your Turn: Choose an item, an object, a thing, that interests you. . . what does it smell like? sound like? look like?