Guest Blogger Daniel Ari writes about Sense And Specificity: The Soul of Great Writing Great art is about balance. Okay, great art is about a heck of a lot of things. But one thing that makes great writing stand out from the superfluity of all writing is that it strikes a balance between emotional abstraction and concrete specificity. We want to read about things like devotion, honor and transformation. But the actual words devotion, honor and transformation aren’t concrete enough to sweep a reader away. As I discussed in “How to Make Your Poems Stand Out: Advice From a Reader” for Writer’s Digest online, abstract nouns can’t be grabbed, and they don’t grab readers. And what’s worse, they tend to come in flocks. Once a writer writes honor, then love and respect want to come in. Then deep, forever, and mutual are at the door, having chased away all the beautiful…
Category: Guest Bloggers
Guest Blogger Alison Luterman writes about the “shadow”
Guest Blogger Alison Luterman talks about “how to be true to the complexity of intimate relationships, while at the same time protecting the dignity of all concerned.” The other night in essay class, a student read her story aloud. Behind her moving account of her mother’s death, I could sense something missing. “I can tell from your description what a wonderful woman she was, ” I said. “But there are hints here and there about things that might have been difficult as well.” “Yes, that’s true,” she admitted. “We got into some tangles, but I didn’t know how to write about that part. Maybe I wasn’t ready.” I knew exactly what she meant. I also struggle with how to be true to the complexity of intimate relationships, while at the same time protecting the dignity of all concerned. I don’t have any one-size-fits-all answer. I just know that the weight…
Bella Mahaya Carter writes about courage, love, and intuition
Guest Blogger Bella Mahaya Carter writes about courage, love, and intuition. In fall 2014, I attended Hay House’s I Can Do It! Conference in Pasadena, California. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision to attend what was being advertised as a “mind, body, and spirit retreat.” The conference featured luminaries in the fields of self-help, personal growth, and spirituality. Looking back over that experience, I felt like a kid in a candy store with a twenty-dollar bill in my pocket. I’d been scared to go. I was just coming off a year of grief and debilitating anxiety. I’d felt like I couldn’t breathe, and an irrational thought that I’d quit breathing and drop dead in public haunted me. So the thought of being at a venue with three thousand people unnerved me. Why was I going? I asked myself. What was I looking for? What did the words I Can Do It!…
. . . something from The Twilight Zone . . .
Guest Blogger Steve Fisher writes. . . (and I love it) . . . Writing. We love it; we hate it. Anyone who has put pen to paper, or in this modern age, fingers to keyboards, understands that sentiment. It’s a process both joyous and painful. When it works—that is, when our brain clicks into gear and coherent thoughts manage to escape the gray matter—there’s no more exciting feeling. When emotions actually materialize on the page, or screen, leaving you feeling drained in the best of ways, it’s the best of all possible worlds. On a rare occasion I have found myself laughing at something one of my characters said or crying because of something they did. And I didn’t feel like the mystical God creating those words or actions that I was at that moment. Once, I actually walked out my door and ran into my characters. People who…
The Write Spot Blog Seeks Guest Bloggers
Writers! Need to build your cred? . . . or, as they say, need to build your platform? One way is to be a guest blogger. The Write Spot Blog seeks guest bloggers. ~600 words, something inspiring and informative for writers. Contact Marlene if interested. mcullen – at – comcast.net
Guest Blogger Jordan Rosenfeld reveals secrets of successful writers.
Guest Blogger Jordan Rosenfeld: 5 Habits of Persistent Writers (That you can adopt, too). Show me two equally capable writers and I’ll show one who succeeds at her publishing dreams and one who struggles. What’s the difference between them? And no, the answer isn’t luck, or “being born with it.” The writer who succeeds persists. What does this mean, precisely? We hear a lot about persistence–is it just a numbers game, where if you keep submitting the same story or novel eventually it will just magically land? No, that’s blind hope. Persistence is passion + commitment + practice. Below I’ll walk you through seven strategies for becoming a persistent writer, and I promise you the answer will not include self-immolation or losing sleep. Find a Passion Root: One of the most amazing things about rose bushes is that they are notoriously difficult to kill by chopping or cutting. You can prune…
Suffering from a creativity dry spell? Look to your nighttime dreams.
Guest Blogger Susan Audrey writes: I didn’t begin paying attention to my nighttime dreams until my dreamscapes started showing up in my waking life. The first instance was fairly benign: I dreamt of a man with dark hair, wearing a white, button-down shirt, standing to my right and talking on a pay phone (yes, this was awhile ago). And the next morning, after I dropped my kids off at daycare, I saw this exact scene: the same man, same hair, shirt, and pay phone. This really got my attention! I found out later that these are called precognitive or premonition dreams –– they show you the future. I wasn’t sure why this was happening at this time in my life. I was in my thirties and a single mom of two grade schoolers. It wasn’t until years later that I learned that our nighttime dreams are more abundant and more…
How does someone become frightening to one’s self?
Guest Blogger Ted A. Moreno: How You Became What You’ve Become I’m learning a new song on my guitar: “Africa” by the band Toto. One line of the lyrics intrigued me: “I seek to cure what’s deep inside, frightened of this thing that I’ve become.” It’s never really explained in the song what that means. How does someone become something that is frightening to one’s self? Seems to me that it doesn’t happen all at once, of course. It’s more like the frog peacefully floating in increasingly hotter water until he is boiled, never aware of what’s happening so he never jumps out. Kind of like death by a thousand cuts. Perhaps a good word would be entropy: the gradual decline into disorder. How does someone become someone that they are not happy with? It happens one extra cookie, or additional scoop of ice cream or portion of food at…
Keep Calm, Carry On And Let the Magic Begin
Guest Blogger Karen Hart reveals secrets about how to Keep Calm, Carry On and Let the Magic Begin: How To Breathe Life Into Your Work Through Revisions. During my thirties, I wrote my first novel, Butterflies in May. It tells the story of a 17-year-old high school senior, Ali Parker, who discovers she’s pregnant. I gave her characteristics, created a family, a best friend and boyfriend, and described where she lived. I effectively created a situation and characters, and the mechanics were in place. After nine months of work, I had a novel, but the story was flat. It was discouraging after all that effort, but in the words of Hemingway: “The first draft of anything is shit.” The goal in writing a novel (or any body of work) is to capture the magic, give it a heartbeat and touch your readers in a relevant way. Revising and editing are…
Just What Does an Editor Do for Me, Anyway?
Guest Blogger Mark Burstein elucidates about the different types of editors. “Editor” is a catchall term for a host of different functions in the publishing business; here we will look at six different kinds. It’s an amorphous field, one in which our roles and definitions are moving targets. Sometimes we are hired by the author, sometimes by the publisher. Often the same person can take on diverse roles for different clients, or even the same client. So, in more or less chronological order: The first, at the top of the food chain if you will, is known simply as the “editor,” but is also called the “book,” “project,” “literary,” “substantive,” or “developmental” editor. S/he is the person who is in charge overall, helping with organization, the story arc, consistency, features, structure, transitions, “assets” (images), permissions, and possibly even advising on design and layout. S/he is also your friend, ideal reader,…