Get comfortable in your chair, couch, or wherever you are sitting . Both feet flat on the floor. Wiggle, squirm, move around until you are sitting comfortably. Take a deep breath in through your nose and release slowly through your mouth. Feel the floor under your feet. Your chair is firmly supporting you. Rest your hands comfortably in your lap, or on your thighs or on the table. Sit back and relax into your chair, feeling completely supported and totally comfortable. Take a deep breath in, hold and let go. Let go of your worries, Let go of your concerns. Take a nice deep breath in. Feel the breath go down, past your lungs, into your belly. Hold and really whoosh out. As you go through this relaxation, take deep breaths as you need to and really whoosh out as you exhale. Perhaps wiggle your toes and feet, rotate your…
Amy Zhang and your scraps of writing
My dear friend, Arlene Mandell, asked a question the other day that I’ve been pondering. What happens to our scraps of writing? What can we do with our journal writing and our freewrites? I just read “The Secret Life of a Teenage Author” by Amy Zhang in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Inspiration for Writers. Zhang’s honesty and confession led me to want to learn more about her. Her blog, “A Story of a Dreamer,” is inspiring and delightful. The October 10 post begins, “If You Give an Author Some Chocolate …to encourage her to revise, she’ll eat it. She’ll eat it slowly because there is an art to eating chocolate bars. She’ll try to revise while holding the chocolate bar in one hand, but realize that she can’t revise without proper music. If you let an author look for proper music, she’ll decide that her normal revising playlist simply…
Twelve Steps to Successful Writing
Are you the type of person who needs to clear your desk before getting down to the business of writing? Me, too. I have to pay the bills, sort, organize, stack things on my desk. Satisfied, but not ready to get to writing, I look around. Oh, I really need to do the laundry, clean the bathroom, clean the floor, check the refrigerator, look outside, get a drink of water. Sometimes it seems I’ll do everything except write. One year I participated in NaNoWriMo for the month of November. I loved it. This year I’m going to participate in Write Nonfiction in November (WNFIN), founded by Nina Amir. But I know I’ll only be successful if I plan ahead. Here are Twelve Steps to get to that writing we so want to do. 1. For the next two weeks, get caught up. Get organized, file those pieces of paper that…
The Sun Magazine
Submissions – The Sun Magazine We publish essays, interviews, fiction, and poetry. We tend to favor personal writing, but we’re also looking for thoughtful, well-written essays on political, cultural, and philosophical themes. Please, no journalistic features, academic works, or opinion pieces. Other than that, we’re open to just about anything. Surprise us; we often don’t know what we’ll like until we read it. We pay from $300 to $2,000 for essays and interviews, $300 to $1,500 for fiction, and $100 to $500 for poetry, the amount being determined by length and quality. We may pay less for very short works. We also give contributors a complimentary one-year subscription to The Sun. We purchase one-time rights. All other rights revert to the author upon publication. We’re willing to read previously published works, though for reprints we pay only half our usual fee. We discourage simultaneous submissions. We rarely run anything longer…
Natalie Goldberg talks about writing practice
From an interview in The Sun with Natalie Goldberg, November 2003: A writing practice is simply picking up a pen — a fast-writing pen, preferably, since the mind is faster than the hand — and doing timed writing exercises. The idea is to keep your hand moving for, say, ten minutes, and don’t cross anything out, because that makes space for your inner editor to come in. You are free to write the worst junk in America. After all, when we get on the tennis courts, we don’t expect to be a champion the first day. Writing is an athletic activity; the more you practice, the better you get at it. The reason you keep your hand moving is because there’s often a conflict between the editor and the creator. The editor is always on our shoulder saying, “Oh, you shouldn’t write that. It’s not good.” When you keep the…
I thought I would never . . . Prompt #18
Another prompt inspired by essayist Susan Bono. I thought I would never learn to love ____________.
I learned about . . . Prompt #17
Today’s prompt inspired by Susan Bono. I learned about ________from ___________. Go. Now. Write.
I want to tell you how . . . .Prompt #16
I want to tell you how ______________changed my life. Prompt inspired by Susan Bono. Fill in the blank. Write for 12-15 minutes about how something or someone changed your life.
Simple Structure for Building the Essay by Susan Bono, Guest Blogger
Continuing with Guest Blogger, Susan Bono, here are building blocks for writing personal essay, or memoir. Character: you Problem: give yourself a problem Struggle: problem creates conflict Epiphany: after struggle, a flood of new understanding Resolution: what you do differently as a result Many essays begin with a clear, straightforward statement of intent. All essays have an implied thesis and should have a clear angle —a particular way of approaching and narrowing the subject matter. For example, notice how the following statements could shape your narrative from the start. I want to tell you how ______________changed my life. (Universal statement: this is the basic scaffolding for every personal essay) I learned about ________from ___________. I thought I would never learn to love ____________. We’ll continue this exploration of personal essay and memoir over the next few days with intriguing writing prompts suggested by Susan Bono.
What is personal essay? Susan Bono, Guest Blogger
When you’re writing personal essay or memoir, it’s helpful to keep these words by Vivian Gornick in mind: “Good writing has two characteristics. It’s alive on the page and the reader is persuaded that the writer is on a voyage of discovery.” (Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story) Remember, too, that readers want to feel as if they know WHY you are telling your story. It’s not enough for the incidents you’re describing to be exciting or scary or hilarious. Your readers want to know how those events changed you. At the heart of every personal essay is this basic purpose: “I want to tell you how ______ changed my life.” When you attempt to communicate that intention, you are helping your essay become a “quest for understanding and information.” (Lee Guttkind, founding editor of Creative Nonfiction) Once you understand that personal essay is what Tristine Rainer calls a…