Guest Bloggers

Choices

Guest Blogger Nancy Julien Kopp wrote about choosing a path and exploring your choice. It seems like a perfect writing prompt for the start of a new year. Nancy wrote on her blog: Life is full of choices. I think often of Robert Frost’s poem that tells us of two roads diverging in a yellow wood, and the poet said he took the one less traveled by. But don’t we always wonder if this choice would be better than that choice or another one?   For a writing exercise today, look at the four photos. Each of them is somewhere you can walk. Two have water while the others are filled with green trees. What is your choice? Where would you prefer to walk? A, B, C or D?  Choose one and write a paragraph or several paragraphs about the photo you liked best. Study the photo and ask yourself a…

Guest Bloggers

Fiction. Nonfiction. Creative nonfiction.

What are you writing these days? Some people find it difficult to concentrate. Others are filling pages with poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and creative nonfiction. It might be a perfect time to chronicle what is going on in your life . . . if you write this as a journalist would . . . just the facts, that’s nonfiction. If you add vignettes and personalize your story, that’s creative nonfiction. Here’s what guest blogger Nancy Julien Kopp says about fiction, creative nonfiction, and fictional narrative. Most people are aware of the difference between fiction and nonfiction. Fiction is made up, nonfiction is true. There is, however, a differentiation between nonfiction and creative nonfiction. Nonfiction is generally expository in that it describes, explains or is informative. If you wrote about leaves in a forest in Montana, your readers would probably learn a great deal about the topic. You would write it as…

Guest Bloggers

Writing About Difficult Times In Your Life

Guest Blogger Nancy Julien Kopp writes about a topic I am passionate about: Healing through writing. WRITING ABOUT DIFFICULT TIMES IN YOUR LIFE When life hands us situations that hurt, we sometimes want to push it away, hide it in a closet. It’s too hard to bring it forth and try to deal with the misfortune. There are so many events in our life that create deep wounds and leave scars—the death of a spouse, losing a child, being in a terrible accident, losing a home to fire or a tornado, a difficult romance and break-up. The list could go on and on. I believe that writing about whatever happened has benefits. It is cathartic for the writer and can be a help to readers who have gone through a similar situation. You’re a double winner if you aid both yourself and those readers who have been through something difficult….