…the heart…and the learned skills of the conscious mind… make appointments with each other, and keep them, and something begins to happen. Mary Oliver A Poetry Handbook Whether you are someone who sets out to write poems, essays, stories … Continue reading →
In 1992, my colleague Christi Killien and I published Writing in a Convertible with the Top Down with Warner Books. It is a book of correspondence between the two of us about writing, the craft tools we’d learned and the … Continue reading →
An interesting email arrived one day recently — a young man from Chicago was hoping I’d take a look at 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More, his new e-book of prompts for writers. Having written … Continue reading →
I often hear from people eager to share their experience as writers with Writing It Real subscribers. I write back to them all with interest in how their experience can clarify aspects of the writing life as well as inspire … Continue reading →
[Writing It Real subscriber Tina Traster used a time of great change in her personal life to build a bridge from her work as a newspaper journalist to making money with her passion for writing personal essays. This week we … Continue reading →
I was introduced to Diane Lockward’s poetry as a member of a Yahoo group dedicated to poets helping one another publicize their work. I read and very much enjoyed her collection What Feeds Us. A 2006 Quentin R. Howard Poetry … Continue reading →
This year, I was introduced to the Espresso Book Machine at a Northwest bookstore and learned there were three of these machines in Western, WA, all of them not too far from where I live. Not too long after that, … Continue reading →
Because we experience life chronologically, without a clear beginning, middle or end, memoirists tend to write in an episodic way — “this happened, then that happened, and after that… ” — and are often overwhelmed by a huge array of … Continue reading →
[We continue this week with more sage advice from a talented memoir author and psychotherapist who has guided many in writing their life stories. We think you will make good use of her idea for moving ahead even when your … Continue reading →
[Early in her newest book, The Power of Memoir: How to Write Your Healing Story, Linda Joy Myers describes well our feelings as memoir writers: This scenario is a common one with memoir writers — the struggle between the desire … Continue reading →
Creative nonfiction writer and novelist, Judith Kitchen shares with us a fruitful exercise she created for those of us searching for new ways to use photographs to inspire our writing. A photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of … Continue reading →
[This week we offer a second exercise from Dinty W. Moore, author of The Accidental Buddhist and Crafting the Personal Essay and editor of Brevity magazine. –ed.] Too often, we write about other people because we think we know something … Continue reading →
[This week we are proud to present the first of two exercises that Dinty W. Moore, author of The Accidental Buddhist and Crafting the Personal Essay and editor of Brevity magazine, uses to help his students work in creative nonfiction. … Continue reading →
[This week we are starting a series of postings with poetry and creative nonfiction writing exercises offered by writers who teach. No matter what genre you favor, try the exercises they describe, and you will most certainly surprise yourself with … Continue reading →
I am pleased to post this interview with author Jan Vallone, whose memoir excerpt “Perspective” appeared as our article last week. It is always a pleasure to correspond with authors about their experience, process, hopes, desires, disappointments and successes and … Continue reading →
[The following is a chapter from Jan Vallone’s memoir Pieces of Someday. The speaker is a lawyer and 44 -year-old mother of two who longs to become a writer and a teacher of writing. To make the career change, she … Continue reading →
[This essay appeared in The Summerset Review in 2005. The honesty of the author as she investigates her post-MFA-in-Creative-Writing life will resonate with many of us who dream of a life in which our writing is our main focus, a … Continue reading →
I recently came across notes I’d taken while working on The Writer’s Journal: 40 Writers and Their Journals. I’d long relished the journals of Emerson and Thoreau and liked reading about how the transcendentalists, including Louisa May Alcott, shared their … Continue reading →
It isn’t easy for us to write up to the standards we demand of ourselves when we are writing about those we love who are no longer with us. The more we wish to honor them and the life we … Continue reading →
This week we are proud to post “My Mother, the Queen,” our first place-winning essay in Writing It Real’s 2010 Spring Contest. I think you’ll find the author’s use of an extended metaphor to describe her mother both poignant and … Continue reading →
After I read Kristin Henry’s poem “Release,” I was drawn to reread it many times over the days I was reading contest entries. I admired its embedded rhymes (“back away./ Her airy body; delirium-like, but true. I’ve/heard them, too) and … Continue reading →
I am proud to present Martha Sarkissian’s place-winning essay. When I read this essay about making a trip to where the author’s mother had grown up, I was impressed with the way she organized her essay around her short stay, … Continue reading →
Recently, I met Beckie A. Miller online and learned that her writing career began with the need to write about loss. This week in our series on writing grief, I am sharing her first published essay, a recent humorous essay … Continue reading →
Writing one’s way through grief is a process that helps us integrate our loss into our interior life. Writing about loss, we face life without the physical presence of someone we loved dearly. Having written a memoir about the loss … Continue reading →
A few months ago, Writing it Real subscriber Leslie Wake suggested that she interview me about the writing of my memoir, A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief. We began an email correspondence that resulted in … Continue reading →
When guest judge Anna Quinn selected Sindee Ernst’s essay as our Winter No-Contest Contest winner, she wrote, “A wonderful piece. Writer uses specific sensory detail beautifully to evoke feelings of leaving one’s childhood home and discovering another. Strong ending.” Sindee … Continue reading →
So often as writers we know we have captured something in our drafts and have brought the work as far as we can at the moment, but sometimes we miss seeing what our writing is leading us toward. That’s when … Continue reading →
Meg Hannah House won third place in this winter’s Writing It Real No-Contest Contest for her personal essay “He Was Surprised And So Was I”. Our contest was designed so that entrants wrote in response to words they came across … Continue reading →
A saying goes: Readers pick your current novel if you impress them on the first page, and they’ll buy your next novel if you wow them on the last page. Though all readers enjoy an impressive beginning, the impact of … Continue reading →
Over the last few years, I have been getting to know retired Seattle Times journalist Ross Anderson and his wife, Mary Rothschild, a retired Seattle Times editor. Since moving from Seattle to Port Townsend, the couple has made many contributions … Continue reading →
Career journalist, Ross Anderson, worked for over 30 years at the Seattle Times, covering everything from the police beat and courts to commercial fishing, though most of his time was spent writing about politics, serving as chief political writer, congressional … Continue reading →
Last week we posted an interview with Harmoni McGlothlin, writer and writing enthusiast, whose website is connecting writers and offering publishing opportunities. This week, she adds her viewpoint on writing strong characters to our fiction article archive by looking into … Continue reading →
After being asked to be a judge for a creative nonfiction contest at Notes & Grace Notes, an online site for writers, I read the editor’s mission statement and was impressed with the venue for writers seeking peer response and … Continue reading →
As the publishing industry moves online, you may have ordered books on your computer or gone on your local library’s website to request books or an inter-library loan. But would you ever consider reading a book on a computer or … Continue reading →
All of us are in front of computers more than we ever imagined we’d be. Though we often talk about longing for time to curl up with a book, we still find ourselves instead in front of a screen. I’ve … Continue reading →
Melissa Hart’s memoir Gringa: A Contradictory Childhood is the story of growing up between the polarity of her parents’ worldviews and the harsh judgment of a dominant culture and surviving. As reader, I was engaged in this tale from the … Continue reading →
Writing poetry does take a certain frame of mind–one in which the poet realizes that small things hold great emotional meaning. We have to trust that whatever comes to mind and heart can help us begin poems. The following exercise … Continue reading →
William Wordsworth famously defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and Emily Dickinson explained the sensation of poetry this way, “If I read a book and it makes my body so cold no fire ever can warm me, … Continue reading →
This week during National Poetry Month, William Mawhinney offers us an account of the way sound is at the root of his poetry practice. His books, Songs in My Begging Bowl, which appeared in 2002, and Cairns Along the Road, … Continue reading →
Giving Attention to Sentence Construction and to Locution In this last installment of the series on paying attention to the sound your words make on the page, we will discuss the use of interesting (to the ear) sentence variety and … Continue reading →
This week we’ll examine more techniques of making meaningful sound on the page to carry emotion and momentum. Onomatopoeia The term onomatopoeia comes from the Greek for “word-making.” It means the employment of one or more words to imitate, echo, … Continue reading →
Remember Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven“? Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some … Continue reading →
An essential element for good writing is a good ear: one must listen to the sound of one’s prose. — Barbara Tuchman Sound itself… is surely a signifier of mood, and thus of message… –Mary Oliver Paying attention to the … Continue reading →
What is tone? It can seem a hard element to isolate, but we definitely know it when we read it. Compare these two descriptions of the same event: The protest erupted into violence today as police attempted to keep the … Continue reading →
What is a subplot? It is a smaller story inside a larger story and it illuminates the life, times, personalities, themes and issues of the main characters, often by introducing peripheral characters and events. In novels (and in films) subplots … Continue reading →
Francois Camoin writes in “The Textures of Fiction,” a contribution to Words Overflown by Stars, edited by David Jauss, that fiction is: little bits of action to keep us turning the page, to keep us moving through the landscape that … Continue reading →
In real life, spoken language together with body language carries mountains of information and, like many if not most writers, you may find it difficult to convey the richness of this in prose. But you have already started writing dialog … Continue reading →
As humans, we are wired for empathy and vicarious living, so we easily put ourselves into stories if we can identify with what the characters are going through in the emotional and physical situations they encounter. Whether we are reading … Continue reading →
Who is telling the story you are writing? It’s an important choice because it dictates what kind of information the narrator knows, and it reveals the window through which you must tell your story to your readers. Will your story … Continue reading →
Last week we worked on getting to know your protagonist and understanding the necessity of creating a fictional dream for readers. The week before we worked on narrative line and time frame. Now, we’ll turn to developing plot and arc … Continue reading →
Last week we explored story ideas and ways to develop them by establishing a narrative line and a time frame. This week we are going to think about the story’s protagonist, his or her nature, dilemmas and settings. In following … Continue reading →
Whether you are talking about short stories by Raymond Carver, novels by Barbara Kingsolver, or sudden fiction by Bruce Holland Rogers, you are reading stories that sprang from the imagination of the authors. Although the stories may in some way … Continue reading →
These last few months, I’ve been researching for a book I’m writing for McGraw-Hill’s education department. It’s called Creative Writing Demystified and is meant for use in high school and college classrooms. Creative writing is a broad term that covers … Continue reading →
Author Joel M. Vance offers a tightly written essay on tips for writers — ones we shouldn’t forget when we are polishing our work and ones we should remember as we are focusing and developing it. Following the essay is … Continue reading →
“We are all already poets in the depths of ourselves — as our image-filled and wildly imaginative dreams show us!” David Richo in Being True to Life When I collected journal entries from contemporary writers for The Writer’s Journal: 40 … Continue reading →
This week, I am sharing my developmental editing responses to another Honorable Mention essay in our Summer 2009 No-Contest Contest. You’ll see Karen B. Call’s original contest entry, my written responses to her work and then her revised essay. You’ll … Continue reading →
Continuing in our revision diary category posts, this week we are sharing an essay by Jack Shea, one of two essays that our guest judge Brenda Miller chose as honorable mention in our recent contest. My developmental editing comments inserted … Continue reading →
Reading the draft Joyce sent to us for the Fall 2009 Writing It Real No-Contest Contest and the tweaked version, you’ll see an example of the importance of polish editing. Although an essay might be “all there” on the page, … Continue reading →
In this article, we present Lisa Kee’s winning essay from our Fall 2009 No-Contest Contest. Each entrant submitted an essay, which I read and responded to. All entrants had the opportunity to revise their essays after reading my comments and … Continue reading →
In this article, we present Julie Barker’s winning essay from our Fall 2009 No-Contest Contest. Each entrant submitted an essay, which I read and responded to. All entrants had the opportunity to revise their essays after reading my comments and … Continue reading →
With the traditional publishing world in flux as publishing houses balance the cost of printing and advertising books against their sales numbers, more and more book loving entrepreneurs are finding ways to stay abreast of readers’ changing habits and bring … Continue reading →
In Betsy Howell’s book Acoustic Shadows: Men at War and a Daughter Who Remembers Them, the author searches for an understanding of her family’s emotional legacy. After her parents’ deaths, she realizes that there is no one to tell her … Continue reading →
Betsy L. Howell, an only child, was 31 when both of her parents had died. She was drinking and upset with herself when she started to ask questions about her parents’ lives and read the family heirloom her father treasured … Continue reading →
The following is an excerpt from Acoustic Shadows: Men at War and a Daughter Who Remembers Them by Betsy Howell. At 31, after the death of both her parents, Betsy sought solace in a family heirloom–the diary of her great-great-grandfather … Continue reading →
Meg Waite Clayton’s novel, The Wednesday Sisters invites you in to the lives of five suburban young moms in the late sixties. Frankie, Linda, Brett, Ally, and Kath, want more from their lives than family and playgrounds can provide, yet … Continue reading →
Seven years ago this October, Kurt and I launched Writing It Real. It would have been Seth Bender’s 27th birthday, had he not died in December, 2000 in a snowboarding accident. The magazine’s first article was “A Special Birthday,” explaining … Continue reading →
Many of us have a connection to place and want to use research about that location’s founding, settlement, history, flora and fauna in our writing. Eileen Apperson’s essay about Los Tulares provides a good example of how love of place … Continue reading →
In graduate school, at California State University-Fresno, Eileen Apperson began what was to become a longer creative non-fiction project when she wrote one short essay about the eradication of Tulare Lake, which was once the largest fresh water lake west … Continue reading →
This essay, which won an American Jewish Press Award, originally appeared in the April 2004 Hadassah Magazine, April 2004. It is included in a collection of essays by Sandra Hurtes, On My Way To Someplace Else, that will be out … Continue reading →
The following conversation with essayist Sandra Hurtes helps us all realize that we have it in us to pursue the dream of publishing our essays. We need to stick with it, listen to others, and find the publications that are … Continue reading →
This week’s article by British author Jo Parfitt recounts the story of her early writing success and extracts the elements of that success for others to emulate. Getting a book published does not have to depend on who you know … Continue reading →
Barbara Graham’s essay about the birth of her granddaughter, Isabelle Eva, and the changes it made in her and her family are not only the subject of this wonderful essay but also the inspiration for a whole anthology of writings … Continue reading →
Earlier this year, Writing It Real contributor Steven Winn wrote me that Barbara Graham, a former San Francisco Chronicle colleague of his, was publishing a collection of essays by women writers on grandmothering. He wondered if I would be interested … Continue reading →
[This essay was adapted by the author from her book Naked, Drunk and Writing: Writing Essays and Memoirs for Love and for Money] For all its charm and sometimes apparent aimlessness, an essay has a skeleton, an underlying structure that … Continue reading →
I have recently completed one more semester of mentoring graduate student Kathy Lockwood in her Creative Writing program at Alaska Pacific University. Here is a third article from our series of exchanges about writing poetry. Just before Kathy sent this … Continue reading →
Last week we posted an interview with memoirist Sue William Silverman. This week’s article is an excerpt from her new book, Fearless Confessions: A Writers Guide to Memoir, and is reprinted here with the permission of the author and University … Continue reading →
Memoirist Sue William Silverman’s guide for memoir writing is hot off the press this month. Fearless Confessions is immensely useful and absorbing. Its tone is warm, patient, helpful and reassuring, and it is itself an example of its lessons — … Continue reading →
As I continue to mentor Kathy Lockwood, who attends Alaska Pacific College in Anchorage, I grow and learn by considering her poems and her readings of the published poems she studies. Just as I did in April of this year … Continue reading →
I’ve been to your web page and read: ABOUT INDEXES Sheila Before I met you this winter, Katherine, I had never spoken to an indexer, not even the ones some of my publishers employed to make the indexes for my … Continue reading →
This essay is excerpted from <em>Off-Kilter: A Woman’s Journey to Peace with Scoliosis, Her Mother and her Polish Heritage</em> with the author’s permission. It is my pleasure to offer you this sample of the book’s excellent essays — each one … Continue reading →
This week we present an interview with author Linda C. Wisniewski. Her book Off Kilter: A Woman’s Journey to Peace with Scoliosis, Her Mother & Her Polish Heritage accomplishes what many of us wish to accomplish when we are writing … Continue reading →
“Walking to School” is an essay that is very close to being completely satisfying. I want to share the essay and the comments I sent Nancy in our recent No-Contest Contest to provide the experience of workshopping an essay using … Continue reading →
I am pleased to present the second place winner in our spring 2009 Writing It Real No-Contest Contest. Mary Oak has woven her childhood longings and adult experience into a rich tapestry in the service of informing many through her … Continue reading →
Kathy Krause’s personal essay “The Hershey Bar Incident” entertains as well as reminds readers of something very important–how many times as adults we make promises to children and then don’t come through, thus eroding the admiration the children have for … Continue reading →
The first time I hold my daughter’s daughter I feel so sad. I don’t remember feeling this when her sons were born. It is a strange feeling, the wrong emotion for this happy time, but I can’t help it. I’m … Continue reading →
Ever since I started writing in earnest and working with other writers, I’ve been curious about why one chooses fiction for one story and non-fiction for another. Most of what I write is drawn from personal experience so for me … Continue reading →
Caroline Arnold has been a contributor to Writing It Real, and recently, she sent me an essay about how one of her early children’s books began as gardening observations with her children. We will be posting an excerpt from that … Continue reading →
In this slightly abbreviated excerpt from another of author Elaine Partnow’s introductions, we see an argument at work that informs as it asks us to consider the absence of women from lists of notable playwrights. Partnow has put her book … Continue reading →
Elaine Partnow wrote this introduction for The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Your True Age, which she co-authored with her sister Judith Hyman, Ph.D. You will see the work a book’s introduction can do for managing readers’ expectations of how a … Continue reading →
I started out in life as an actress. Around my 32nd year, I was depressed. I had been getting great reviews on my theater performances in LA, but I was not getting hired for films. I had little parts in … Continue reading →
Voice is one the most essential features of successful writing; if we fail to create an authentic, credible voice in our work, that work will fail — in spite of other virtues it may have. However, voice is often referred … Continue reading →
This school term, I have been mentoring Kathy Lockwood, a student enrolled at Alaska Pacific University, where she is doing independent study in writing poetry. Very recently, she sent me an email with a letter attached describing her lack of … Continue reading →
When I think about how I began cultivating my writer’s life, I realize had been doing so even before I knew what I was doing. But once it began a more conscious process, about a year later, I became overwhelmed. … Continue reading →
Chantelle Osman recently approached me about sharing information about her work as a screenwriter and producer with Writing It Real subscribers. Those of you interested in pursuing acceptance of screenplays for production will enjoy the hit of energy you’ll get … Continue reading →
It is with pleasure that we post our third place winner in Writing It Real’s 2008 No-Contest Contest. Nicki narrates a Christmas morning in a way that goes beyond Christmas memories. She does a fine job of helping us see … Continue reading →
I enjoy “White Bird Morning” by Mai Lon Gittelsohn for many reasons. The poem situates me in the familiarity of an early Sunday morning and then takes a turn into territory that is new to me. It isn’t long before … Continue reading →
Mardi Link’s essay is a wonderful example of how narrating a story about a time you found something important to you allows you to weave themes of sadness and joy together into a full experience for the reader. The details … Continue reading →
Jack Heffron is one of the most versatile writers I know. I’ve read his short fiction, creative nonfiction, books on writing, books that he has ghost written and books that he’s edited (including my own). Recently, I read some of … Continue reading →
Embarkation by Meg Files The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. –Marcel Proust We believe we are prepared for this trip: all-terrain shoes, tiny clotheslines, mesh-sided shirts, new underwear, Columbia shorts, … Continue reading →
How do writers decide what to write about? In “Death on a Quiet Street“, by Jack Heffron and John Boertlein, Cincinnati Magazine, April 2008, Jack Heffron writes: Last September, I was having dinner with my friend John Boertlein when the … Continue reading →
[This article first appeared in Lizard, Victoria University’s Professional Writing and editing program’s magazine. The University is in Melbourne, Australia where Meg Files did a Doris Leadbetter Teacher Exchange between Pima College and VU’s Diploma Professional Writing and Editing. –ed] … Continue reading →
Our new President is a writer, which focuses national attention on trusting in the power of words. It helps those of us who write from personal experience re-invest in the importance of what we do as we write, hoping to … Continue reading →
This week I got a note from a student who said she was looking forward to taking my advice about writing more this year if she could only figure out how to stop working 60 hours a week. I had … Continue reading →
Love And Hate On Night Watch By Katrina Hays Originally published in Sea Stories Journal, Winter 2008 Offshore sailors have ridiculous and sublime ways to spend their time. One of these exercises in necessity and boredom is the night watch. … Continue reading →
I met Katrina Hays this past summer at Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers’ Writing Workshop’s (RWW) graduation day discussions and ceremony. I was there to talk about how students in the graduate low-residency writing program could choose to work on … Continue reading →
Shortly after reading Margaret D. McGee’s gentle, focused book Sacred Attention: A Spiritual Practice for Finding God in the Moment, I emailed her with some questions about her writing and about publishing in the spiritual genre. She graciously wrote back, … Continue reading →
When author Margaret D. McGee moved with her husband David into a house in the woods on the Olympic Peninsula, she started keeping a nature journal. As she formed the practice of writing short entries a few times a week, … Continue reading →
This time of year we cope with a lot of activity. Social engagements and gift shopping, worrying about how to spread a gift buying budget around and the need to travel distances or entertain out-of-town family sweep away our writing … Continue reading →
[From What I Thought I Knew, Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing, Inc., 2008] Faint light is leaking through the bedroom mini-blinds, but there’s no good reason to get out of bed. It’s late winter in Southern Indiana. The sodden ground is blotched with … Continue reading →
What I Thought I Knew is a gorgeous collection of life-, love- and spirit-affirming personal essays. In the preface to her book, Barbara Stahura says it this way: Sometimes, I wake up early in my grown-up bed, windows open around … Continue reading →
In 1988, while I was living in Berkeley with my husband Kurt, who was on a computer network assignment, I came across a book: The Enneagram: An Ancient system for Understanding Yourself and Others in Your Life,by Helen Palmer. I … Continue reading →
In July, Nina Soifer sent three poems into the Writing It Real No-Contest Contest. I was very taken with “Buttons,” a poem that evokes specific childhood time the young poet spent with her grandmother: Buttons Sometimes when I look at … Continue reading →
[This week we present the second place winner in our first No-Contest Contest. The work Nicole Janeen Jones sent in moved me very much. Most of the essay was fluid and kept me engaged in the weightiness of Nicole’s subject … Continue reading →
This article appeared on May 26 2008 among the article archive on the valuable NAWW.org website. Having met Penny several years ago at the Whidbey Island Writer’s Conference, I already admired her energy and support for writers. Her information in … Continue reading →
Recently, I heard from author Linda Collison in response to a Writing It Real e-mailing. Linda and I had met years ago during a visit my husband and I made to the Big Island in Hawaii. She and her husband … Continue reading →
After Rodney Merrill received my answers to his questions about writing and my motivation to write, he sent me an interesting letter about his writing process and his knowledge of what those who study writers say. And he asked me … Continue reading →
Last fall, doctoral candidate Rodney Merrill sent me a questionnaire about my approach to writing. He was surveying many writers while researching for his dissertation in the area of social constructionist views on writing. I was very taken with his … Continue reading →
Earlier this year, I submitted a story to Glimmer Train, a fine literary magazine that boasts, “Each quarterly issue presents about 260 pages of literary fiction—eight to twelve brand new stories by luminaries and fresh new voices making their way … Continue reading →
When Judith Kitchen, who is Assistant Program Director of Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop, suggested I might want to read a paper by graduating MFA student Hilary Schaper on organizing a collection of personal essays, I was delighted. I … Continue reading →
According to a Japanese Shinto tale, Enchin, a priest from Nara, was told in a vision to look for the clear water origin of the Yodo River. After a long search, he stumbled upon a place deep in a forest … Continue reading →
Author Stuart Dybeck was the final judge for the 2006 G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction. I imagine his delight when he read Naomi Benaron’s original and moving collection Love Letters from a Fat Man. How could he not … Continue reading →
When writer Mimi Schwartz hears a story during a trip to Israel that corroborates the one her late father used to tell, she is compelled to conduct an ambitious research project about her father’s birthplace, a village where, he said, … Continue reading →
Built of timber over the years from 1601 to 1626 as a residence of the Tokugawa Shoguns, the Nijo Castle in Kyoto is preserved as a UNESCO World Heritage site. I walk in the July heat toward the building’s large … Continue reading →
In this exercise, we are going to build an essay, piece of fiction or a poem with inspiration from fiction writers Ron Carlson and Lisa Shea and poet Bill Matthews. You’ll start, without knowing where this might lead, by imitating … Continue reading →
One way to tackle subjects you may not feel up to handling is to learn from the strategies of writers who tell stories and/or evoke issues through the use of dialog alone. Their stories are often very short, striking the … Continue reading →
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant by Emily Dickinson Tell all the truth but tell it slant— Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With … Continue reading →
[This week’s article continues the interview Sheila did with writer Nahid Rachlin for the May, 2008 AWP Chronicle. Part one Sheila What advice do you have for those writing from painful political and family backgrounds? Nahid My advice is that … Continue reading →
This article originally appeared in the AWP Chronicle, May, 2008 Nahid Rachlin has published four novels, Jumping Over Fire, (City Lights), Foreigner (W.W. Norton), Married to a Stranger (E.P.Dutton), The Heart’s Desire (City Lights), and a collection of short stories, … Continue reading →
“In 1833, British anatomist Sir Charles Bell published a book whose premise was that the very existence of the human hand proved the existence of God.” So opens Arnold (Arnie) Arem’s book In Our Hands: A Hand Surgeon’s Tales of … Continue reading →
When my sister came to visit me this spring, she brought along her boss, Rob Roy, a former Olympic ski coach who lives in Bend, Oregon where he hikes, skis, and develops green building and affordable housing for seniors. I … Continue reading →
In Lucy Rector Filppu’s journaling classes for parents, men and women gather together to write, cry, laugh, listen, discover, and to learn about themselves and support one another. They arrive in class hoping to find themselves as parents — but … Continue reading →
“After Marisa’s first seizure, when the two of us were in the hospital, the nurse told me I was doing a great job, and that I was a wonderful mother.” I read the opening of Betsy MacWhinney’s essay and immediately … Continue reading →
Mary Zelinka opens her essay “Grooming” with a statement that lets us know up front that she is going to tell us an emotional story: “I wanted to hate Papa Burke, but by then I loved him too much.” I … Continue reading →
“Becoming a Woman of Color” by Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor offers a satisfying and moving read. A lyric essay in structure, it is built in sections that each begin with a command: Imagine, Remember, Picture. The symmetry between beginning and ending the … Continue reading →
Those of us committed to seeing personal experience in print often consider our journal entries a valuable source and form for literature. Usually, we are thinking of mining our own journals and compiling selected entries, but the three books I … Continue reading →
This week we are posting an excerpt from Ellie Mathews’ memoir The Ungarnished Truth. The excerpt is a kind of a how-to essay. Ellie details the winning recipe she entered into the 1998 Pillsbury Bake Off Contest, telling us how … Continue reading →
This year, I have had the delightful experience of working with Tarn Wilson, who is finishing up her MFA this spring from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainer Writing Workshop. Writing It Real subscribers have already benefited from her article on keeping … Continue reading →
The following exercise presented by Writing It Real in Port Townsend Writer’s Conference faculty member Susan Rich is from a poetry-writing workshop she presented at our 2007 writers’ conference. We publish it this week as a finale to our celebration … Continue reading →
Last year, poet Susan Rich, a Writing It Real in Port Townsend Writers’ Conference faculty member, told conference goers that she was asked to become a Board member for Whit Press in Seattle. She was pleased about helping a press … Continue reading →
This week, in honor of National Poetry Month, we are proud to share an article by Writing It Real in Port Townsend Writers’ Conference faculty member Meg Files I have lived in three countries, in eight states, in fifteen cities, … Continue reading →
With poetry, we mourn the passage of time, celebrate connections, yell out at injustice, cry from the pain of unrequited love and exclaim our joy in love and gratitude. Over the years, I have known I would start poems because … Continue reading →
If you’ve been identified as the one in your family, neighborhood or group of colleagues who writes, you may find yourself called upon to create writing for projects you hadn’t imagined setting out to do. One such request could be … Continue reading →
Although trained as a clinical social worker and as a Certified Public Accountant, Kate Kelsall is currently writing and speaking and inspiring many with her twice weekly blog. Kate has Parkinson’s disease (PD) and through her efforts, many others with … Continue reading →
This week, Jack Heffron, writer, editor and faculty member for Writing It Real In Port Townsend’s annual late June writer’s conference, shares “Dot the Dragon’s Eye,” Chapter Seventeen in his instructional book The Writer’s Idea Workshop: How to make your … Continue reading →
Winter is one of the birthday seasons in my family. Among those birthdays, my late father’s comes February 20 and then mine, March 6th. Growing up, I marveled about how both he and I were Pisces, when we seemed so … Continue reading →
People have told me that fear of public speaking ranks high among the biggest fears we have. I know from my experience as a poet and writer who has given and attended readers for almost 30 years, that reading our … Continue reading →
Thelma Zirkelbach, who won an honorable mention in a previous Writing It Real personal essay contest, has a talent for evoking those she is close to. In this winning essay, she writes about her mother as she is today and … Continue reading →
Our second place winner this time around is from Lebanon. Her teacher at the Beirut Evangelical School for Girls & Boys submitted several of her students’ essays. I was delighted to have chosen Nour’s essay as a winner and especially … Continue reading →
Our winning essay this winter is an account of events the year the author was 15. Her use of simple short sentences is especially effective for writing about childhood trauma and for reminding us about children’s disenfranchisement. More of my … Continue reading →
Writing It Real contributor Janice Eidus’ newest novel, The War of the Rosens, is the story of 10-year-old Emma Rosen, a thoughtful girl who is writing poetry amidst the anger, confusion and angst of her leftist and atheist father Leo, … Continue reading →
You may have read that since 1976, Lake Superior State University in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has published a yearly list of words/phrases to ban from the Queen’s English. This week, the school released words chosen from over 2000 nominations on … Continue reading →
After all the gift giving, charitable donations and holiday trips away this time of year, you’ll find the free resources listed below particularly attractive. Each link has inspiration and information to help you fill the well of your creativity. Stock … Continue reading →
In How I Learned to Drive, Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, the main character enters, stands center stage and addresses the audience. “Sometimes to tell a secret, you first have to teach a lesson,” she announces. The lesson the play … Continue reading →
This past spring, writer Jody Bower created a testament to the close circle of friends she has shared her adult life with. In writing about them, for them and for herself, she evokes a kind of organism made of lives … Continue reading →
Do you have a memory of an early piece of writing you did? A memory that has with it the feeling of enjoyment–that you really liked being able to articulate your experience and thoughts in words? I remember sitting down … Continue reading →
On November 1-4, I attended the Bedell Nonfiction Now Conference at the University of Iowa. The conference’s mission is to explore the history, present, and future of nonfiction in its myriad forms, and, as you might expect, the conference was … Continue reading →
I thought Ma was my own birth mother until I was about twelve years old. And why wouldn’t I? When in one of her buoyant moods, she boasted that my good looks, smarts, generosity, even my willfulness were owing to … Continue reading →
Rodney L. Merrill contacted me for an interview about writing from personal experience. He explained that for his doctoral thesis, he is conducting a “research study on how skilled personal essay writers go about writing personal essays and how this … Continue reading →
Writing that rivets its readers requires evocation of place, situation, and at least one person to inhabit the place and deal with the situation. This is true for all writing, even the most lyrical, imagistic or self-reflective. In her novel … Continue reading →
Each year, I spend the month of February teaching writing in Tucson, AZ, and each year I learn about authors fostered by the ongoing program at Pima Community College. The following interview is with an author who credits the Wednesday … Continue reading →
Years ago, I read Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom, a man who was Morrie Schwartz’ college student at Brandeis University. The narrative is about weekly visits to see his former professor, who is dying. What is so inspiring in … Continue reading →
For many of us, fall brings leaves to rake and sometimes to burn. It brings memories of visiting cider mills and eating sweet doughnuts as we sipped fresh apple cider. This week, take a moment to describe fall days either … Continue reading →
I’ve been talking with parents these past few weeks about how their kids are doing with their return to school and all the newness: new teachers, new classrooms, new classmates, new textbooks, new notebooks, and new clubs to join. I … Continue reading →
I spent a lovely day this week reading three books of poems I’ve wanted to sit down with for some time: The Love Hunter and Other Poems by Meg Files, Boxing the Compass by Holly J. Hughes, and Small Knots, … Continue reading →
I spent my summer writing a book called Perfect Phrases for Writing the College Application Essay. My effort was to come up with sentences (sometimes questions, sometimes statements) to help those who have to write the application essay focus and … Continue reading →
Barbara Sjoholm‘s memoir in essays, Incognito Street: How Travel Made Me a Writer, Seal Press, 2006, evokes a 1970s-style Bohemian travel life and will arouse memories in many readers. Those who knew they wanted to write when they were young … Continue reading →
This summer, Writing It Real in Port Townsend Writer’s Conference faculty member, Susan Rich suggested we do an article on Floating Bridge Press, a community-based nonprofit, of which she is a member, that has published 17 books of poetry and … Continue reading →
This week, Writing It Real presents the first place winner in our Spring Personal Essay Contest. Following the essay, Sheila has posted comments on what she admires in the way the essay works. Out of the Trenches and Chasing Butterflies … Continue reading →
We present “In Debt” by Marcia Wall, which took second place in Writing It Real’s Spring 2007 Personal Essay contest. Sheila’s comments about how and why the essay succeeds are printed following the essay. In Debt by Marcia Wall The … Continue reading →
We present here the 3rd place essay from the Writing It Real Spring 07 Personal Essay contest. I have included some comments following Jan Henrikson’s winning essay. Head Size 8 by Jan Henrikson “Head, Size 8,” Tony said gravely as … Continue reading →
I have been reading Sebastian Matthews’ book, In My Father’s Footsteps: A Memoir, about growing up the son of the late poet William Matthews. I was fortunate to have William Matthews as my thesis advisor at the University of Washington. … Continue reading →
I spent my summer writing a book called Perfect Phrases for Writing the College Application Essay. My effort was to come up with sentences (sometimes questions, sometimes statements) to help those who have to write the application essay focus and … Continue reading →
This week, as we continue our series of interviews with authors who have self-published, I had the pleasure of interviewing Sam Turner about This Might Help, the book he and his wife Phyllis put together. Like author Janice Urie, who … Continue reading →
There are a lot of small-world stories in the writing world. Here’s one of mine: In 2000, I was asked by Writer’s Digest Books to judge personal essays. From over 3500 essays, for first place, I chose an essay by … Continue reading →
This week, we have the second in our series of interviews with writers who have self-published. Each of these writers reports on the successful experience they have had. Adina Sara published her collection of poems and personal essays about being … Continue reading →
This week we begin a series on self-publishing, the outgrowth of interviews I’ve been doing with authors who have taken a variety of routes toward self-publishing. Cindy La Ferle and other authors have shared details from their publishing experiences in … Continue reading →
Following my reading of and writing in response to Impassio Press’s anthology In Pieces, An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing, I began a book American philosopher Ken Wilber’s A Brief History of Everything. The rich effects of reading each continue to … Continue reading →
What definitions, thoughts and dreams I’ve snagged from In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing, edited by Olivia Dresher for Impassio Press. In her introduction, Dresher, a fragmentary writing enthusiast, introduces fragmentary writing this way: “lack of a traditional beginning … Continue reading →
Sheila Olivia, I was introduced to your press when one of your authors, Sandi Sonnenfeld, asked me to write a blurb about her book, This Is How I Speak, which is a memoir in diary form. I have been … Continue reading →
Art is a lie that tells the truth. — Picasso A fantasy: I want to write A Diary of Lies. Actually, it’s already in my head, written in invisible ink. But I could just as easily call it A Diary … Continue reading →
In this week’s article, we interview John Nemerovski, who writes about technological subjects for a non-technical audience. His online articles, and now podcasts, are filled with personal anecdotes, quirky observations and bits of his own life including activities with friends, … Continue reading →
Lifetime journal keeper Ruth Folit combined her passion for journal keeping with her technological experience to create LifeJournal, a software program to help those who journal using their keyboards and computers. It wasn’t too long before she decided to create … Continue reading →
Writing about a significant experience or ethical dilemma: A part of our mind, the part that was trained in school, feels we should know what we have to say before we write it down. However, in writing the personal essay … Continue reading →
Most of us writers collect quotes from writers on writing. Whether we hang them above our desks, write them in journals, put them in our email signatures, or use them as epigraphs for our own writing, they remind us of … Continue reading →
Last week we discussed poems in Rebecca McClanahan’s impressive collection, Deep Light. This week, we hear from her as a skillful user of figurative language and enjoy the exceptional opportunity to learn how to stretch our metaphor making muscles. The … Continue reading →
Reprinted with permission of Writer’s Digest Books from Writing Personal Essays: How to Shape Your Life Experiences for the Page by Sheila Bender, Writer’s Digest Books, 1995 About The Three-Step Response To help the writer understand what kind of contact … Continue reading →
Editor’s Note — To read some of Michael Dylan Welch’s Tanka poetry, click here You’ve heard of haiku, but did you know that it’s a spring chicken compared with another genre of short Japanese poetry? The rich heritage of this … Continue reading →
Editor’s Note — to learn more about Tanka poetry, click here to read Michael Dylan Welch’s accompanying article. Missing Poems this is but a moonless night, and my pillow has no tear stains— it is in the grocery aisle amid … Continue reading →
Being tall is not all bad. Sure your hit your head a lot, and people are always asking you to get something breakable down from high places or rescue a cat. But my height has served me well a time … Continue reading →
I met Martha Grace Duncan and became aware of her work when she made a research trip to Seattle for a personal essay she was writing about her stepmother. When I first learned she’d come to research for a personal … Continue reading →
This week, we begin a series about the work of writer and Emory University law professor Martha Grace Duncan. In her essay and book writing, Martha combines her passions for law, teaching, and memoir. This memoir originally appeared in The … Continue reading →
“Partners” by B. Lynn Goodwin was one of ten honorable mentions in this year’s inaugural Writing It Real Personal Essay Contest. The essay is followed by response comments Sheila sent to the essay’s author, as promised for all ten honorable … Continue reading →
This excerpt from Allison Gilbert’s Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents (Seal Press, 2006) is reprinted with the permission of the author. Please click here to read Sheila’s interview with her. In this … Continue reading →
Always Too Soon: Voices of Support For Those Who Have Lost Both Parents is a collection of intimate interviews about the journey traveled by those whose parents have both died. Some of the book’s contributors are famous (Rosanne Cash, Ice-T, … Continue reading →
Following this prize-winning essay, Sheila discusses the author’s way of putting description, metaphor making, example, comparison and contrast and cause and effect to good use in developing a humorous essay that clearly defines the experience of menopause and the mental … Continue reading →
Following this prize-winning essay, Sheila discusses the author’s craft and technique for creating an essay that uses imagery and details to work toward a felt understanding. A Dime in My Pocket By Kelly Sievers I scooted a chair close to … Continue reading →
Following this prize-winning essay, Sheila discusses the author’s craft and technique for creating a successful personal opinion essay. I Do, Undone by Catha J. Loomis Shocked by a message on the answering machine, I dashed upstairs and turned on the … Continue reading →
Writers are tuned into the language that people use. Most of us feel that the everyday language of the people we listen to is rich and colorful and important, even if it doesn’t stick to what our teachers taught us. … Continue reading →
I’m reading over 70 personal essays about rich human experience. The essays that came to us as entries in our contest are having a great impact on me. As I read, I move among countries, among ages, among decades and … Continue reading →
In October, my publisher’s essay spoke about the way I wrote and read poetry to help me after losing my 25-year-old son Seth in a snowboarding accident on December 27, 2000: When I finished one particular poem, I saw that … Continue reading →
Stan Sanvel Rubin’s third collection of poems, Hidden Sequel, the winner of the 2006 Barrow Street Poetry Prize, contains this opening epigraph: No, my heart is not sleeping, It is awake. Awake.” –Machado Right from the start, in the beat … Continue reading →
My daughter Emily is a Computational Linguistics Professor. One thing this means is that she spends a lot of time on the computer. She has found a way to keep a diary about her two little boys and the life … Continue reading →
Caroline Arnold graduated from Grinnell College in Iowa where she majored in art. After graduate school at the University of Iowa, she worked as an artist and art teacher for a number of years. Her writing career began in the … Continue reading →
At this past summer’s Writing It Real in Port Townsend writer’s conference, Susan Rich spoke to the conference group about building a writer’s community and finding a place in the world based on one’s passion for poetry. This week, I’ve … Continue reading →
Susan Rich taught for the Writing It Real in Port Townsend’s summer writing conference last June. At the conference, she read from the poems that were soon to be published by White Pine Press in the volume entitled Cures Include … Continue reading →
Everyone wants to help. Everyone has advice. My audiences split along the divide of wanting to know more about Louisa May Alcott, wanting to know more about me or wanting to know more about the genesis of the book (that’s … Continue reading →
From Miss Alcott’s E-mail: Yours for Reforms of All Kinds by Kit Bakke. Reprinted by permission of David R. Godine, Publisher Copyright 2006 by Kit Bakke It was a wild, windy day, very like me in its fitful changes of … Continue reading →
Miss Alcott’s Email: Yours for Reforms of All Kinds is a remarkable memoir by Kit Bakke about a political activist, mother, nurse and management consultant’s midlife review interwoven with a biography of her political and literary soul mate Louisa May … Continue reading →
Last week, we shared a chapter from Joni Cole’s book, Toxic Feedback: Helping Writers Survive and Thrive, published in 2006 by University Press of New England, Hanover, New Hampshire. This week, I talk with Joni about writing the book. Sheila … Continue reading →
Reprinted with permission of the author from Toxic Feedback: Helping Writers Survive and Thrive, University of New England, 2006 Chapter Two: Getting Feedback — Twenty-Two Years By Joni Cole One time I went with a friend of a friend to … Continue reading →
Last March, I attended the annual National Association of Poetry Therapists conference in Boston. Browsing the vendor tables, I discovered Jennifer Bosveld’s offering, The Pocket Poetry Parenting Guide. It presents a short but impressive collection of poetry for use in … Continue reading →
My son Seth Bender, to whom Writing It Real is dedicated, would have turned 31 this October 1. He died in a snowboarding accident December 27, 2000, the year he was 25. In the months following the tragedy, the only … Continue reading →
Writing from our experience gives us the opportunity to know more after the writing than we knew in the experiencing alone. When we can combine our experiencing of outer events with our experiencing of inner events, using the outer as … Continue reading →
This week, we offer a third essay by Brenda Miller, in which she skillfully uses an chance meeting to draw a metaphor that allows her to more deeply reflect upon herself as a writer. Again, the weaving of the outer … Continue reading →
Last week, we posted Brenda Miller’s essay about how making metaphor both removes us from the moment we are in and sets us more deeply into meditation, helping us know ourselves and our inner worlds. In “On Thermostats,” she once … Continue reading →
“Writing it all down,” is the phrase that ends Brenda Miller’s essay. That’s what we strive to do as writers. It is an ambitious striving, a striving that forces us to question our experiences and ourselves–can we possibly write it … Continue reading →
A few months ago, I received an email request to help spread the word about Scrap Paper Press’s worldwide call for creative writing submissions from teens. I went to the project’s website, was impressed with the effort, and posted the … Continue reading →
In a journal, writers write without knowing where their writing is going. They unload thoughts, explore obsessions, record insights and observations, and sometimes imitate other writers, noticing how their perceptions come across in the voice and sentence structures of those … Continue reading →
As a writer, I use my journal to both play with strategies I pick up from other writers’ work and test strategies I invent. In combination with observing the “show don’t tell rule” (use imagery and detail that appeal to … Continue reading →
Every time I open Yahoo on my computer, I look at the upper right-hand corner of the screen to type in what I am searching for and avoid looking at the left-hand area with its news images of death and … Continue reading →
A month ago, when I asked Writing It Real subscribers if they would like an article on technical computer issues writers face, there was a big response. Almost all the comments were about hard drive organization: Any tips you can … Continue reading →
describes a time of not writing but enjoying the garden of a rented London apartment. Her husband thinks she is avoiding her writing, but actually she is cultivating it. Sometimes writing is allowing the senses in without direction. In the … Continue reading →
Joan Weimer’s second memoir, Awestruck: A Skeptic’s Pilgrimage, just out this year, opens with a dramatic prologue: The plane is so near the ground I can make out individual palm trees, their fronds whipped into a frenzy by a tremendous … Continue reading →
I am fortunate to have the opportunity to work with people in developing their essays. Writing It Real subscriber Beth Einstein entered our spring essay contest and recently took me up on my offer to work with her essay for … Continue reading →
Recently, I read Writing Brave & Free: Encouraging Words for People Who Want to Start Writing by Steve Cox and Ted Kooser to learn how they encourage others who want to write. As always with books on writing, I am … Continue reading →
It isn’t an easy path to write from personal experience. There are no guarantees that editors will want to publish what we have to say and no guarantees that we will successfully find a way to say it, publication or … Continue reading →
A lot of books claim they can help authors who are in a hurry to get paid for their writing. This one is enthusiastically subtitled Your Guide to a Profitable Writing Career Within One Year, and it certainly does include … Continue reading →
In their book, Writing True: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction, writers and writing professors Sondra Perl and Mimi Schwartz offer a straightforward, encouraging look at how any of us can write our own moving and insightful accounts of … Continue reading →
Most of the time, I am one of the most annoyingly politically correct people I know. I am so PC that even the word “tolerance” strikes me as a tad intolerant. But there is one minority group I can’t stand, … Continue reading →
When I judged Mary Ann Payne’s essay submitted for Writing It Real’s first 2006 personal essay contest as our runner up, I wrote to her with comments about her ending and ideas for strengthening it. Here is the essay she … Continue reading →
This essay is reprinted here from Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed by Mimi Schwartz by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright 2002 by Mimi Schwartz. Available wherever books are sold or from the University of Nebraska Press, 800.526.2617 … Continue reading →
This article originally appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle, October/November 2001 I made up my mind at the beginning of my writing life not to write about my family and friends, since I want them to remain my family and friends. … Continue reading →
This week’s article begins with an excerpt from Mimi Schwartz’s memoir, Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed. Entitled “Jimmy and June, ” this second essay in the collection illustrates the way Mimi Schwartz writes about ordinary life to “get it just … Continue reading →
Sheila Last week, in Writing It Real, I shared a section of your memoir, On Austrian Soil: Teaching Those I Was Taught to Hate with readers. I think the section we posted demonstrates the way your memoir developed from a … Continue reading →
The following is excerpted with Sondra Perl’s permission from Chapter 2, “History Becomes Real”, of her memoir, On Austrian Soil: Teaching Those I Was Taught to Hate, published in 2005 by State University of New York Press, Albany, NY. Writing … Continue reading →
Already familiar with Rebecca McClanahan’s essays about her family from her book Riddle Song (as well as her other Writing It Real articles), I was delighted when I found that a new and selected volume of her poems was coming … Continue reading →
I’ve been teaching poetry writing since 1981, when I began working on my Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Washington. As a teacher, I have continually applied all that I learned through trial and error creating and revising … Continue reading →
Last week, you read Michael Welch’s instruction on writing haiku. This week you’ll learn more about haiku and publishing from a transcript of my email interview with him. It includes the treat of some of Michael’s poems at the end … Continue reading →
Which of us has not looked intently at the markings of age in others and then looked for those markings in ourselves? Which of us doesn’t hope for some wisdom to come along with the signs of aging? Which of … Continue reading →
Writers write. A journal is way to do that, without knowing where you are going with the writing, to unload thoughts, obsessions, insights and observations, and sometimes to imitate other writers, seeing how your perceptions might come across in the … Continue reading →
If you don’t know how to start a piece of writing about a person, try remembering something that person believed. Write that belief out and attribute it to the person. What can you write that bounces off of those words? … Continue reading →
This week’s article is an essay by one of our treasured correspondents with a contest announcement for Writing It Real subscribers inspired by the essay. Janice Eidus’ essay was to have appeared in an anthology that explored the theme and … Continue reading →
We pick up where the email thread left off last week. Sheila starts: I wanted to respond to what Lisa said: “And I wanted to raise this idea about how writing has repercussions that go far beyond whether you are … Continue reading →
In the fall, I consulted with freelance, technical and creative writer, Michelle Goodman about publishing with regional presses. By way of thank you, she arranged for two other writers to join her in an email conversation with me about themselves, … Continue reading →
Here in the Northwest, despite the unusually cold temperatures we recently experienced, daffodils, crocuses and blossoming fruit trees add yellow, purple and pink to our current landscape. And under a week of consistently sunny skies, we find ourselves anticipating spring. … Continue reading →
Always take some time to read what you are writing aloud after you have finished a draft. Note the places that are hard to say or seem to go flat or inspire you. Try taking out the flat spots, extending … Continue reading →
Hannah Goodman is the author of My Sister’s Wedding, a young adult novel that addresses the effects of alcoholism on individuals, friends and families. She self-published it in 2004 (a sample chapter appears in the WIR Gallery) and now often … Continue reading →
After reading Jack’s instruction last week about narrating a day in your life to find material, you will be interested in looking into this story to find the quantity of details that come from such close observation, from the way … Continue reading →
Jack Heffron’s simple, masterful writing prompt will have you realizing how much content you have to write about in no time–well, in the time it takes to live a day and read the notes you put on paper. Taking notes … Continue reading →
On July 8, 2004, I posted an instructional exercise article, “Put Summer on the Page,” encouraging writers to use the opening of Ray Bradbury’s novel Dandelion Wine for inspiration in writing their own memories. Recently, I worked with Michelle Vanstrom … Continue reading →
Why connect the writing of poetry with an appreciation of good food? On first consideration, the juxtaposition of poems and pastries might seem frivolous. Isn’t poetry sustenance for something more than the physical body? Recently, I taught a workshop at … Continue reading →
Long time professional editor, Jerry Gross developed a widely used code of ethics for editors and book doctors. Here are his 10 points to consider when evaluating someone to work with you on your manuscript. Ten Signs Of A Scam … Continue reading →
The following essay is one of a collection of 39 essays by distinguished editors about the practical and theoretical aspects of publishing that appear in Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know About What Editors Do, edited by Jerry … Continue reading →
We’ve seen movie versions, television versions, and stage adaptations of Dickens’s famous story. We have had the story read to us and in turn have read it to others. Like people all over the world, we have been haunted by … Continue reading →
During the winter holidays and New Year’s season, I usually search my files for writing I’ve done on previous holiday seasons, just to see what I was thinking in other years. Looking through my files this past week, I became … Continue reading →
Last March, I met Sondra Perl at the National Council of Teachers of English‘s Conference on College Composition and Communication in San Francisco. We talked about her book Felt Sense: Writing with the Body and I recognized the aspects of … Continue reading →
Writing in BOOK PROMOTION newsletter, Francine shares the following quotes and biographical information about four dynamic motivational speakers and book authors: “Whatever your mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.” Napoleon Hill (1883-1970) “You become what you think about.” … Continue reading →
As you read this short story by magical realism enthusiast Tamara Sellman, pay attention to the ways in which the omniscient third person narrator reports the main character’s thoughts and ideas. Techniques of magical realism allow readers to understand and … Continue reading →
We come to journaling to record what we are doing and what we are thinking. As a writing teacher, I spend a lot of time onsite teaching and even more off-site creating lessons. When I was journaling about my son’s … Continue reading →
When he was a boy she was always painting the ceiling of his room. Once she painted it blue for a sky with lazy white clouds and faint daytime stars. And in one corner, as if just disappearing into his … Continue reading →
Viewing poetry as a gift, Edward Hirsch writes in his book “How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry: “The question poses itself as how to keep alive an interior life in the face of our own … Continue reading →
Yesterday, I saw a sign in a shop announcing Halloween items were now half off. I was shocked to realize that Halloween was now close enough for merchants to start reducing their inventory. They’d started selling Halloween goodies in August, … Continue reading →
This article was originally published by Writer’s Digest Magazine. Reprinted here with the permission of the author. I’m willing to bet my favorite pen that most people who are reading this have no idea what a book packager is. Until … Continue reading →
I am a young schoolgirl watching the early dark fill my bedroom windows. I sit at a small drop leaf desk doing vocabulary homework, folding paper long ways in half and writing the date in whichever upper corner the teacher … Continue reading →
Before I started studying poetry writing, I littered my work with the word soul. What was poetry but the soul making itself known? How else to talk when making an exploration of emotions but to use the word? John Donne, … Continue reading →
In the conversation we posted last week between Kaylie Jones and Beverly Donofrio, you read about what these two authors think about the similarities and differences between memoir and fiction. Kaylie Jones states: “…memoir becomes an exploration of the author’s … Continue reading →
In February 2005, old friends, novelist Kaylie Jones and memoirist Beverly Donofrio reunited to teach together in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. In the months before the workshops, they conversed with one another about their respective genres and the experience … Continue reading →
I once created a daily writing exercise for myself by opening the dictionary to random pages and, eyes closed, circling my finger until it landed on a word. “This is something like throwing the I Ching,” I thought. I read … Continue reading →
In 2002, Grace Jackson wanted to start a community-based literary magazine filled with the voices of her women neighbors on Bainbridge Island, WA. To find her contributors, she distributed a flier at coffee houses, bookstores and libraries near her home. … Continue reading →
Earlier this year, Hannah R. Goodman emailed me about her book, My Sister’s Wedding, a young adult novel she published in 2004 that addresses the effects of alcoholism on individuals, friends and families and asked me if I would like … Continue reading →
My Sister’s Wedding by Hannah Goodman (iUniverse, 2004) is a young adult novel that addresses alcoholism among family members and high school students from the point of view of a younger sibling who realizes her family is denying her older … Continue reading →
To write a good character, you have to imagine that you live in the character’s body and listen for his or her inner voice. Ask the character you are inventing what secret he or she most wants to keep. Decide … Continue reading →
At every conference I teach, participants commiserate about rejection notices– not only about getting them but about the insulting nature of their standardized messages. Occasionally, someone has a story of a personalized rejection or of actually having received suggestions from … Continue reading →
We benefit from writing about how something important to us became a passion. Reliving the decisions leading up to reshaping our lives around our passions and reflecting on how our efforts changed us, we learn more about our journeys. When … Continue reading →
Steven Winn, columnist and critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and past contributor to Writing It Real, tells a good story about a series of articles he wrote that were extremely popular. He was eating lunch with one of his … Continue reading →
Joanne Rocklin’s young adult novel, For YOUR Eyes Only is in the form of a young teen’s notebook. You can read an excerpt at Amazon.com to see how effectively the writing strategy evokes the main character and the world in … Continue reading →
In March, 2005, Sarah Dickerson and I were on a panel along with Boise State University’s Karen Uehling and San Francisco writer Steven Winn in which we addressed attendees at the National Council of Teachers of English’s Conference on College … Continue reading →
Beggar Woman of Naples by Max Jacob When I lived in Naples there was always a beggar woman at the gate of my palace, to whom I would toss some coins before climbing into my carriage. One day, surprised at … Continue reading →
Lucy Grealy, author of Autobiography of a Face, and five-time novelist Ann Patchett were acquaintances at Sarah Lawrence, where Lucy was legendary as a poet and inspired her classmates with her courage in facing and healing from constant surgeries to … Continue reading →
We come to journaling to record what we are doing and what we are thinking. As a writing teacher, I spend a lot of time onsite teaching and even more off-site creating lessons. When I was journaling about my son’s … Continue reading →
School is almost out and the lazy days of summer are right around the corner. Well, the days we experienced as lazy when we were kids, anyway, because for a few months our schedules were more open. Some of us … Continue reading →
Jack Heffron was my editor at Writer’s Digest Books for almost a decade, and we have been teaching colleagues for going on six years now.I still have the editorial letter he wrote to me after he’d read Writing Personal Essays:How … Continue reading →
Writing It Real is happy to post an article this week by editor and creative fiction writer Jack Heffron. “The Flowering of Rabbit Hash” originally appeared this fall in Cincinnati Magazine. Jack lives in Cincinnati where he works with Emmis … Continue reading →
From The Cartographer’s Tongue: Poems of the World Leaving Sarajevo by Susan Rich The bus driver stops to pick plums from an abandoned late summer garden, the pale blue carrier bags pulled from his bed where he sleeps underneath the … Continue reading →
This week we are very lucky to have an article about revision by poet Susan Rich, described by Naomi Shihab Nye on the back cover of her first prize-winning collection The Cartographer’sTongue as “a caring citizen of every heart-land.” Not … Continue reading →
A few years back, I received an email from Christopher Buckley requesting permission to reprint a review I’d written in an anthology of work by and about the late poet Larry Levis. I was thrilled to share what I’d written … Continue reading →
…if you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself. Also you will have betrayed our community in failing to make your contribution to the whole. — … Continue reading →
This material was originally published in the Making the Perfect Pitch: How to Catch a Literary Agent’s Eye, edited by Katharine Sands Pitch Perfect by Jandy Nelson Years ago, I received a query letter that began: “I am a Vietnamese … Continue reading →
This year Marlee Millman wrote an essay to read to her family and friends who were gathering to celebrate her 65th birthday in her hometown of Chicago. She was excited and wanted to have a speech prepared. She emailed me: … Continue reading →
So often, we believe we have to put our daytime work aside in order to write and in order to reach the place inside ourselves where writing comes from. But I believe we will be more successful at tapping into … Continue reading →
After creating an exercise from which her fiction writing students wrote stories, Meg did the exercise herself. She says, “In my story, a woman is suddenly afraid to leave a grocery store. Why? As I began the story, I didn’t … Continue reading →
“Our most promising fictional characters are obsessed,” says Meg Files, Writing It Real correspondent and author of Write From Life: Turning Your Personal Experiences into Compelling Stories. “They’re looking desperately for love or passion or parents or fame. They’re searching … Continue reading →
When I walked into an independent bookstore recently and saw Apprentice of the Flower Poet Z. on a table of new fiction paperbacks, I picked it up because of its title and then read the first of the back cover … Continue reading →
Three days ago, the weather grew suddenly cold where I live in Port Townsend, WA, and for the last two mornings there has been light snow and frost on our roofs and on the ground. This is not typical weather … Continue reading →
Last Valentine’s Day, I read an essay in The Seattle Weekly by Marilyn Meyer, a friend of mine who had raised a family in Seattle the same years I had and who, having survived remarriage and divorce a time more … Continue reading →
I am currently teaching an online course entitled Journal Like the Pros for Writers.com. Each week, participants use prompts and examples I send to them to comb their memories and observations and put words on the page that surprise them … Continue reading →
Janice Eidus, author and Writing It Real correspondent, currently teaches creative nonfiction for the University of New Orleans and uses writing prompts with her students based on the essay anthology In Brief, a book I discussed in my December 16, … Continue reading →
I have been enjoying humor writer Judy Gruen’s essays since she published her first collection of them, Carpool Tunnel Syndrome: Motherhood as Shuttle Diplomacy, and began an Internet newsletter to deliver her humorous column, Off My Noodle, to a wide … Continue reading →
These essays first appeared in “Off My Noodle“. Revenge of the Chihuahua by Judy Gruen I have always had a secret hankering to take bold and dramatic action to further the cause of liberty. Sadly, I have had few opportunities … Continue reading →
After reading In Short and In Brief, two anthologies of short personal essays co-edited by author Judith Kitchen, I re-read her collected essays in Only the Dance and Distance and Direction, and then her novel The House on Eccles Road. … Continue reading →
Yellow by Judith Kitchen (Reprinted by permission of the author from Distance and Direction, Coffee House Press, 2001, this essay first appeared in the Great River Review.) Lately the rush hour traffic begins before you have to put your headlights … Continue reading →
After reading essayist and editor Judith Kitchen’s observations about effective essay endings for last week’s article, I turned to In Brief, the second of two creative nonfiction anthologies Kitchen co-edited with Mary Paumier Jones and published with W.W. Norton. In … Continue reading →
In “Endings,” an instructional essay for the literary journal Fourth Genre, Fall, 2001, Judith Kitchen asserts that in a piece of creative nonfiction, “the building of thought is what interests the reader.” “We look as much for how an author … Continue reading →
“It is a matter of proportion,” Judith Kitchen and Mary Paumier Jones say about the criteria they used for selecting essays for an anthology entitled In Short and published by W. W. Norton in 1996. Noticing that nonfiction writers they … Continue reading →
In last week’s article I reviewed Natalie Goldberg’s The Great Failure: A Bartender, a Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth. Near the end of the book, when Goldberg’s elderly father, who’d been operated on for colon cancer, sits down … Continue reading →
Reading popular writing guru Natalie Goldberg’s newly published memoir, The Great Failure: A Bartender, a Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth, Harper San Francisco, 2004, I am drawn to the speaker’s many descriptions of the two influential male figures … Continue reading →
This week I am sharing an excerpt from my new book Writing and Publishing Personal Essays, just out from Silver Threads in San Diego. The excerpt demonstrates the power of extended metaphor for writing the essay. **** Telling It How … Continue reading →
This week, in the last of four articles presenting writing generated from Writing It Real exercises, I have included the work of three subscribers who sent me results from the exercise I proposed in Remembering Your Birthdays, August 19, 2004. … Continue reading →
Just before most of us turn our clocks back, and we are well into fall, I’d like to share two subscribers’ results from the exercise I proposed in “Put Summer on the Page,” July 8, 2004. In that article, I … Continue reading →
It seemed to me that if we copied Thomas’ technique of speaking in paired commands, we might write well. Although I didn’t expect readers to necessarily write tight villanelles as a result of the exercise (I actually suggested repeating the … Continue reading →
In May, I posted an article called “Coaxing Imaginative Awareness,” in which I reviewed Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser. After reading the review, some Writing It Real subscribers teamed up to work on … Continue reading →
Excerpted by permission of the author from Helen’s Garden: What we learned about life and love in a small country school, by Helen Mitchell, Niche Press, 2003. One of many stories in Helen’s Garden, “Jiggs” reminds us that we are … Continue reading →
On a sunny day in mid-July, I visited a lavender farm in Sequim, WA with my friend Judy from Northern California. She was beginning to grow lavender herself, and as a merchant at her local farmers’ market, she was eager … Continue reading →
Most teachers who understand writing as a process say that the first step is to play with words. They provide exercises for helping students jump and run and climb on the word playground. But what if your teacher is a … Continue reading →
Having been a student of Jack Grapes, I am privileged to be on his email list and receive messages about reading and activities that inspire thoughts about the nature of writing. In a recent email from Jack about authenticity in … Continue reading →
In the latter half of Chapter III of Barbara Sjoholm’s The Pirate Queen: In Search of Grace O’Malley and Other Legendary Women of the Sea, the author finds a woman who tells her the truth about women’s fishing history in … Continue reading →
The Lonely Voyage of Betty Mouat We are pleased to present Chapter VIII of Barbara Sjoholm’s new book in two parts. In this chapter, the author tracks down information on a woman who at age 59 was the sole survivor … Continue reading →
This past spring, The Seattle Times ran a review of Barbara Sjoholm”s new book The Pirate Queen: In Search of Grace O”Malley and Other Legendary Women of the Sea. The review opens: If Janet Forsyth lived in the here and … Continue reading →
In Mitch Albom’s tale, 83-year-old Eddie Maintenance, as children call him because of the stitching on his work shirt, dies in an amusement park accident at Ruby Pier, where he has spent decades making sure that all the rides are … Continue reading →
This March, I attended the first annual Burning Word Festival on Whidbey Island, a 30-minute ferry ride from my home, for a day devoted to listening to poetry and instruction by Washington State practitioners. On the way over to the … Continue reading →
In the few days he had between meeting his deadlines and leaving for a month at a remote fire lookout in the North Cascades National Park, naturalist, author and poet Tim McNulty took the time to answer some questions that … Continue reading →
Summers in Port Townsend, WA, an arts organization called Centrum hosts a ten-day writers conference. It is a sensational time, with nationally known poets and writers teaching participants who are serious about writing. Highlights include craft lectures and readings in … Continue reading →
In Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer: How to Win Top Writing Assignments (Nomad Press, 2004), writer Jenna Glatzer, who is Editor-in-Chief of absolutewrite.com, may insult some of us in her early chapters as she offers tips on … Continue reading →
What does it take to write persuasively and to move others to read and stay interested in your point-of-view? What does it take to write to change their thinking and behavior? Eda La Shan, the early childhood specialist, once said … Continue reading →
Ray Bradbury’s novel Dandelion Wine has long been a favorite of mine. In one summer, the novel’s protagonist, twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding, encounters the richness of life. The book opens with the announcement that he is allowed to sleep in his … Continue reading →
Copyright ©2003 by Nancy Pearl. Reprinted from Book Lust by Nancy Pearl with permission of Sasquatch Books. I love to read. And while I might not absolutely agree with the Anglo-American man of letters Logan Pearsall Smith, who said, “People … Continue reading →
After years of spreading the word far and wide about reading and drumming up interest in books and literature, Nancy Pearl, the Seattle Library’s Director of Programming and Director for the Washington Center for the Book, has a new book … Continue reading →
Many of us know the poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night“ by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who is pleading in his famous villanelle that his father not easily give in to death. The archetype of the … Continue reading →
This essay first appeared in Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Essay, Volume 9, Number 2. Feldman Brothers’ mortuary of Denver called two days after Seth’s death to say we could come to get his ashes. My husband Kurt and … Continue reading →
This spring, I met publisher and poet David D. Horowitz, who was selling books from his Rose Alley Press, at the Redmond, Washington Poets in the Park Conference. As I browsed the press’s well-designed, handsome books, David asked if he … Continue reading →
Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser (Copper Canyon Press) offers wisdom, sensitive observation and love of essence. On the book’s back cover, the editors have written that one of the poets said, “This book … Continue reading →
Writers often use prompts to help them come up with original ways of opening and organizing their work. Whenever I dip into The Writer’s Idea Book and The Writer’s Idea Workshop by Jack Heffron, I find help for inventing and … Continue reading →
It’s spring-cleaning time, and I’ve gone through my files and bookshelves to update resources for those who write from personal experience. Here is Part I of my annotated list of resources, including books, journals and websites: Books on How to … Continue reading →
With Mother’s Day approaching, I once again reread two poems by Stanley Plumly that I admire. In “Say Summer/For My Mother,” Plumly writes: I could give it back to you, perhaps in a season, say summer. I could give you … Continue reading →
When I was a girl of 10 and already a writer in my own mind, I was frustrated that no one took my writing seriously. I nevertheless decided that I would be a Rhodes Scholar and a winner of a … Continue reading →
In The Heart Aroused: Poetry and Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, poet David Whyte writes: The core of difficulty at the heart of modern work life is its abstraction from many of the ancient cycles of life that … Continue reading →
Editor’s Note: All the poems printed in this article are a collaboration of the two authors, James Bertolino and Anita K. Boyle. “Hard Candy” first appeared in the print journal Cranky, No. 1, 2004 as did James Bertolino’s instructional essay … Continue reading →
My great fantasy when I was in my early teens was that my dad and I would go bowling on a Saturday morning, then go out to breakfast together. Maybe to one of those broken down waterfront joints next to … Continue reading →
Feeling overwhelmed by data, random information, the flotsam and jetsam of mass culture, we relish the spectacle of a single consciousness making sense of a portion of the chaos…” — Scott Russell Sanders As readers of essays and poems, we … Continue reading →
Two professors from the Creative Writing Program at Western Washington State University in Bellingham, Washington have put together Tell It Slant, an enlightening, comprehensive and very satisfying text on writing and shaping creative nonfiction. The book includes a 237-page bonus … Continue reading →
Meg Files is a novelist, short fiction writer, creative nonfiction writer, poet and writing instructor extraordinaire. She has helped hundreds of students write and publish their writing, and she always takes their concerns seriously. Recently, when one student’s problem with … Continue reading →
Meg Files is a novelist, short fiction writer, creative nonfiction writer, poet and writing instructor extraordinaire. She has helped hundreds of students write and publish their writing, and she always takes their concerns seriously. Recently, when one student’s problem with … Continue reading →
When essayists learn to listen closely to the music they are making on the page and examine what the changes in the music mean, they learn to make the sounds of exactly what they have experienced and of exactly what … Continue reading →
In Daughter’s Keeper, a novel by Ayelet Waldman, the main characters are Elaine and her daughter Olivia. The novel succeeds as a portrayal of love redeemed between a mother and daughter against the backdrop of the United States’ drug enforcement … Continue reading →
When Betty Shafer sent me the following poem for help in revising it, I read it and found something haunting stayed with me after I read the lines. Look Again We return to find our land barren Weeds choking walls … Continue reading →
This week’s article is an interview with author Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. Her latest book is Loving in Flow: How the Happiest Couples Get & Stay That Way. Susan makes good use of her personal experience in a second marriage … Continue reading →
While I was living in Los Angeles these past several years, I was lucky enough to meet Barbara Caplan-Bennett, a fellow member of the Independent Writers of Southern California. A novelist and trained action coach, Barbara is a person who … Continue reading →
About 10 years ago, I wrote this poem, which was distributed on a lovely poster illustrated with a picture of a rocking chair with wings on its back and a moon on its seat. The chair was poised on the … Continue reading →
Continuing from last week’s article, which included resources for publishing markets as well as six stories from writers on how they got into print, this week we share six more stories by writers of essays, children’s books, short fiction, nonfiction … Continue reading →
To publish your work, you must consider many markets and match your material to them: literary small press publications, national large circulation publications, local newspapers, regional and national newspapers, radio, industry publications and online sites and publications. It is rare … Continue reading →
I recently came across the following quote from German philosopher Karl Jaspers whose work influenced theology and psychology: Truth, he wrote, “only appears in time as a reality-through-communication. Abstracted from communication, truth hardens into an unreality.” For those of us … Continue reading →
This week’s article is an excerpt from Rebecca McClanahan’s instructional book Write Your Heart Out: Exploring & Expressing What Matters To You, published by Walking Stick Press. This season, as we watch children in an environment where everything seems transformed, … Continue reading →
I enjoy dipping into a collection of short fiction entitled You’ve Got To Read This as much for the pleasure of the fiction itself as for gathering new ideas about how to organize writing. There is something about the way … Continue reading →
Shortly after I posted the September 11, 2003 instructional exercise for Writing It Real, subscriber Christine Robinson sent me some writing of hers that resulted from using the exercise. In this week’s article, I want to show you what she … Continue reading →
Here is a sample scene from the novel-in-progress that David Beckman refers to in last week’s interview about being mentored in his writing. You will notice that he has made stylistic decisions in using sentence fragments to evoke the little … Continue reading →
As a writing instructor, it is always interesting to me to talk with other writers who teach. I enjoy hearing about the parts of the teaching process that excite them. This past June, I had the opportunity to talk over … Continue reading →
Not scheduled for release until January 2004, The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters, an epistolary novel by Elisabeth Robinson, has already received excellent reviews. If you are developing a wish list for holiday gifts, I recommend putting … Continue reading →
At the May 2003 Book Expo America in Los Angeles, Joni Cole handed out advance copies of an exciting book, eventually released this September. Joni is a freelance writer with a Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies from Dartmouth College … Continue reading →
Although it might not be obvious, those of us who write personal essays can benefit greatly from not knowing what we have to write about. That is surprising to people who think of the essay as researched knowledge with a … Continue reading →
Every Labor Day Weekend at the Bumbershoot Arts Festival held at Seattle Center, Jerome (Jerry to his friends) Gold mans a Black Heron Press booth at the festival’s book fair. In April of each year, he mans the booth at … Continue reading →
Lately, I’ve read a book of Buddhist wisdom by Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, poetry by the Northwest’s James Bertolino, essays by the Northeast’s Philip Simmons and memoirs by the Southwest’s Laurence Shames and by Timothy Doyle, who has lived … Continue reading →
I met Joelle Fraser at the 2003 Whidbey Island Writer’s Conference, where we both presented. Her book The Territory of Men intrigued me. Sherman Alexie (author of The Toughest Indian in the World), and Beverly Donofrio (author of Riding in … Continue reading →
Robyn Conley and I met at a time when we both had books on journaling newly out from Walking Stick Press. Robyn’s role at the Society of Southwestern Authors‘ conference we taught at involved individual editing sessions with conference participants. … Continue reading →
On this September 11, two years after the tragedy at the World Trade Centers in NY, many of us who write believe more whole heartedly than ever that getting our words on the page makes a difference in our lives … Continue reading →
Those of us who write from personal experience often think that we’d like to share life lessons and delights in the form of literature for children. Excited by our desire to write, we also feel in touch with the child … Continue reading →
I have been in correspondence with a grand dame of Australian Poetry. I met Doris Leadbetter in 2002, when she and her husband Richard spent their winter holiday (our summertime) away from Melbourne attending writers’ conferences in the US and … Continue reading →
“Poetry is a form of necessary speech,” Edward Hirsch writes in How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, and “poems strike something deeper than thought itself…experience that takes us to the very heart of being.” Over … Continue reading →
After posting last week’s interview about Steven Winn’s ideas for finding contacts on the publishing scene, I am pleased to reprint his wonderful essay about a spring day during a most difficult passage in his life. The essay originally appeared … Continue reading →
The Sunday July 20, 2003 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle was proud to report that its journalists are serving the Bay Area community well. Arts and culture critic Steven Winn was among four Chronicle writers who placed in the … Continue reading →
At Yourdictionary.com, linguists maintain a page about word definitions and histories. I signed up on the web to have these words and stories about their usage emailed to me each day. Some of the words are ones that I’ve never … Continue reading →
As the creator and director of Poets & Writers’ Publishing Seminars Program, Amy Holman addresses the needs of writers (including herself). She teaches writers what they need to know about matching their work with the right editors and agents. In … Continue reading →
Caroline Arnold, who has published over 100 nonfiction books for children, is a pro at finding information on sophisticated topics and making it fit the page limits set by her publishers. To do this she uses captions, sidebars, glossaries, charts … Continue reading →
On my vacation this year along the shores of Lake Michigan, I was reading the last chapters of an advance reading copy of The Dogs of Babel on the day it appeared in bookstores across America. Little, Brown and Company … Continue reading →
Meg Files enjoys researching and uses what she learns to set her stories and to inform her characters. In the excerpt below, 19-year-old Hanna accompanies her father, who is researching for a magazine feature article, on a car trip to … Continue reading →
Last week you read an article by Susan Bono on the personal essay–writing them, teaching them, and starting a magazine for publishing them. This week’s article is a personal essay by Susan Bono, which appears in the anthology Saltwater, Sweetwater–Women … Continue reading →
A couple of years ago, I began receiving Tiny Lights, a publication out of Northern California that is dedicated to the personal essay. I was struck by the caliber of the essays in each issue and contacted the publisher of … Continue reading →
When I was writing monthly poetry writing columns for Writer’s Digest Magazine, I created strategies for writing poetry that utilized as a jumping off place the topical thoughts our culture promotes each month. I wanted to help those who wanted … Continue reading →
This essay first appeared in slightly different form in The Diarist’s Journal, Volume II, Issue #2 The first week of my first graduate poetry-writing workshop at the University of Washington, our teacher William Matthews came to class in paint-stained clothes. … Continue reading →
When my daughter told me to read a personal essay in her school’s alumni magazine, I did. I enjoy finding the many places personal essays inhabit and I appreciate their great value. In this case, Stanford sophomore Sheena Chestnut wrote … Continue reading →
I had lunch recently with novelist and screenwriter Robert Morgan Fisher, who supervises the online screenwriting program at Writer’s Boot Camp (WBC) in Santa Monica, CA. His first novel, called Set the Poem Free, won 2nd place in the 2000 … Continue reading →
The Diarist’s Journal is published three times a year in February, June and October by Hollie Rose. The publication is a rich and lively discussion of journaling, diary keeping, and the community surrounding it. The journal is calling for submissions … Continue reading →
Novelist and poet Meg Files recently spoke on a panel at the Associated Writing Program’s annual meeting. She talked about researching for writing her novels. After her talk, Meg and I conducted an email interview about how her research affects … Continue reading →
When Karen Rippstein wrote to me that she wanted my help in shaping a poem from a prose piece she had written about a specific Christmas with her daughter, I was intrigued. Most of the people I’ve worked with bring … Continue reading →
As I prepare the following interview with Sebastian Matthews, I’m thinking of an encounter I had at a workshop I co-taught for teachers early this spring at the headquarters of the Los Angeles Unified School District. An administrator for the … Continue reading →
Poet Stanley Plumly, a teacher of mine, used to say that poems must weigh more at the end than at the beginning. What matters to us has emotional weight, and as with poetry, the personal essay supplies a vehicle for … Continue reading →
Personal essayists, poets and memoir writers face many questions about making personal truths public. In the following essay, author Migael Scherer evokes the effects on her readers as well as on herself of her writing about painful truth. Even as … Continue reading →
When writing moves us to struggle against a taboo, especially one that demands silence, we can expect powerful resistance. It is natural to feel alone, even besieged. The resistance to our words comes both from ourselves and from others. If … Continue reading →
If March comes in like a lion, they say, it’ll go out like a lamb and vise versa. I’d like to combine this notion with an idea that Keats termed “negative capability.” He said that a good poem holds within … Continue reading →
After our initial correspondence, posted on 12/12/02, author Janice Eidus answered some more questions I posed based on what she’d written to me. I am delighted to share the continuation of our correspondence this week: When you do decide to … Continue reading →
In our interview with her on 12/12/02, Janice Eidus says, “But there I was, years later, writing about a tough-cookie, teased-hair girl from the Bronx, modeled on the older Italian girls in my neighborhood who had seemed so exotic and … Continue reading →
Ok, you asked what I’ve learned that I might want to pass on to those who Meg Leder was the Writer’s Digest editor who worked with me on Keeping a Journal You Love and A Year in the Life: Journaling … Continue reading →
About 1020 words In these days just before Valentine’s Day, it seems as if every shop window, radio and TV commercial has turned the volume up on love. “Don’t forget, don’t forget, don’t forget,” whether the one you love is … Continue reading →
When fiction writer Janice Eidus (see the From Our Correspondents article of 12/12/02) introduced me to the work of nonfiction writer Sue William Silverman, I knew I wanted to find out what she had to say on memoir writing. After … Continue reading →
Sheila Bender, July Poetry Column, 1295 words When an author repeats the same word or words at the beginning of a series of sentences the technique is called “anaphora.” In Greek, it means “a carrying up or back.” With repetitions, … Continue reading →
Category: Instructional Exercises So many times we find that what we are writing sounds dry and dull compared to what we wish to be writing or what we admire in other’s writing. “How can we make our work matter?” we … Continue reading →
When my daughter was 14 months old, we lived in Seattle, and she and I spent a cold, cloudy winter afternoon at the Woodland Park Zoo. Her favorite animals were the uncaged pigeons she realized she could send into flight … Continue reading →
Writing Poetry Through Storms and Showers “You have helped me learn how to write a poem. You have taught me how to shape an essay. But I’m not sure about how to get something published. How do I publish my … Continue reading →
This article originally appeared in the 1999 issue of The Sampler, the newsletter of the Southern California Children’s Literature Council (formerly the Southern California Council on Literature for Children and Young People (SCCLCYP). When I was seven years old, I … Continue reading →
Recently I interviewed poet and essayist Rebecca McClanahan for a book on essay writing that I am finishing for Writer’s Digest Books. When I told her that I had reviewed her essay “Book Marks,” which I’d found in Best American … Continue reading →
This fall I corresponded with novelist and short fiction writer Janice Eidus to investigate how fiction writers use personal experience in their writing. I have admired Eidus’ fiction and her teaching for many years now and in 1997, I invited … Continue reading →
I like to keep quotes in an 8 by 5 inch blue-cloth covered three-ring binder. I write down or tear out quotes that strike my fancy. They come from books and magazines, affirmations I wish to repeat to myself, fortunes … Continue reading →
I’ve been editing essays this fall for professionals who are applying to graduate school programs. As always, I am pointing out passive voice constructions and instructing the applicants on how to make them active constructions, and I’m also pointing out … Continue reading →
When her mother’s Parkinson’s had progressed, Patricia Hassler quit her job and became her mother’s caretaker. Realizing she needed a creative outlet, she answered an ad in a local paper for a columnist to write about a nearby suburb where … Continue reading →
I’d like to examine how three essays from The Best American Essays 2001 satisfy me as a reader and inspire me as a writer. I offer my thoughts and some writing ideas based on the essays in the hope that … Continue reading →
I am delighted to offer readers of Writing It Real this personal essay by writer, editor, and publicist Bob Yehling. In his essay, we get a glimpse of a passionate writer at work, writing from life experience, appreciating the work … Continue reading →
The only thing that distinguished this particular examining room from dozens like it was the huge wall chart of hearts in all manner of disease and disarray. The rest of the room was familiar and predictable – high narrow table … Continue reading →
A few years ago, I invented a way of coming to writing during times when I felt overwhelmed by my need to write, yet stuck in my ability to get anything of value on the page. The exercise I invented … Continue reading →
Poetry is a kind of food, shelter, and clothing for which I am thankful. It nourishes my being, builds a dwelling for my ecstasy and my awe, and keeps me warm when I grieve. Books on my shelves and on … Continue reading →