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 →
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 →