Like a lot of people who scribble in notebooks constantly and wear their library cards thin, my early childhood was defined by books. There were books in every room at my grandparents’ house, where I lived until I was six….
Choosing Settings for Your Writing by Christa Carmen
Think of the last place you visited that really stuck out to you. What was it about the locale that made you connect to the experience? What details of the place did you retain and recall at later, unexpected moments,…
Guest Post: The Importance of a Writing Community by Francine Witte
Jack Kerouac famously said “be in love with your life. Every minute of it.” Certainly as writers, we try to embrace this notion. The creating, the expressing, the transformation of thought to word, the sharing of what we do with…
Guest Post: Why I Teach My Creative Writing Courses Like a Good Rock and Roll Show by Ephraim Sommers
The First Song and Mosh: The best rock and roll concert I’ve ever witnessed was not Metallica or Korn at the L.A. Coliseum in the summer of 2000. It was not Tool in Bakersfield at the Bill Graham Auditorium in…
Guest Post: The Quarrel by Debra Young
It never fails. I sit down to write and the blue screen of death flares up in my head, the gears grind to a halt and it’s quiet up there, but for the voice, irritable and argumentative. What? You want…
Guest Post: MFA Myopia: The Pain is in the Details by Elizabeth Mastrangelo
I’ve always had trouble stepping back and seeing the big picture. “Well, no wonder you’re struggling,” my tenth-grade U.S. History teacher said when we met about my failing grade. “You’ve underlined every single sentence in this textbook. You don’t know…