In my previous blog I discussed the many mandates given writers about keeping up their writing life. I question whether these literary practices are actually absolute in nature. They are often touted with the same certainty as a college education….
Guest Post: Practicing the Literary Arts by Carol Park
I consider my practice of the literary arts routinely. Do you, dear writer? I’ll appreciate your comments. Being asked to write about my literary practices has galvanized me to think on this in a deeply personal and extended manner. It’s…
Guest Post: As Student Writers by Alena Zhang
We are often intimidated at the thought of putting our writing out into the world. Writing makes us vulnerable; reading someone’s poem is like peeking into their soul. Without writing, however, we would have no way to articulate the inner…
Writing that is Alive by Ron Clinton Smith
“If you bore yourself, you bore others,” a comedian friend told me years ago. It was true of the very off the wall stand up we were doing at the time, and I’ve lived by it both as a writer…
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: 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…
Guest Post: Dishwater and Death: The Writer’s Promise by Willow Becker
I’ve been a hobby writer since I was 5 years old. It was never a goal to make writing my living. I wanted to be an actress, an FBI agent, a witch. Writing is something I picked up along the…
Guest Post: Stained by Jordan Abbruzzese
“Oh God. Do I have brown all over the back of my pants?” I spun around clumsily, my supervisor’s eyes wide. I had just torn into some chocolate from the jar at reception’s desk and dropped some on my new…
Guest Post: There’s Fire Between Your Toes by Nathaniel Sverlow
I don’t know what I’m going to talk about. I never know what I’m going to talk about. Though, this hasn’t stopped me before. I just get going, writing down words until it finally comes, and, if it doesn’t, I…
Guest Post: The Guest Poet by Kevin Casey
We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who, content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest. — Horace The bathroom remodel is coming along fine, and thanks for…
Guest Post: Loving-Kindness for Writers by Jessica Demarest
Confession: I’m obsessed with yoga. I took my first yoga class three years ago, and I’ve been hooked ever since. As obsessions usually do, my yoga practice has seeped into my everyday life in more ways than one. More often…
Guest Post: Making Piñatas and Making Time by Eva Langston
When I was a kid, the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas stretched, becoming magical and seemingly endless. Each day my brother and I opened a paper window on our Advent calendar to reveal a tiny square of the hidden picture….