Writing and Creating
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This weekend, I was enthralled by a blog post shared by Mark Willen (“Sexual Assault: When Real Life and Fiction Collide”), who was pondering how his published works hold up in the #MeToo era. As a result of Mark’s post, which was weighing heavily on my mind today, I decided to ask a few writers/teachers about…
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It’s 4:56 a.m., and I have just dropped off my daughter at work. I pour a fresh cup of coffee, sit down in front of my laptop, and open my working revision of my latest novel, Fossil Five. Seven days to go, I think. Seven days until I release my story to 15 readers around…
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About 15 years ago, in the pre-dawn darkness, I stood outside the brand new Starbucks in Dulaney Plaza and waited patiently for them to open their doors for the first time. I enjoyed being a part of the coffee store’s grand opening, and for years I frequented it often, learning the names of the new…
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I’m not much on labels, but in 1981, Betsy Flowers published an article in Language Arts that talked about the four different kinds of writers. Without going into too much detail, here they are: Madman: Unleashed, uninhibited writing that’s a free-flow from brain and heart to parchment. Architect: Planned structures of the story, plotting out…
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It all started last summer with a cool sticker at Open Works in Baltimore. For five consecutive Fridays, I had the good fortune of working with 25 teens in Baltimore City through the Bloomberg Arts Internship Program. We met at Open Works, a collaborative space for creatives. In the main lobby, between the classrooms and…
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Raw Thoughts of a Creative: November 2017 Edition At the beginning of the year, I set some very realistic goals of submitting six unique pieces in competitions or for publication in new markets, an average of about one every other month. I thought this was setting the bar a little low, to be honest with…
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I’ve been writing a long time, and when I go back and read my earliest works written in the 1980s, I see a lot of experimentation and non-conformity while still sticking to the basics of story structure: a defined beginning, middle, and end falling neatly within the boundaries of the standard plot sequence. Although I…
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I spend a lot of time in my head, thinking and thinking and thinking about what to write about. Even though I keep a little Piccadilly notebook with me at all times, capturing little snippets of life that I find interesting, I don’t do enough with them. In those moments, I am happy that I…
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Many years ago, Sharon Miller, National Writing Project Teacher-Consultant and nationally recognized author and educator in the teaching of writing, asked me to offer my thoughts on the power of revision in the genre of creative nonfiction and how, when we write with intent in the revision process and understand who our audience is, we…
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On June 16, when I cut ties with social media to focus entirely on finishing my book, Fossil Five, I made a big deal about descending into darkness (you can read about it HERE). After all, I selected a 105-day period that ran from a new moon to a total lunar eclipse. You can’t get…
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