Last week I had the chance to participate in two separate discussions about David Shields’ Reality Hunger: a Manifesto, the first with members of the Working from Life: Writing Creative Nonfiction workshop and the second with two members of the Future of Publishing Think Tank (FOPTT). Shields’ book contends that shifts in perception—of self, of [...]
Archive for the ‘creative non fiction’ Category
At my desk
Posted in Blogger, Books we're reading, creative non fiction, Fiction on October 4, 2010 | 5 Comments »
Writing Tip by Felice Picano
Posted in autobiography, creative non fiction, writers, Writing process and tips, Writing Tip on May 24, 2010 | 1 Comment »
In the past few years I’ve begun to tune in to the wavelengths of the world — like a radio receiver — and now strangers tell me their lives. I don’t know who they are until I’ve let them use me to narrate. I think it began with my discovery of the unsolved murder in [...]
Writing Tip by Samantha Dunn Camp
Posted in creative non fiction, memoir, writers, Writing Tip on April 5, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Getting into the nitty-gritty of what makes us tick is not something that comes easily, even for those who are inclined to want to do it. It seems we naturally resist examining why we are the way we are; we want to avoid looking at our contradictions, the places where we don’t make sense. That, [...]
Writing Tip by Janet Sternburg
Posted in creative non fiction, memoir, writers, Writing process and tips, Writing Tip on March 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
This is about the old chestnut: “Do you write every day?” And if you answer, “yes,” then chances are you’ll hear another old chestnut: “What discipline you must have!” Nope. It’s not discipline. I always think of discipline as beating yourself on the shoulders with a stick. It’s actually a writer’s “trick.” Let yourself fall [...]
Writing Tip by Eric Gutierrez
Posted in creative non fiction, Fiction, Writers at Work Recommends, Writing process and tips, Writing Tip on March 1, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
That throbbing cursor at the top of an empty computer screen at the beginning of a new tale is the Medusa that can often turn imagination into stone. To get past not getting started I still use that old trick of writing the last sentence first, regardless of whether I’m writing fiction or non-fiction. If [...]
Writing Tip by Kelly Hayes-Raitt
Posted in Blogger, creative non fiction, travel writing, writers, Writing process and tips, Writing Tip on February 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Discover your assets! With no income and possessing only a desire to complete a book about my work with Iraqi refugees, I realized my greatest albatross is really my greatest asset: my house. I decided to take a year and rent out my home while I travel, live elsewhere for free – and write. I [...]
Writing Tip by Catherine Daly
Posted in Blogger, creative non fiction, Poetry, writers, Writing process and tips, Writing Tip on February 15, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Stress: A Revision Exercise for Prose or Poetry Don’t really SCAN. Mark the stresses in your piece, or, if it is long, start with the first paragraph. You might work through each character’s dialogue separately. Even if this is a poem composed in meter, ignore scansion and merely looking at stresses. Marking stresses may [...]
Writing Tip by Gerald Locklin
Posted in creative non fiction, Fiction, Los Angeles, Poetry, writers, Writing process and tips, Writing Tip on November 30, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Photo by Vanessa Locklin The most important advice I have for writers is that a poem can be on any subject in any type of language (but the best for its purposes of that type). In other words, there are no subjects that are “unpoetic” or unfit for poetry and there are no levels of [...]
Writing Tip by Richard Beban
Posted in creative non fiction, Los Angeles, Poetry, writers, Writing process and tips, Writing Tip on November 16, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Read it aloud. Comments: No matter what the piece of writing, read it aloud before you consider a draft finished. We were an aural/oral culture long before we were a written culture, and the ear is still the best way to fine-tune a piece of writing, and to hear its intrinsic music. And if it [...]
