Welcome to this week’s featured writing prompt. Go into a kitchen that’s not your own and look around.
Notes from the Slush Pile: Advice on Book Contests and Some Confessions
Traci offers advice on manuscript poem selections—lessons she’s learned through her own work and that of other poets.
Rearranging The Furniture: Blog Posts On Writing
Join us in welcoming Jyl Lynn Felman, writer, performer and creative writing teacher, to The Writer’s Life. Jyl’s plan: “to create an intimate portrait of the writer, her life and her imagination. Sometimes I’ll give a writing exercise. Most of the time I’ll discuss what it means to be a writer from the inside out and back inside.”
On Sharing
Lauren Nicole Nixon discusses opening up to new books and all that can be gained from sharing new voices: “Writing is a catalyst for sharing and communicating and exploring openings into new channels of thought. Sharing cannot happen when we refuse to allow new voices (and books) into our lives.”
Dark Side of the Moon: The Reading Life
Traci discusses why and what to read to bolster the writing life and the impact of those words on the work: “Recently someone told me that a poet’s reading life was like the dark side of the moon. What we read is often hugely influential to what we write, whether we are reading fiction, non-fiction, poetry, textbooks, newspapers, the dead, the living, translated authors, recipes, gossip columns, medical documents, and yes, even Tweets.”
Weekly Writing Prompt
Welcome to this week’s featured writing prompt. For the New Year, take some time to explore. Leave your car behind, and take a walk. Add warm layers with a coat, hat, and boots. Follow a path to search for new details. Find small details around the corner. How will this year be different from the [...]
Writer Resolutions
With the new year in sight, Traci shares her surprising (and refreshing) resolutions for 2012: “I could resolve to spend more time at my desk this year. I could resolve to submit more. I could create writing challenges or participate in NaNoWriMo. And because I love a good, long ‘To-Do’ list, I’m sure I’ll get many of those things done. However, my resolution is this: play more.”
Weekly Writing Prompt
Welcome to this week’s featured writing prompt. Write about a character’s efforts to prepare for a season, an event, or a goal. Enjoy, and please share your writing with us in the comments section.
Weekly Writing Prompt
This week’s writing prompt is about getting to know your characters.
On Letting Go: Joan La Barbara at The Kitchen
Lauren experiences The Vegetable Orchestra, a Vienna-based orchestra which plays instruments that are created entirely from vegetables. At first she finds the cadence unpalatable, but then opens up to the unlikely music and realizes that “the sounds of these artists are constantly challenging me to unlearn, re-evaluate and reorganize my own notions of what art can be.”
