Allow me to plant a bare foot firmly on a third rail of modern society: gender differences. This post is inspired by a column my friend and Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA classmate Laura Warrell shared with me. Published in Salon by Lorraine Berry, it's titled "Dear female students: Stop writing about men." Ms. …
Continue reading Do Women Simply Write Differently than Men?
Today's creativity links outnumber the writing links two to one. I'm grateful to be named a Top 10 Blog for Writers, but I'm also grateful my readers tolerate my polymath interests. These, of course, are some of the links I tweeted this week, and thus are a reflection of what caught my fancy at a …
Today I'm honored to provide a guest post by author and writing mentor K.M. Weiland, whose blog Wordplay also was named a Top 10 Blog for Writers for 2011-2012. Her bio is below the post. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We all hate the critic in our heads. You know the one—talks with a nasal British accent, uses words …
I may have announced yesterday that this ol' freelancer is looking to return to full-time salaried employment, but I'll still bring you the best links on creativity and writing (and a bonus topic this week, resolutions) on Twitter and here on The Artist's Road. Heck, removing the time I spend searching for work and handling …
I anticipated riding a wave as monstrous as the surfing delights found on Oahu's North Shore. Instead I've been floating in the bathtub that is the Gulf of Mexico post-hurricane season. Last July I rode a huge creative wave out of my first-ever MFA residency, seemingly unlimited energy that carried me through two "packets" of …
Your patience has been rewarded. After a four-week hiatus, the Creativity Tweets of the Week makes its triumphant return. Once again I provide some of the best links on creativity and writing I sent via Twitter this week. Note I still provide a focus on creativity despite changing my Twitter handle yesterday from @on_creativity to …
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA: Now that I'm back from my second residency in the MFA in Writing program with the Vermont College of Fine Arts, I'd like to direct you to one more source of wisdom I learned from the last two weeks: YOU. It was hard to carve out time each day to write and upload …
MONTPELIER, VERMONT: "My observation is that among students of writing, the inclusion of details is very out of fashion," said novelist, memoirist and biographer Larry Sutin at a lecture here at my MFA residency with the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He finds this most upsetting, and I did as well, once he said during …
Continue reading MFA Nugget: In Defense of Excessive Detail and Sentimental Disclosures
MONTPELIER, VERMONT: I just took a nap. Those five words may not seem particularly significant or profound, but they form a sentence I don't often type. I tend to crash daily around 3:00 pm (the time of day Robert Goulet messes with my stuff), but I've learned to put my creative projects aside at that …
MONTPELIER, VERMONT: "Dialogue is a type of action: a means of developing dramatic conflict, in which we witness the push and pull between characters." So said Edgar-award winning novelist Domenic Stansberry in a lecture here at my MFA residency with the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Yes, dialogue is a means of character development, Stansberry …
The Artist's Road 