Is your creativity selling out someone in your life? Joan Didion famously wrote that "writers are always selling somebody out." Songwriters, painters, novelists and other creatives channel their life experiences when producing their art. Take my post on Tuesday, in which I passed along advice I heard at a recent writer's conference about building a …
Month: April 2012
Lighting Up Your Storytelling With Flashbulb Memories
Whether we are revealing ourselves through memoir or creating an alien world in a novel, our experiences drive our storytelling. Writers can amplify the brightness of so-called "flashbulb memories" to add more vigor to the stories they tell. That was one takeaway for me from Saturday's Conversations and Connections writer's conference in Washington, D.C., sponsored …
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Creativity Tweets of the Week – 4/20/12
You shouldn't be reading blogs right now. It's spring. Go outside and frolic in the grass. You can read these links later, in bed, while recovering from your allergy attack. CREATIVITY "4 Secrets of Great Critical Thinkers," Paul J. H. Schoemaker, Inc.: I'm shocked "Eat bacon" isn't on the list. "Slow down" is. "9 Inspirational …
You Can’t Be Published If You Don’t Play
"You can't win if you don't play," lottery jingles tell us. The same is true with our creative pursuits. For example, with creative writing, we won't be published if we don't submit. In a recent post, my friend Kate Arms Roberts posited the notion of "learning to fail better," which she found in Alice LaPlante's …
5 Things to Remember While You Blog
So you've answered the "5 Questions to Ask Before You Blog" that I posed to you in the last post, and your blog is underway. Congratulations! Remember that your blog is a project of creative writing as much as your novel-in-progress or budding memoir. But there are important differences, and they are worth keeping in …
5 Questions to Ask Before You Blog
Today I'm giving you a sneak peek at some of the curriculum of "Writing Compelling Blog Posts," a six-week workshop I'm leading at The Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland, starting next Tuesday, April 17th. Unlike most classes on blogging, we won't be discussing SEO optimization or social-media promotion. The course is, instead, a true writing …
Creativity Tweets of the Week 4/6/12
Care to join me in an interactive, creative storytelling workshop? Make your way to D.C. on Wednesday, April 11th for "Telling Your Story Creatively: Principles and Whole-Brain Practices for Writing Compelling Blog Posts." It's the April event for the Capitol Creativity Network, and it should be a lot of fun! Now on to some of …
What’s Your Take on Pinterest?
Pinterest is the next big thing, right? Look out, Facebook. Get over yourself, Twitter. You're so 2011, Tumblr. That's the noise echoing through social media. It's so loud it reached the editor of one of my freelance clients, who asked me to write an article about how Pinterest is causing both excitement and concern among …
The Artist's Road 