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 the links on creativity and writing I tweeted this week.

CREATIVITY

• “Don’t Just Create ‘On Demand,’ Create for You,” Todd Henry, 99%: Do you create daily in your day job? Henry says: “When we spend all of our time and energy creating on-demand, it’s easy to lose touch with the passions that fuel our best work.”
• “Why Everybody Needs to Make Art Everyday… 7 Keys to Creativity,” Ann Voskamp, a holy experience: “Quit trying to fit. Why try to squeeze all your extraordinary into ordinary?” (Warning: A piano interlude begins playing when you open this post.)
• “The Arts as a Management Tool,” Giovanni Schiuma, ARTSblog: Creativity should be as automatic as thinking, but we must work to maintain a culture friendly to the arts to sustain creativity, Schiuma says.

WRITING

• “Why Poetry Should be More Playful,” Noah Berlatsky, The Atlantic: Lighter verse is now frowned upon and poetry readers suffer, Berlatsky says, as “the serious, high-art poetry tradition has retreated into the halls of academia, closed the doors, and then triple-locked them.”
• “The Essay as an Open Field,” Robert Vivian, Numero Cinq: Vivian details how he came to write essays and why the form matters to him. (Bias alert: Vivian is a Vermont College of Fine Arts instructor, and Numero Cinq is published by VCFA instructor Douglas Glover.)
• “Sarah Manguso: ‘I revise the sentences in my diary from day to day,'” Dianna Dilworth, GalleyCat: Manguso’s short memoirs manifest from restructured diary entries.
• “Official Deets about the Emotion Thesaurus,” Angela Ackerman, The Bookshelf Muse: Ackerman and her colleague Becca Publisi have published  a book expanding on the emotion thesaurus on their site. My emotion for their accomplishment? Enthusiasm. My emotion for their use of the word “deets” in the blog headline? Annoyance.
• “12 Steps to Blog Tour Success,” Joel Friedlander, The Book Designer: #1: Research blogs. As for me, I get highly annoyed at emails asking to guest blog on The Artist’s Road that are clearly form letters and reflect no understanding of what the blog is about. Take your time with #1, authors!

It’s not too late to sign up for my 6-week course at The Writer’s Center, “Writing Compelling Blog Posts,” starting April 17th. Engage with a group of talented and focused writers as you find your blogging voice and grow your craft. I might even let you have your picture taken with Mr. Bacon.