What makes one a successful writer? I was forced to contemplate that question yesterday morning while having brunch with friends from out of town. One of their daughters is a freshman at a prestigious liberal-arts college. She has no idea what she wishes to major in, but knows she loves to write. So she asked …
Continue reading Three Fundamentals to a Successful Writing Career
I'm asked a lot of questions in the blogging classes I teach for The Loft Literary Center, but one I'm rarely asked is, "How do I know when it's time to shut down my blog?" It is perhaps the toughest question to answer. It's also critical. If you just go by software registrations, there are …
Continue reading 5 Reasons Why I’m Ending The Artist’s Road Blog
It's one of the largest annual gatherings of creative writers, publishers, and educators in the United States--usually well in excess of 10,000 attendees--and the largest such event for literary writers. Once again I'll be attending the AWP Conference & Bookfair, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs' annual extravaganza. This year the hordes will be …
That's the mission of the creativity workshop I'm conducting on Saturday, March 21st, at the Florida Creativity Weekend in Sarasota, Florida. "Putting Your Whole Brain to Work" will be an 90-minute interactive session with games, storytelling, and of course a whiteboard. Here's the teaser on the conference's website: Does your creative process involve your right and …
Welcome to my final post on crafting an extended metaphor that runs the length of your creative writing. These lessons apply for fiction as well as nonfiction, but for the purposes of this series I've focused on examples from my recently published memoir, Committed: A Memoir of the Artist's Road. In Part One of this series …
Continue reading Using Extended Metaphors in Your Writing — Part Three
Very few creatives completely support themselves financially through their art. It is those who struggle to find the time and creative energy to produce while managing other work responsibilities that I am thinking about today as those of us in the United States celebrate Labor Day. Take the more than forty creatives I interviewed on …
One common misconception I find many of my Loft blogging students have is that they believe their blog is like a book written in real time, with each chapter building upon the last. I have to point out to them that unlike a memoir, where you read from beginning to end, with each post you …
On what topics would an eighth grader blog? Anything and everything, I've learned. During an all-day creative writing workshop I conducted with about forty students at Henrico County Public Schools' Elko Middle School, I read student writings on everything from football to indie music, from wrestling to baking. I also read a powerful "open letter" …
My read on today's society is that it is no longer "cool" to set New Year's resolutions. Not helping the resolutions' case is that we rarely keep them; there's a reason gyms require you to buy a year-long membership rather than pay month-to-month. For me, I've never felt moved by the random change of an …
Perhaps a 2014 resolution for me should be to gain readers in Africa and South America. I say that because among the dozens of responses to my survey requesting feedback on what to write about in 2014 were readers from the other four occupied continents. I also suppose the time of day I make posts …
Continue reading What To Expect from the Artist’s Road in 2014
The Artist's Road 