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
Extended metaphors in prose resonate with the reader, even if she isn't sure what it is the author has done to trigger that resonance. In Part One of this series I explained that making use of a recurring metaphor advances both plot and character development. We looked at how to identify a key theme that needs …
Continue reading Using Extended Metaphors in Your Writing — Part Two
Memoirs are supposed to be languid reflections of a notable life lived, correct? So how would you describe Cheryl Strayed's runaway bestseller Wild, coming soon as a movie to a theater near you starring Reece Witherspoon? Strayed shares in her memoir insights on a failed marriage, grief over a lost mother, and pain stemming from a …
Let me begin with a teaser for next week: I'm working on a post about creativity lessons we can learn from the newest winners of the President's National Medal of Technology and Innovation. I had the good fortune of attending the recent White House ceremony, and I'll bring you a taste of that as well …
Continue reading Guest Post: Reliving Trauma through the Creative Process
My blog tour following the publication of Committed: A Memoir of the Artist's Road continues with a writing craft post of mine on the award-winning blog by K.M. Weiland, Helping Writers Become Authors. K.M.'s readership largely comprises fiction writers, so I kept that in mind in writing a piece about crafting dialogue in your stories. In my …
Continue reading Lessons on Writing Dialogue from a Memoirist
That headline is, of course, absurd. The vast majority of published books are written by authors lacking MFAs, and I suspect that few works of literature we now rank as great were written during an MFA program. That said, Committed: A Memoir of the Artist's Road was my creative thesis in a low-residency MFA program …
Continue reading Do You Need an MFA to Write and Sell a Book?
So it's starting to become real. Committed: A Memoir of the Artist's Road is now available for pre-order. Even better, my publisher is offering a 10% discount to Artist's Road readers; they just need to enter the promo code PREORDER2014 at checkout. You'll be shipped the book on the day of the "soft-launch" publication, October …
Continue reading Road to Publication: Committed Now Available for Pre-Order (at Discount!)
In my day job I sell people on the merits of my employer; that is what we do in public relations. One of the things I like about PR is that I'm promoting work that is not mine and people who are not me. That is much harder to do when the product is my …
Consider this post a "closed for business" sign for one week. I have before learned the value to my creative process of occasionally going off-grid. A week ago I received my memoir manuscript back from the accomplished memoirist and editor I hired to give it a final read. Her suggested revisions were dead-on, answering the …
My mission: Reduce a 384-page first-draft memoir manuscript to 300 pages. Why? Because I know a tighter book will be a more pleasurable read, and because I know it will be easier to sell a shorter book to a publisher than a longer one. I've spent the last two months revising the memoir I wrote …
Continue reading 4 Steps To Slashing that Manuscript in Revision
The Artist's Road 