Whether in person or via social media, I can’t help but hear a common refrain of late. Similar discussions all related to media pieces that focus on silly distractions and spectacle created purposefully to keep people from focusing on the real issues at hand. I want to suggest that within that very refrain, while the […]
Guest Blogger Don Rearden | Make Art Not More Content Read More »
Last year and the year before, I invested in do-it-yourself writing residencies. Don’t get me wrong: I love and appreciate writing residency programs. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been awarded four, all of which granted up to a month of a free and comfortable space to do nothing but write, and read, and daydream,
Guest Blogger Cinthia Ritchie | Should You Consider a DIY Writing Residency? Read More »
Two summers ago, I failed spectacularly at almost every writing project I attempted. I failed at my novel rewrite, opting to not follow my editor’s suggestions (because, you know, even though she was at a major house and even though I’m just a skinny Alaskan, I was sure that I knew more than she did).
Guest Blogger Cinthia Ritchie | How Following a Training Plan Improved my Writing Read More »
I did something I thought I’d never do: I hired a beta reader to help with the beginning chapters of my second novel. I’d been struggling for months, with no end in sight. I was literally making myself sick with the worrying and the obsession. I had, no exaggeration, over twenty takes of the
Guest Blogger Cinthia Ritchie | Why I Hired a Beta Reader Read More »
When I was in fourth grade, there was a fat girl in my class. She wore glasses that slid down her nose and hair that hung lank and she had breasts (breasts!) when the rest of the girls in the class wore undershirts with one pink flower embroidered in the middle (bought two for a
Guest Blogger Cinthia Ritchie | Dazzled by the Past Read More »
It is the day after the Women’s March and I am asking the question: Am I a well-balanced reader when it comes to the multiplicity of writers, especially that of women writers and characters? I sit down in my office this morning to take stock of all the books on my shelves. I want to
Guest Blogger Bryan Allen Fierro | Taking Stock Read More »
The one question I get more than any other regarding my new fiction collection, Dodger Blue Will Fill Your Soul, is Did all those stories actually happen? I usually respond with something about truth being no excuse for fiction, or some other defensive-ism that confirms a satisfying enough response for the reader/interrogator. I explain that
Guest Blogger Bryan Allen Fierro | Let Me Pin You Down Read More »
Fierro presents “Places and Images: Writing Home”, his 49 Writers Reading & Craft Talk Series presentation. Today in the mail I received my Alaska paramedic certification. It basically states that for the next two years, in the state of Alaska, I am allowed and deemed capable to perform very specific outlined duties under the guidance
Guest Blogger Bryan Allen Fierro | Palpate Read More »
My wife, a school counselor, came home from work this week with an anecdote about an event called The Battle of the Books, an oddly militaristic moniker for a reading activity, but an undertaking that has the students fired up about literature. She said one of the boys on her school’s team, a fourteen-year-old freshman,
Guest Blogger Rich Chiappone | Listen to this Sentence! Read More »
If I were asked to choose (hypothetically) one book to take with me into solitary exile on an island, I’d ask if I could bring my fishing tackle instead. But if that wasn’t allowed, I would choose the heaviest anthology of short stories I could find. Maybe The Story and its Writer edited by Ann
Guest Blogger Rich Chiappone | On Becoming a Short Story Junkie Read More »
