Creative Nonfiction
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Wondering What to Write About? Try These Prompts
We are writers. We are committed to writing regularly. Some of us face a blank page every day. Writing is generally a solitary exercise. The topics about which we write arise from the deluge of our thoughts, from the minutiae of our impulses and emotions. Sometimes, though, our minds may feel blank. What will we Continue reading
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Put the Person on the Page with a Collage Essay
Try this. Consider that subject about which you have had trouble writing. A difficult experience, a problematic person in your life, an emotionally challenging circumstance. That subject that you want to write about, but when you try, the writing turns out dull, awkward, or lifeless. Yes, you know the subject. Rather than trying to write Continue reading
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Update on the 25,000 Words of Winter Challenge
Today is the deadline for my writing challenge. I’m both disappointed and happy to report that I was able to write 19,000 words. Disappointed because I didn’t reach my word count goal, but very happy about the writing that I completed during the challenge. And I believe that I benefited from this experiment in a Continue reading
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Greens
In her later years, my Aunt Hazel could be observed on summer evenings pacing back and forth across her suburban front lawn eyeing the ground. Amid the standard lawn grass in her unruly yard were a host of edible infiltrators: lamb’s quarter, dandelion leaves, and what she called redroot greens. She picked them as she Continue reading
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Three Ways to Energize Your Writing
In my creative nonfiction writing classes, I conduct workshops in which students read and provide feedback on their classmates’ first drafts of writing assignments. The writers then use the feedback they receive to plan and write revisions of their work. In these workshops, I prompt my students to look for the “hot spot” in a Continue reading
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Enough
I move into an old house in Ypsilanti and winter there, braving sub-zero temperatures only to drive to and from work. The rest of the time I’m in bed, swaddling myself in a wool blanket through the twilight days of a Michigan January, shielding myself from the house’s drafts and chills. Chills haunt me through Continue reading
Do you write about yourself and your experiences? Do you write about traumatic events in your life? Or, do you struggle to find time and motivation to write?
If so, this blog is for you.
Person on the Page 