Writing Tips
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The Six-Figure Promise: A Look at Three Sellers of Cyber-Success
As a follower of a few Facebook groups for writers, I’ve been surprised by the comments of some members who lament that they have written a book, edited it and formatted it themselves, and uploaded it on Amazon. Why does it have no buyers? Why aren’t they making any money? What would give these writers Continue reading
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Blog Post, Interrupted
Several weeks ago at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Convention, I presented a paper titled “Othering the Self: The Potential Benefits of Assigning College Students to Write Personal Narratives from a Second Person Point of View.” I intended to blog about my presentation immediately after the conference. But when I returned Continue reading
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The Letter “A” Is Yellow
This semester I assigned my creative writing students to write a concrete poem—one in which words are placed on the page so that they create an image that helps to convey the poet’s message. One student wrote her poem in the form of a square. When we workshopped it in class, I suggested that the Continue reading
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What Dreams Can Do for Creative Nonfiction Writers
When she was dying, my grandmother gave me her dream books. The well-worn three volumes had been stacked on her bedside table for as long as I could remember. They consisted of alphabetical listings of dream subjects (airplanes, bananas, cats, death . . .), and their meanings. To dream that a cat jumps onto your Continue reading
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How to Write about What You Don’t Know in Personal Nonfiction
Writing personal nonfiction—memoir or the personal essay—generally requires us to approach our subjects from a first-person point of view. Since we are telling our own stories, we naturally refer to ourselves as “I” and speak as ourselves. We write as factual human beings about our actual lived experiences. By writing in first-person, though, we limit ourselves Continue reading
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Writing about Place in Personal Nonfiction
All of our experiences are located; they happen in a physical space. All of our most profound thoughts and deepest wishes, all of our doubts and our convictions, our heartbreaks and triumphs have been influenced by the place in which they occurred. Fiction writers know that creating a palpable setting for their stories is essential 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 