Poets in Performance Over the years, Bill Moyers has welcomed some of America’s best poets to share their works and inspiration. Many of those writers have performed at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, which Bill and his colleagues covered for television specials including Fooling with Words (1999), The Language of Life (1995) and Sounds of Poetry (1999). Coleman Barks | Robert Bly | Lucille Clifton | Rita Dove | Martín Espada | Nikki Giovanni | Maxine Hong Kingston | Galway Kinnell | Stanley Kunitz | Kurtis Lamkin | Li-Young Lee | John Lithgow | W. Coleman Barks reads Rumi’s “I See My Beauty In You” Watch this full episode from Fooling with Words Robert Bly reads “After Drinking All Night With a Friend, We Go Out in a Boat at Dawn to See Who Can Write the Best Poem“ Watch this full episode from Bill Moyers Journal Lucille Clifton reads “homage to my hips” Watch this full episode from Sounds of Poetry Rita Dove reads “Daystar” Watch Bill’s full conversation with Rita Dove from Moyers & Company W.
Who Versus Whom Mignon Fogarty is the creator of Grammar Girl and the founder and managing director of Quick and Dirty Tips. A magazine writer, technical writer, and entrepreneur, she has served as a senior editor and producer at a number of health and science web sites. She has a B.A. in English from the University of Washington in Seattle and an M.S. in biology from Stanford University. Mignon believes that learning is fun, and the vast rules of grammar are wonderful fodder for lifelong study. She strives to be a friendly guide in the writing world. Grammar Girl provides short, friendly tips to improve your writing. To book a lecture event with Mignon Fogarty for your company or organization, contact Macmillan Speakers. Follow Mignon on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Awards Media The Oprah Winfrey Show, Grammar Girl Fixes Common Mistakes, March 2007 "Mignon has come up with clever ideas to help even the most grammatically challenged person remember the rules." "Helpful.
DFTBA Short Story Contest Dear all This post comes to you in two parts, so lets get right to it! Part one! So I am frustratingly aware of the fact that I have been really bad when it comes to updating the blog for inspiration waystation. But you don’t come on here to hear my life story. Link One - Anti Secrecy Activists What’s kind of fascinating and also terrifying about Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden is that they didn’t act out of a sense of nationalism, or in aid of a specific group or ideology, they acted because they thought that a government simply shouldn’t keep secrets. This is very much a 21st Century phenomenon. For another source on this, here is a blog on the subject from the Federation of American Scientists project on Governmental secrecy. Link Two - Women in Politics. There’s an old joke about the etymology of the word “Politics” which I’m sure many of you have heard. So here’s an idea for a story. Link Three - A trip to the Martian lakes Here’s Hank’s video on this. Link Six - Digital Aristotle
Ending a Sentence With a Preposition One of the most frequent questions I’m asked is whether it’s acceptable to end a sentence with a preposition. I know many of you were taught that you shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition, but it’s a myth. In fact, I consider it one of the top ten grammar myths because many people believe it’s true, but nearly all grammarians disagree, at least in some cases (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8). So before I lose you, let's back up. What Is a Preposition? A preposition is a word that creates a relationship between other words. When Can a Sentence End with a Preposition? Here's an example of a sentence that can end with a preposition: What did you step on? I can hear some of you gnashing your teeth right now, while you think, “What about saying, 'On what did you step?'” I've read long arguments about why it's OK to end sentences with prepositions when the preposition isn't extraneous, but the driving point still seems to be “Normal people don't talk that way.” [Where you at?] Cover Letter Grammar
10 Writing Exercises to Tighten Your Writing By Brittiany Cahoon Writing projects can be like children. You love them dearly, but sometimes they irritate you to the point that you just need a break. Working on something fresh and new can invigorate your mind and give you a new approach to your work. These exercises can work for any genre of writing, fiction and non-fiction alike. 1. This is probably the most popular writing exercise to get the juices flowing. 2. Think of something you’re passionate about, like a hobby or a love interest, and write everything you know about it. 3. Something I love to do when I’m stuck is read another author’s work, especially an author who writes in the same style or format as my current project. 4. Writers feel their work, and when you can quite describe what you’re feeling on paper, it can be frustrating. 5. Choose one noun, adjective and verb. 6. This is a wonderful exercise if you struggle to write natural dialogue between your characters. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Ten Creative Writing Activities During the Fall, a couple teachers asked me to tackle a list of creative writing assignments. It's taken me a while, but here they are. While they are all phrased for creative writing assignments here, many of them could be revised to work for other kinds of essays. [Show & Tell] Children in elementary school look forward to show & tell days eagerly. edittorrent: Marks of the amateur-- starting a list By popular demand-- This is something I'd never really contemplated before becoming an editor, but every editor I've spoken to since knew immediately what I meant. That is, "What tips you off about a submission that this isn't an experienced writer? What are the marks of the amateur?" Now I don't mean to be insulting here. So anyway, when I was in England (very nice-- I want to live there, seriously, and I've narrowed my future home choice down to Somerset, Wiltshire, or the Yorkshire Dales), I asked my friends who had edited what they would put on this list. Just to get started, and please add on or ask questions as we go: 1) Improper dialogue formatting. 2) A whole lot of introductory participial phrases. 3) Lynn said semicolons, but really, I'm okay with the occasional semicolon, even in fiction. 4) Clumsy quote-tagging. 5) More than a couple homophone mistakes (then/than, here/hear, etc.). 8) Too many names in the first couple paragraphs. 9) POV shifts on the first page. What else?
Poets & Writers | Contests, MFA Programs, Agents & Grants for Writers Good Writing Is...#7-- 10 common mistakes new writers make in writing dialogue. Fiction writers hear voices in their heads. No, they are not schizophrenic – they are listening to the voices of their characters. But sometimes, something goes wrong when the writer attempts to put those conversations on paper. Nothing is more daunting to the new writer (or if it isn’t, should be) than conversation, and rarely is anything so mishandled. No talent is more worthy of mastering than the art of writing effective dialogue. I’ve often wondered why that is. And I’ve come up with some ideas. One: Many writers try too hard to instill artistry into their character’s mouths. “Yes, indeed,” he said. You find me someone who actually speaks like this, and I’ll look forward to making the acquaintance of a certifiable pompous ass. Rule number one: If it isn’t speakable, it isn’t dialogue. Two: Sometimes writers get hung up on the grammatical ‘correctness’ of their writing and carry it over to dialogue and the result sounds far too formal and strained. “Hello Mother,” the child said. Three:
Paulo Coelho: How I Write Paulo Coelho (Photo: Philip Volsem) Paulo Coelho has long been one of my writing inspirations. His work, of near universal appeal, spans from The Alchemist to the most recent Aleph and has been translated into more than 70 languages. Few people know that The Alchemist, which has sold more than 65 million copies worldwide, was originally published by a small Brazilian publisher to the tune of… 900 copies. I, for one, have always been impressed with consistent writers. My output is erratic at best, and I wondered: how does Paulo write? I reached out to him, and he was kind enough to reply with the attached/linked audio. – When on deadline, what is the first thing you do in the morning? – How do you capture ideas that might be helpful in your writing? [TIM: Evernote, Moleskine notebooks] – How much of your books do you visualize/outline upfront vs. writing organically piece-by-piece? – What are the most common mistakes that you see first-time novelists making?
Young Writer's Scene: Five Practical Tips for Young Writers by Beth Adele Long ©2001, Beth Adele Long You're in school---maybe junior high, maybe high school. If you're like me, the idea of getting paid to think up wild stories and write them down is almost too good to be true. So what can you do? A huge part of what you can do is simply apply yourself to learning the craft of writing. Tip #1: Plan a second career. You will not earn enough to support yourself (let alone a family, if you have one) from your writing alone, not for a long time. "There is the tendency," Kathleen Ann Goonan says, "for the individual to think, 'Yeah, but I can quit my job, write full time, and make money soon because I'm better than everyone else.'" Even if your first novel sells---which it most likely will not---and you go on to sell more novels immediately, it will still take a while before your writing earns enough that you can live on it. Even for people with supportive spouses, it's not easy to reach financial independence. Tip #2: Find a career you enjoy.
Karen Fox - Common Mistakes of Beginning Writers 1. Show, don’t tell. Telling is a narrative, distancing. Showing brings the reader in close, makes him/her part of the story, an immediate scene. Scenes are shown as they happen rather than described after the fact. 2. A lot of writers feel they have to describe everything about their main character when they first introduce him to include a full description, past life and personality description. This also applies to exposition—scene, setting or background, which is another type of character. 3. Four major points of view 1st person (I) 2nd person (you) 3rd person (Jane)—recommended Omniscient (author’s)—used sometimes for setting scene but keeps reader from getting into story Purist stays in POV for entire scene—easier for reader to follow. 4. Again show, don’t tell. Read dialogue aloud to see if it sound real. Watch ly adverbs. Don’t throw in a ton of dialogue tags. Be consistent in referring to a character. "Hello, John." "Hi there, Marsha." "Nice party we're at, John." 5. 6.
Bella Books - Books and eBooks The Writer and the Psychopath Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich features The Writer and the Psychopath For the past several years, I have been writing about a murderer, an occupation of mine that has led to many cocktail party conversations. At this, the listener’s face recoils. “No,” I say, “I don’t think so.” “But to do such a crime…” she muses, and then usually follows determinedly, “He must be a psychopath.” I think I know what this woman and others like her mean. Psychopathy is hot right now, hot the way legitimate diagnoses sometimes become. I was reminded of this phenomenon recently when Jon Ronson’s book, The Psychopath Test, was published to instant bestseller status. Like any other diagnosis, a diagnosis of psychopathy offers an explanation. One imagines that no writer has these cocktail conversations more than Janet Malcolm. Without the enigma -- if Borukhova was an obvious murderer -- there would be no reason to write the book, no urgent need to find (to make) a story.