When you receive a “Listenback” from a critique on your work, what can you do next?
Use the feedback you’ve received to set up exercises to try things out.
Use this releasing question: What other poems are inside this poem?
Editing and re-writing are like sculpting.
I’ll be going to San Marcos, Texas next week to participate in the LAND FULL OF STORIES conference presented by the STORY CIRCLES network. The theme for the conference is PLACE and that’s what pulled me to respond to a call of papers. I’m honored to be chosen to present a break-out session there. My…
Dusting by Marilyn Nelson from Magnificat Thank you for these tiny particles of ocean salt, pearl-necklace viruses, winged protozoans: for the infinite, intricate shapes of submicroscopic living things. For algae spores and fungus spores, bonded by vital mutual genetic cooperation, spreading their inseparable lives from equator to pole. My hand, my arm, make sweeping circles….
I dove face down into the potato salad and… You finish the story.
The “Write, Pen!” technique is a variation of what the Surrealists dubbed “automatic writing.” Writing that came, they felt, from their subconscious, and therefore routed around the conscious mind with its nagging censor dogs yapping at our writing heels too early. In modern day writing circle we use clustering or mind-mapping and free-writing to come…
Sell your services to the company store, but not your soul. In company towns, there was always a company store selling goods at high prices and always willing to extend credit to get you more deply mired in their debt. In our service-oriented world, the company store takes on a different, more psychological character of…
When Jake Lorfing and I were talking yesterday about some long ago work I felt would be worthy writing material, he said, “But I don’t remember anything; it’s too long ago.” I suggested he do a Sensory Scan. You can do this, too. 1) Take each sense in turn: sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. 2)…