Visit These Six Blogs. Now.

I have just concluded teaching a six-week class–”Writing Compelling Blog Posts” at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland–and thoroughly enjoyed learning more about blogging and writing myself, as we spent six Tuesday nights workshopping each other’s potential blog posts. We were a bit large for a workshop–eighteen strong, when everyone could make it–but we found a way to make it work.

Several of the students have started personal blogs, and I’m proud to introduce you to them here. Several more students are looking to launch ones of their own, and I very much hope they do; their work to date is great. If they follow my advice we will have to wait a bit, however, because I always advise bloggers write for six months without posting. That allows a potential blogger both to find her voice and build up a backlog of posts for when the muse is AWOL.

I strongly encourage you to check out these great blogs by my new friends:

• Dignitary’s Retreat: Chrisanna tells us she is “in the process of re-booting my life.” With raw honesty, she is chronicling a major life change that has brought her back home to Washington, D.C., after many years in Santa Barbara. “My blog’s purpose is simply to record and share some of life’s humorous or thought provoking experiences, which generally spring forth from the most mundane of circumstances,” she shares. I can relate. I encourage students to engage readers in conversation by inviting feedback on insights and reflections, which she does in “10 Things to Ask Yourself When Re-booting Your Life.”
• health2happiness: Health and happiness are not abstract concepts for Cliff. As he shares, they have become very important to him: “I have been in recovery from various people, places, things and assorted chemicals for 23 years.” Cliff’s blog is an eclectic mix of medical information, cultural observation, and personal reflection. I encourage bloggers to watch their word count, and Cliff’s are nice and short. A good example of getting to the point is “‘Illusions’ for Health and Happiness,” in which he recalls the Richard Bach book, then quickly shares this: “Don’t know about you, but I have created some absolutely awesome messes in my time.” I have too, Cliff.
• abitravelblog: “I’m a traveler, a maverick of sorts, and a long-time environmentalist and conservationist.  If I had my druthers, I’d be outdoors in nature all the time…. That said, I am a social sort so I’d want to bring my party with me.” Abi brings some nice twists to the travel-blog genre. Her tagline gives a hint of that: “Travels through a Same-Sex Marriage and Around the World.” Her travels go beyond geography, however, to explorations of the self. A quite moving example of this is “A Visit Home–to Pet the Tree, Perhaps,” which has the beauty of a personal essay.
• Fox High Perspective: Bill Fox is a “plane-flying project management and performance improvement consultant for technology companies ready to implement effective, lasting change,” and the author of 5 Minutes to Process Improvement Success. With his High Perspective blog, Bill has kicked up the creativity, finding ways to share a bit about project management and himself while anchored around flight. A good example of that is “What I Learned About Performance Improvement from Nearly Crashing an Airplane.” I’d probably learn to what extent I have mastery over my bowels.
• Callie’s Blog: You might try calling Callie Feyen a “mommy blogger,” but that label falls short. Callie is an MFA student, and her love for the craft of writing comes through in her posts. Her adventures with daughters Hadley and Harper are the anchor for many of her posts, and we meet them both in words and in pictures. Callie comes through in her voice, which is sometimes sassy, occasionally vulnerable, and always engaging, as you find with “Beach Reads.”
• Rubin-Hood: Rebecca Rubin is a busy young woman. She works for an IT design firm, Blue Water Media, and writes for its blog. But I’m directing you to her personal blog, which she refers to as “a raspberry-tinted virtual shrine that chronicles the inspirations, adventures and passionate convictions of a tiara-loving zen wanna-be running wild in DC (a.k.a., Moi).” One thing I encourage is a catchy elevator pitch; she’s got one. Rebecca makes use of short posts with inspirational quotes and images, but also will be incorporating short essays on everything from fashion to heartbreak. In “5 tips for being taken seriously at work (especially when you’re young, female, and damn quirky!)” her whimsical voice comes out strong.

FYI, I posted the curriculum for the first night of the six-week class here on this blog. They are “5 Questions to Ask Before You Blog,” and “5 Things to Remember While You Blog.” If you want the materials for the other five classes, then you’ll just have to take my next class!

Guest Post: Honoring Your Muse

Today I’m honored to provide a guest post by Lisa Hayes, a singer/songwriter extraordinaire. I’ll confess to a love of passionate and lively Americana roots music, and I love Lisa’s music. I’d describe Lisa as three parts Susan Tedeschi (before her music became a bit, at times, sappy) and two parts Grace Potter (before she added in disco funk elements). But today we’re going to enjoy the output of another one of her muse influences, her engaging prose.

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I’d like to start by thanking Patrick for asking me to guest post on The Artist’s Road. Besides his blog, Patrick’s tagline is a favorite of mine.

At Monday Morning!, my tagline is For Writers (&Fans) of Women’s Fiction & Roots Music.

I hail from the storytelling world via songwriting. My publishing deals were in tandem with record deals. That’s because they were for an artist versus a songwriter, as in Springsteen, Petty, Cold Play (my stab at something other than ancient), etc.

The Violets – Cisco DeLuna, Chuck Bramlet, Lisa Hayes, & Jano Janosik

To give you an idea of how much words matter to me, this is a favorite review culled from twenty-five years worth for Rebel Train, The Violets, Lisa Hayes & The Violets, just plain Lisa Hayes, & now the Lisa Hayes Band.

To quote Portland, Oregon’s Williamette Week:

“Slide guitar and aggressive drums take the back seat to Lisa Hayes and her soul-searching brand of musical poetry.”

My first publishing deal was from Kaz Utsunomiya, then President of Virgin Publishing. As you can well imagine, I hold a special place in my heart for Kaz. Next up was John Titta, then Senior VP/General Manager of Warner/Chappell Music. He reached out his hand after a gig at the Mercury Lounge in New York and said, “I hope you’ll consider making your home with us.” And with that handshake (and then way too much moolah spent on a music lawyer hashing out those pesky “details”), I realized a lifelong dream. Warner/Chappell. I had reached my own personal songwriting pinnacle. The years of van touring, living in band houses, and thousands of hours spent honing my craft…well, it had paid off, again.

I have now embarked on a different creative path, deciding to write a novel, which I have (sort of) finished. Damn there’s some serious editing involved in corralling 80,000 plus words! There are two more stories percolating in my head along with a screenplay.

Umm…looks like North, South, East, & West!

I am also sorting out the maze known as Looking For an Agent.

Does Insecurity Drive Creativity?

I had the pleasure yesterday of seeing a photograph, taken by my daughter, on display at a D.C. art show. Pleasure is an understatement; I was bursting with pride. Both of my children give me reasons to smile. My daughter’s art. My son’s grades. The thoughtfulness and generosity of both.

And yet. As I was driving home from the art show, I found myself wondering if my daughter’s growth as an artist might one day find me feeling proud, yes, but also jealous. Perhaps more jealous than proud.

This is the photo that was on display: “Rib Caged” by Marisa Ross

I’ve never met a creative who didn’t, on some level, suffer from self-doubt. I think that the doubt we carry within us can, at times, drive us to improve our craft. But it can also paralyze us. And it can take us to dark places.

I know a writer who is enormously talented and hugely successful. Yet she has, at times, reacted to the more modest creative successes of her adult child by turning the attention back to herself, seeking assurances that her creative output is unparalleled. Such behavior defies logic, but insecurity isn’t logical. It is a hunger that can never be satisfied; feeding it often makes it more hungry. Is it possible, however, that she needs her insecurity, that she wouldn’t be so successful if she wasn’t consumed with self-doubt?

I’ve heard some creatives say they struggle when a friend or spouse achieves a creative success that has eluded them. A bit of professional envy is natural, and may be intensified when it involves a loved one. But Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne were each other’s editors, cheerleaders, and lovers. Surely there were periods where one was producing more, selling more, inspiring more. And yet their marriage lasted. More than that, it worked.

We never know the future, so I can’t say for sure that I won’t, someday, find myself feeling more envy over my daughter’s creative success than pride. But, speaking as a father, I would love to reach the point where I learn how I will respond. That will mean she has reached the level of success that I can see in her future.

This is one of those silly posts I find myself writing, a post where I have a question but lack an answer. I don’t know to what extent insecurity drives creativity, and when insecurity actually undermines creativity. But I’ll keep reflecting on it, and keep monitoring how my insecurities interact with my muse.

I welcome your thoughts.

When Do I Write?

The conversation continues in the comments field of my last post, “Why do I write? Because…” That post was inspired by the process of writing a guest post for the blog She Started It. I’m flattered that Anjali Enjeti invited me to appear on her great blog. She asked me to answer a seemingly simple question: “When do you write?”

That’s a sensitive question for me right now, as I am working on building a creative-writing life around a new full-time job. You can read my answer here.

Why don’t we continue last week’s conversation about writing below. When do you write?

Why Do I Write? Because…

This thought exercise began over the weekend, as I was writing a guest post for another blog answering the question “When do I write?” (It should run next week; I’ll provide a link at that time.) Just a few weeks ago, I wrote another guest post answering the question “Where do I write?”

I am grateful no one has asked me to write a post answering the question,”Why do I write?”

Because…

Do I stall because the answers are too many? Or too unclear?

I’d like to invite you, The Artist Road readers, to answer that question for yourselves below. Feel free to leave more than one answer. In fact, come back if you think of a new one after you’ve left. And comment on others’ answers as well.

I’ll be reaching out to some of you whose answers have inspired me to see if you’d like to write a guest post for The Artist’s Road.

Have at it!

Seven Vows for Sustaining an Art-Committed Life

So you’ve dedicated yourself to living an art-committed life, I can hear you saying. It’s one thing to proclaim that. But how do you maintain it during those moments when real life interferes?

I have capitalized on the flexibility of self-employment over the last year to grow this blog; start an MFA program; and begin teaching. I’ve approached each day like a baker, mixing together the sugar of creative writing with the flour of commercial writing. Some days have been sweeter than others, but each has been filling.

Two weeks ago I returned to full-time salaried work. What lured me back was not just the comfort of a predictable paycheck, but the opportunity to serve my country in a truly meaningful way. There are jobs the art-committed work so they can afford to do what they really love; this is a case where it’s the job itself I really love.

By the time I reached Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge, near the end of my 2010 cross-country U.S. road trip, I knew I needed to return to an art-committed life. Nearly two years later, I know I can balance that life with an inspiring full-time job.

What a delightful dilemma, I can hear you saying. A great day job, with a fun side pursuit.

It is not a dilemma. But it is a challenge. Because of the dedication I bring to this job, and because I find it rewarding, it will actually be easier for me to neglect the muse to which I have dedicated myself as a creative writer.

I spent too many years neglecting my muse. I believed creativity was finite, that when I gave my creativity to my employer, there was none left for my art. But creativity is not a fossil fuel of finite supply that must be transported in pipelines and on ships and driven around in automobile tanks. Creative thinking, I’ve learned, begets more creative thinking. A creative breakthrough at one’s day job can inspire a blizzard of creativity with one’s late-night or early-morning art.

I will not remain true to myself if I do not continue living an art-committed life. So to keep me on the path, I am proclaiming here these vows:

• I vow to make time for my art. I returned home from a long day at work at 10:45 pm last night. I awoke at 5:15 am this morning to write this post. That is not a sustainable daily schedule, but I am committed to carving out at least an hour a day for my personal muse. Today my muse wanted to write this post.
• I vow to bring full creative effort to my employer. This is easy to say now, when I am loving every minute of my new job. But there will come a moment when my muse tells me she misses the time we used to spend together. Her call might come in the middle of the day, perhaps during a dull meeting or when a project I’ve been working on has suffered a setback. I vow to tell her I’ll call her back that night.
• I vow to continue my MFA in Nonfiction Writing. It already is clear to me is that the work I’m doing in my degree program brings daily value to my new job in communications. But it is tempting to think that perhaps I should take a hiatus from the program, that producing thirty solid pages of creative writing each month along with critical reading and writing will take too much of my time. I will remind myself that the MFA is a core part of my art-committed life, and will increase my efficiency at my salaried job.
• I vow to be fully present while on the job. If you look through my tweets over the last month, you’ll see two trends: 1) I’ve sent far fewer the last two weeks, since I started the new job. 2) Those tweets I’ve sent during East Coast working hours were sent via Hootsuite. In fact, they were scheduled each morning before I left for work to go live while I was at work. I made a decision when I started this job that I will not engage in any personal media while at work. That means the social media conversations I allowed myself to engage in during the day as a freelancer must now wait until the evening or the early morning, just as my muse must wait.
• I vow to remain engaged with the artistic community. I’ll still answer your tweet, just not right away. I’ll still chat with you in the comments field on this blog, but again perhaps not right away. Everyone I interact with in social media not only shares my passion for living an art-committed life, they also share the challenge of balancing art, work, and family. They will understand.
• I vow to maintain a separation between my worlds. Longtime readers of The Artist’s Road know that I never blogged about my freelance clients. My professional and personal code calls for a firewall between work and social media. As it happens, my new employer mandates that. Consider it done.
• I vow to remain open to possibility. When I chose to return to freelancing at the end of 2010, it was the third time in my 20+ year career that I voluntarily became self-employed. Clearly I have a bit of an entrepreneurial bug. But a good entrepreneur, like a good artist, remains open to possibility. This new professional possibility was too good to refuse. And so I voluntarily adjust my day parts to accommodate it while remaining committed to my art. Now my mission is to remain open to possibility with my art. As I restructure my engagement with my muse, she may wish to take me in unexpected directions. I trust her enough to follow.

I love to learn, and I’ve just embarked on a major learning process, determining how best to balance a commitment to my salaried employment while honoring my commitment to my muse. What lessons have you learned as you seek balance in your own artistic life?

Lit Journal Nugget: Ep;phany

Awhile back I had an epiphany; as I studied literary journals I would run reviews on this site. I then had a further epiphany; I would invite readers to submit their own. I’m pleased to feature the first guest post in the Lit Journal Nugget series, a review of Ep;phany by Jennifer (Jenna) McGuiggan, a great writer and budding roller-derby queen I met through her own blog The Word Cellar, only to learn she is an alum of my MFA program. Is there a journal or magazine publishing creative writing that you’d like to review for The Artist’s Road? Email me and we’ll talk!

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I first heard about Ep;phany, a literary journal when I met the editor at a Vermont College of Fine Arts dinner during AWP 2011 in Washington, DC. I had just started my last semester of grad school, and the editor, Willard Cook, is a graduate of the program. His journal stayed on my subconscious radar while I finished up school and started thinking about sending my work out into the world, but I didn’t get a copy of Ep;phany until I ran into Willard again this past February at AWP in Chicago and then picked up a copy at the book fair. (I love that playful use of the semicolon in the journal’s title.)

Ep;phany

• Publisher: Epiphany Magazine
• Publishes: Primarily Poetry, Fiction and Nonfiction
• Editor: Willard Cook
• Publisher’s description: “Epiphany is committed to publishing literary work in which form is as valued as content. We look for writing, wherever it may fall on the spectrum from experimental to traditional, that is thoroughly realized not only in its vision but also in its commitment to artistry. We are especially open to writers whose explorations of new territory may not yet have found validation elsewhere.”
• Print schedule: Published twice a year, in the spring and the fall
• Submissions: Closed to regular submissions during June, July, and August. Submissions for an upcoming issue (Winter/Fall 2012-2013) on war will be accepted throughout the summer. All submissions should be made through the online submission engine.
• Issue Reviewed: Fall/Winter 2011-2012
• Content: 12 fiction pieces (including two with “Writer’s Process” notes from the authors, and three translations); three nonfiction pieces under the category of Memoir; 25 poems (including two translations)

Epiphanies get a bad rap in the world of literature. Writers bemoan how overused and trite this literary device has become. Need a tidy way to tie-up the loose ends of your short story? Give your protagonist an epiphany! Need to impart some existential meaning to bridge the personal-universal gap in your memoir? Epiphany! To be honest, I’m not sure what poets think about epiphanies, but I feel like poetry functions on a different plane, one where the whole poem itself is the epiphany. At least, the poetry I like most has this feeling.

In fact, the prose I like most has this same feeling. And if I’m being really honest, I’ll confess that I adore epiphanies, both on the page and off. What writer (or reader) doesn’t long for a “manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something; an intuitive grasp of reality through something (as an event) usually simple and striking”? (Thank you Merriam-Webster.)

Say what you will about epiphanies in writing – and yes, they can be trite and sophomoric in the hands of less-skilled writers – but these flashes of insight, these “moments of being,” as Virginia Woolf called them, well, they’re the whole reason I write (and read).

Still, a whole literary journal committed to such moments is an overwhelming and dicey prospect. Things could go badly. But they don’t. As I read through this issue of Epiphany, the word that kept coming to my mind was swept, as in: swept-away to foreign lands, swept-along in (everyday) adventure, swept-up in an author’s peculiar, particular mindset. Although explicit “ah-ha moments” do show up in Epiphany (I even encountered the word “epiphany” in several pieces – how brazen! how meta!), many of the prose pieces are more like long, slow burns in which the sum of their parts function on that poetic plane, leaning toward meaning without any overt shriek of “Eureka!”

This aesthetic makes the pieces in Epiphany simultaneously more pedestrian and more profound than one might hope for or expect. Many of the pieces are set in countries outside of the U.S., but even the “domestic” pieces feel new and alien to a U.S. reader, an effect which the contributors achieve by pulling readers into their world and their minds quickly and viscerally, with little to no set-up or exposition. There’s a wildness to the pieces, even the tamer ones.

The sidebar of one of the journal’s web pages lists the names of several contributors and invites you to read their work so that “you may see life a little differently.” That’s Epiphany: as low-key and as intense as life itself.

A few extras:

Epiphany Editions, the chapbook publishing offshoot of Epiphany, a Literary Journal, offers its books in two formats: as handmade, letterpress-cover chapbooks, and as Book Kits, which enable readers to print, cut, and bind their own copy of the book. The press holds two annual chapbook contests, one for poetry and one for fiction. (This essayist hopes they’ll consider adding a third genre.)

The journal also offers fee-based editing and consultations services for prose and poetry, including a full-length manuscript consultation option.

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Jennifer (Jenna) McGuiggan is a writer, editor, and creativity coach who lives in Pennsylvania. She received her MFA in creative nonfiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is working on an essay collection that is chock-full of epiphanies. She developed and teaches Alchemy, a series of online writing classes and workshops. Visit her in The Word Cellar, where she writes about everything from navigating the writing life to venturing into the world of roller derby.

Who Has Your Creativity Sold Out?

Is your creativity selling out someone in your life?

Joan Didion famously wrote that “writers are always selling somebody out.” Songwriters, painters, novelists and other creatives channel their life experiences when producing their art. Take my post on Tuesday, in which I passed along advice I heard at a recent writer’s conference about building a fictional narrative around a personal “flashbulb” memory.

Writers often write with the hope that the individuals who appear in their writings won’t discover that fact. I changed the person’s name, a fiction writer will say. I changed her ethnicity, or her sex. But as I explore this issue–which I’m thinking about examining more fully in my MFA critical thesis at the Vermont College of Fine Arts–I hear published writers repeatedly say that the people they write about do find out, often quickly after publication.

In the last few months I’ve questioned published memoirists and attended panel discussions on this question. I blogged about a panel on this topic at AWP for the online journal Brevity, and a week ago I attended a similar panel at the Conversations and Connections Conference in D.C. The message always seems to be the same: Assume the person will read the piece, and will be upset. And write it anyway.

Write it. But is that right?

“I’ve sold my family out a lot,” said Huffington Post essayist Tamar Abrams at the recent conference. She said she hasn’t written about her brother, who is a Harvard Law professor, “because he said he would sue my ass.” But she writes about her parents and others, and never shows her work to them before publication.

A writer has to risk selling out others, memoirist Tom McAllister said. “Your option is either to tell an honest story or hold things back.” “You have to be willing to lose your friends,” he said.

When Cathy Alter in her memoir included unflattering details about her mother, her mother chose not to read the book. But her father did, and chastised her. Yet Alter has no regrets. She asked her father, “Should I have lied?” “You have to make people three-dimensional,” she said.

A writer has to write, I keep hearing. When you write, you have to be honest. Being honest means risking offense of others. If you’re harder on yourself in your writing, others really don’t have the right to object.

But everyone I’ve talked to on this subject, and everyone I’ve listened to on panels, is a writer. They are in a bubble that most people don’t occupy. Alter said someone told her that if she felt compelled to write her memoir, she should have written it, but then hidden it away in a drawer. The audience of writers in the room gasped in horror. “I know, right?” Alter said. She bemoaned the fact that she lacked a good comeback for the awful offense she felt by that statement. But what about the offense her mother felt?

I feel the woman who caused Alter offense had a point. Okay, your muse is insisting you get it on paper, so obey her. But why do you have to publish it?

I confess to examining this issue in such detail because I am wrestling with it myself. I have begun to explore the personal essay form in the last two years, and am working on a memoir in my MFA program. At times I am writing about others in a way that I believe is flattering, but what I’ve learned from memoirists is that others will take offense even when you think you’re being nice, simply because they don’t see themselves as you do.

But sometimes I am not being nice. Or, to put it another way, I am painting somebody in what I perceive to be three dimensions, and I know they will not appreciate that. I’m writing about private moments, times when the subject could not possibly have imagined that their actions or words would be broadcast to the world. Beyond that, what would be broadcast would not be actual footage, but my own perception, colored by biases and the passage of time.

I believe the writers I’ve sought knowledge from on this issue fail to appreciate the fact that non-writers don’t get this burning need writers feel to not only write their stories, but share them with the world.

One of my MFA advisors–a brilliant writer and teacher who I’d love to work with on this issue if it becomes my critical thesis–tells me that her memoirs of child abuse and sexual addiction have helped many others who suffered like her. The title of Sue Silverman’s craft book Fearless Confessions makes clear the advice she offers. But while individuals in her sexual addiction memoir, Love Sick, were still alive when she wrote it, her sexually abusive father and truth-denying mother both were dead when she wrote Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You.

I maintain the writer’s courage must be higher when the subjects can read what you’ve written, and know that others who interact with them also can read it, potentially changing their opinion of that person. There are things about myself of which I am not proud, and at some point I may be willing to share on the page. I would not appreciate someone else sharing those in writing first, colored by their own perspective.

I haven’t found the answers I seek. For now I continue to write, wondering what I would risk publishing and what I would choose to leave in the drawer. I also wonder if other creatives have pondered this dilemma in their own creativity, if they’ve been able to pull themselves out of the artist bubble and appreciate the perspectives of those they would portray in their art.

I invite your thoughts below.

Lighting Up Your Storytelling With Flashbulb Memories

Whether we are revealing ourselves through memoir or creating an alien world in a novel, our experiences drive our storytelling. Writers can amplify the brightness of so-called “flashbulb memories” to add more vigor to the stories they tell. That was one takeaway for me from Saturday’s Conversations and Connections writer’s conference in Washington, D.C., sponsored by Barrelhouse and hosted by Johns Hopkins University.

A “flashbulb memory,” author, teacher and literary journal editor Joanne Cavanaugh Simpson told a tired but engaged audience late in the day, is an emotional event that is locked down in our memory. It’s remembering where we were and what we were doing on 9/11, for example. We relive the memories, in our minds and in our telling of them to others. But everyone has memories unique to them, often linked to a personal trauma.

Isaac Baker‘s forthcoming novel Broken Bones was inspired by a flashbulb memory that proved to be the first to return to him after awakening in a hospital in 2008 not knowing who he was. The memory was that 1) he was married, and 2) his wife was cheating on him, and 3) she had recently left him. Exploring this memory, he realized he was hospitalized because the trauma had led him to stop eating.

My honeymoon in Greece produced some flashbulb memories. I likely would have forgotten this lazy dog I "spotted" in Santorini, however, had I not snapped his picture. I include him here because he looks like how I felt at the end of the conference.

From Baker’s description of Broken Bones, it sounds like his novel borrows heavily from real life. But panelists made clear that the flashbulb memory should be considered a trigger point from which a narrative could be built. It is the narrative that matters; a traumatic memory may be unique to us, but we all suffer trauma. The key is to find a way to build an original story from that trauma.

Josip Novakovich watched his father die at the age of eleven.  He relived that flashbulb memory every year on his father’s death day, convinced that at midnight he too would die. The death of a father is not unique to Novakovich, but he said that vivid and life-shaping moment has helped him launch numerous writing projects, including stories, essays, and even poetry.

We all remember things differently. Dario DiBattista knows this well. An Iraq War veteran, he has written extensively about his experiences since returning to the U.S. and earning an MA in Creative Writing. What he has found, however, is that two soldiers in the same battle can have highly divergent perspectives on what transpired, with one convinced the firefight lasted minutes and another equally adamant it lasted hours.

If crafting a memoir, the writer must tell the story as it is true to her, even if others will have a different perspective, Simpson said. This is something Simpson has given a lot of thought to, as she recently launched a new literary journal, Three Quarter Review, featuring essays that are “at least 75% true.”

But the notion of varied perspectives on the same incident can also be useful in fiction. Panelists discussed how a writer could take one incident from his life and imagine how various characters would view that same incident. That process could trigger a narrative for a short story, or even a  novel.

Have you ever used a flashbulb memory to craft a story? What steps did you take to go beyond the memory itself and build a narrative, to tell a story instead of just a memory?

Creativity Tweets of the Week – 4/20/12

You shouldn’t be reading blogs right now. It’s spring. Go outside and frolic in the grass. You can read these links later, in bed, while recovering from your allergy attack.

CREATIVITY

• “4 Secrets of Great Critical Thinkers,” Paul J. H. Schoemaker, Inc.: I’m shocked “Eat bacon” isn’t on the list. “Slow down” is.
• “9 Inspirational Quotes for Creativity,” Susan Silver, Irque Du Mot: I wanted to dislike this post, because it uses so many blogging tropes: 1) A list. 2) Recycled quotes. 3) Cute images. But I’m a sucker for creativity quotes. You can quote me.

WRITING

• “5 Reasons Why Your Life Will Improve by Writing Memoir,” Sue William Silverman, guest post on Write Now! The bestselling memoir author (and one of my instructors with the Vermont College of Fine Arts) says that, among other reasons, the process helps us understand the past. My question is: What if I don’t want to remember it?
  

  One memory from my cross-country U.S. road trip I wouldn't mind forgetting: Escaping an overly friendly drunk in a bar in Boise, Idaho, by slipping into an alley through the kitchen. I startled a couple of busboys sneaking a smoke.

• “Make-or-Break Verbs,” Constance Hale, The New York Times: We know the power of using action verbs, but Constance tells us verbs can also carry sentiments, hint at cognition, bend ideas together, assert possession, and conjure existence itself. Take that, adverbs.
• “20 Ways to Kill Your Writer’s Block Forever,” Carol Tice, Lifehack: This is a topic that has received exhaustive examination in the blogosphere, but I still found some good nuggets in this list. I’ll add a 21st: “Start writing a blog post titled ‘All the things I’m doing to avoid writing.’”
• “Today’s Publishing Landscape: What Do You See?” Rachelle Gardner: Among the nuggets provided by this literary agent: “I see authors pulled in too many different directions, no longer having the ‘luxury’ of focusing on just writing the best book they can, but needing to be experts at marketing and social media too.” Yup.
• “Author Blogging 101: Widgets, Sidebars and You,” Joel Friedlander, The Book Designer: As my blogging students know (and, I suspect, dislike), I prefer to focus on the writing side of blogging over technical aspects such as blog layout. Maybe it’s because I’m not very good at layout. So, once again, I let Joel provide that kind of advice here in Creativity Tweets of the Week.

A quick thanks to those of you who read my essay that was just published in Barely South Review, “The Upset Win.” I have a stack of literary journals on my coffee table still unopened, so I can relate to being tempted to do something other than sit down with a creative work. Like sending a few tweets that might make their way into next week’s Creativity Tweets of the Week.