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Oct 14

Write a postcard to spread global understanding

The written word is a powerful way to increase empathy and understanding on a global scale. Writers can be activists in many ways. One of those opportunities is through a program started by Peace Corps volunteer and teacher Matthew Borden.

Borden started a project called Postcards to Java as a way to help his students practice their language skills and learn more about people in other countries. The project is designed to address Peace Corps’ three goals. The Peace Corps focus on Java is English education and the program provides students with the opportunity to practice their language skills.

The students hope to receive postcards from all 50 states and from all over the globe. Participants are asked to write students a postcard in English. The students read the postcards and then write back. One international stamp in the United States only costs $1.10.Postcards to Java_children Read more

Oct 10

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Self or traditional publishing? Important insights from hybrid publisher Hugh Howey

Self or traditional publishing?

It’s the big question most writers are considering no matter what point they’re at in their writing. Writers have more options than ever with all the changes in publishing in the past five years.

As I’ve been learning about the paths to publishing, I’ve been struck by insights from hybrid author Hugh Howey that you might find helpful as you build your writing career. Howey is known for his popular series Wool, which he independently published with great success through Amazon.com’s Kindle Direct Publishing system. Wool – Part One is currently available for free.

In 2012, Twentieth Century Fox bought the film rights to Wool, and Howey signed a deal with Simon and Schuster to distribute Wool to book retailers across the U.S. and Canada. The deal allowed Howey to continue to sell the book online exclusively. He turned down seven-figure offers and instead opted for a mid six-figure deal in order to retain e-book rights.

In a blog post by Porter Anderson on Publishing Perspectives yesterday, Anderson asked Howey to offer advice for self publishers. Here’s one piece of it:

1. Asking people to buy your book doesn’t work. Instead, try to entertain or enlighten with your Facebook posts and tweets. Read more

Oct 9

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Learn how outlining techniques can help you find your story (and have fun)

I just finished reading one of the most helpful books on writing I’ve ever read—and that’s saying a lot considering how many titles decorate my shelves.

But I hesitate to tell you the title. You might faint. You might freak out. You might jump back from your computer screen or iPhone or whatever device you’re reading this on and chuck it out the nearest window.

One word, in particular, in this book’s title is generally known to make writers quake in their pink bunny slippers as if they are witnessing a wolf spider crawl up the bathtub drain. Read more

Oct 8

Add depth to your novel or memoir with this structural technique, Part 2

In my last blog post, I wrote about how author Elizabeth Rosner used a structural technique to add subtext to her novel. In today’s post, I share an example from a memoir.

In Lisa Dale Norton’s memoir Hawk Flies Above: Journey to the Heart of the Sandhills, she wrote 12 sections called “Notebooks” that created connections between chapters. Norton’s idyllic childhood ended when her parents divorced when Norton was 12. After 13 years of drifting, attending college, and surviving a rape where she was left for dead, Norton returned to Ericson, Nebraska. She began writing stories intertwined with threads of the landscape and its impact on her imagination and identity.

Norton weaves natural images of plants, wildlife and the landscape of her childhood summer home in Nebraska with an account of her search for self as she returns to the Sandhills, her childhood home.

“By lying close to the land, skin to sand, bone to wind, I believed I could merge with the grasses, with the hills. I believed I could become whole again. I did not know this on a conscious level.” Read more

Oct 7

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Rhetorical devices: Your secret writing weapon

When a book instantly grabs me and draws me in, I like to go back later and analyze why. Sometimes, it’s the subject matter. Sometimes, it’s the narrator’s voice. Sometimes, it’s a simile or metaphor that hooks me. Always, it’s the strong writing. Strong writing means that the arrangement of words on the page “works.” Strong writing is an art that we can learn.

Many award-winning, best-selling authors have a secret weapon that helps them produce strong writing. That secret success weapon is the use of rhetorical devices.

Award-winning poet and author Jack Remick discusses his use of rhetorical devices in his interview with Joel Chafetz. He says that the devices all conspire to create a certain cadence in his work. He goes on to say:

…”it’s not enough to put the words down, that’s information. You have to make the words dance and rhetoric can make your words dance. Most people dismiss rhetoric but rhetoric cannot be dismissed. Rhetoric can give you rhythm, rhetoric can give you cadence, rhetoric can give your writing new life. So the writing in Blood is thick with rhetorical devices. And that’s what you’re picking up—the poetry of violence couched in rhetorical devices driving images at full speed so the story spins out ahead of you, drawing you along with each one.”

I’ve used rhetorical devices in my poetry for years–alliteration, assonance, similes, metaphors, etc. These are some of the more common devices with their definitions below: Read more

Oct 3

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Add depth to your novel or memoir with this structural technique

I’m always inspired to see the many ways authors add subtext and metaphor to their stories. As I read, I like to analyze the way an author creates a page-turning story so that I can learn how to apply those techniques to my work.

In The Speed of Light, Elizabeth Rosner uses a structural element to add meaning to the story. In the novel, brother and sister Julian and Paula Perel strive to find their voices in a home where their father struggles with devastating memories as a Holocaust survivor.

A scientist who exists by numbers and routines, Julian lives an isolated life. As Julian retreats from life, Paula throws herself into the world through her study as an opera singer. Both of them change when Paula asks her housekeeper Sola, who has struggles and a devastating past of her own, to stay at Paula’s apartment and look out for Julian in the apartment above while Paula travels.

Rosner tells the story in the alternating voices of the three protagonists. Then throughout the book, she threads scientific definitions written by Julian that reveal his character and create additional depth. The definitions leave readers with another way to interpret and experience the novel. Read more

Oct 2

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Art as activism: Project Unbreakable

Note: The links to Project Unbreakable contain emotionally disturbing material. Please consider this before clicking on those links.

Yesterday, Carly wrote a post about artists as activists—those of us, like poet Martin Espada, who feel called to make the invisible visible.

Another artist doing this same thing is photographer Grace Brown, founder of Project Unbreakable. Two years ago, Grace began photographing survivors of sexual assault holding up posters on which they quoted the words of their attackers. Since it began, the project has highlighted more than 2,000 survivors’ stories. Brown uses her art to give survivors the opportunity to heal and increase awareness of sexual assault.

Read more

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