Salad Days

I love reading about a writer's salad days...these reminiscences by 97-year-old Doris Grumbach are wonderful! Doris Grumbach came in to teach a workshop when I was getting my MFA at American University and she seemed (as I recall) mostly unimpressed, except for one remark that she spoke while handing back a story to another writer: "I enjoyed reading this." Oh, but I was terribly envious! Even now, I think this might be the rarest, most perfect compliment to receive as a writer.

Here’s a juicy tease:

The custom in the [Iowa Writers’] Workshop was to submit a short story to everyone in the class, note their criticisms and comments, and then resubmit the rewritten story later in the semester. I came away from those three sessions with a great respect for the collaborative way the Workshop operated, and with one favorite and perhaps apocryphal story. Paul Engle, the director of the Workshop, told me that Flannery O’Connor shyly submitted her first story and sat behind the class circle, taking down all the criticisms that were offered. When that story, “The Geranium,” was resubmitted, it was exactly in its original form. Not a word had been changed. It appears as the first story in her famous collection,The Complete Stories.

Read the rest: http://lithub.com/a-life-in-letters-from-the-new-republic-to-iowa-to-knopf/

It's been a long time, but I remember loving Life in a Day, sort of a memoir/extended essay that she published in 1997, about aging and Maine and writing and a million other things: http://www.amazon.com/Life-In-Day-Doris-Grumbach/dp/0807070890

Right Brain Writing Class on 4/27

This is one of my favorite classes to teach, and I’m so pleased that Politics & Prose is now offering classes AT NIGHT! Registration is limited, so don’t put this off if you’re interested. And if you’re doubtful that prompt writing is for you, please read my recent article on the benefits of prompts for any writing practice here. 

Right Brain Writing: class

Wednesday, April 27

6:30 – 9 p.m.

Politics & Prose Bookstore

5015 Connecticut Ave. NW

Washington, D.C. 20008

Price: $45 (10% off for members)

Explore your creative side at this afternoon of guided writing exercises designed to get your subconscious flowing. No writing experience necessary! This is a great class for beginners and also for those fiction writers and/or memoirists with more experience who might be stuck in their current project, looking for a jolt of inspiration. The goal is to have fun in a supportive, nurturing environment and to go home with several promising pieces to work on further. Please bring lots of paper and pen/pencil or a fully charged computer. Details and Registration.

Can a Prompt Group Help Your Writing Practice?

My article about the neighborhood prompt writing group is up today at the AWP site. How can prompt writing help your writing practice? Why turn to prompts…aren’t they for students and workshops?

I’ll be honest. Much of what got me thinking about prompts was needing my own hand held. I had poured myself into writing a novel that didn’t sell and was left flailing around, unable to commit to another long project. Anxieties about the publishing biz sapped my creative energy. More than anything, I wanted to remind myself that writing could simply be fun, not exclusively a pathway to publication. Starting a low-stress prompt group felt manageable.

Read the rest: https://www.awpwriter.org/magazine_media/writers_notebook_view/39/prompt_writing_not_just_for_workshop

How (Really) to Promote Your Literary Book

We need some humor today (or at least I do), so here’s a link to a funny piece by poet/fiction writer David Ebenbach, about how to promote your book of poetry. Example:

#8. Reviews really help put the book out in front of people, at least if the review is from the New York Times. So, you know, if the New York Times offers to review the book, I say go for it.

Read the rest here: http://www.thebigjewel.com/thirteen-awesome-pro-tips-for-promoting-your-book-of-poetry

And, actually, speaking of promotion, David will be one of the three readers at lovely Upshur Books in Petworth/DC on Thursday, March 24 at 7PM. He’ll be joined by Baltimore writer Kathy Flann and yours truly!

Details here: http://upshurstreetbooks.com/?page_id=205

Tension & Suspense....

I’m delighted with this write-up of my recent visit with the George Mason University MFA Program. We talked about ELEVEN different manuscripts in 2.5 hours, which meant that I focused on larger writing issues that could be relevant to all, which also meant that I got to share some of my favorite bits of writing advice, including Alfred Hitchcock’s theory on how to create suspense, which is included in this blog managed by Stillhouse Press:

“A Life in Tension” ~

http://www.stillhousepress.org/moonshine-murmurs/buildingtension?platform=hootsuite

How to Keep Yourself Writing

by Joanne M. Lozar Glenn

They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Here are five ounces of prevention to cure "falling off the wagon" of a writing practice. Consider making one of them a habit--because meeting your blank page or screen regularly (whatever "regularly" means to you)  is lots easier than trying to get reacquainted after a long absence.

• If it's just you and a buddy, pledge to meet at a coffeehouse and write for 30 to 60 minutes every week. You don't even have to share what you write. Just write, and go home. Mission accomplished.

• Or make a pact with that buddy to write (on your own) for a specified amount of time each week, using any old prompt to start you off--and agree on a regular time and day, say Thursday at 3 pm,  to report your progress. Then call each other just to say you did it, or to read to each other what you wrote. Alternatively, you can do this by email.

• If it's you and a few others, decide together whether you want to have a writing group (where you write together) or a critique group (where you respond to each others' writing). Let the first meeting be a discussion of what kind of group you'd like it to be; who will be responsible for keeping the group on track; how the group will work; when, where, how long, and how often you'll meet; and what ground rules you want everyone to follow.

•  Or if the writers you'd like to hang with are geographically scattered or pressed for time, create an accountability group. Agree that you will each set at least one writing goal a week, share it with the group, and report (the following week) on what you accomplished. Then rinse and repeat. The size of the goal is up to you. What's important is the regular checking in, aspiring, accounting, and doing it all over again. You'd be surprised how much you can accomplish with regular attention to this practice and the group's support.  

• If you're overscheduled and "writing" is impossible for now, first forgive yourself, then try to at least capture the ideas for "someday writing" that flit through your brain. You could jot each idea in a small spiral-bound "idea catcher" or use a manila folder to hold the scraps of paper, one per idea, that you pile up. You could jot ideas on index cards or post-it notes and file them in a zipped pouch for easy retrieval and sorting. You can even use the "Notes" section of your smartphone. What kinds of ideas, you ask?  Ralph Fletcher, author of A Writer's Notebook, suggests jotting down mind pictures, snatches of conversation, memories, doodles, things you wonder about, and even photographs you capture with the phone's camera.

No matter which of the above practices you try, doing it consistently guarantees that you'll not only have "written" more than if you'd done nothing at all--you'll also feel that, despite whatever else fills your day, you're living more of a writing kind of life.

BIO

Joanne M. Lozar Glenn is an independent writer, editor, and educator. She leads destination writing retreats that feature writing from prompts as simple as a photograph and as shameless as eavesdropping on strangers’ conversations. Her book Memoir Your Way (co-authored with five other writers) is forthcoming from Skyhorse Press. For more information: www.wtwpwn.com 

Link for destination writing retreats:  www.wtwpwn.com

Link for Memoir Your Way: http://skyhorsepublishing.com/titles/538-9781510707511-memoir-your-way

Dan Wakefield's Novels/Memoir Are Now Ebooks!

My friend Dan Wakefield is delighted to announce that his most popular novels (and one memoir) are now available in ebook format, thanks to Open Road Media. While I love all of Dan’s work, I have a special place in my heart for the memoir, New York in the Fifties, which I keep on my “Favorite Books Bookshelf.” It’s a wonderful and wonderfully personal history of those post-war, pre-hippie days in New York City when you might say, “I’m going over to Jimmy’s,” and mean James Baldwin’s apartment—at least if you were fortunate enough to be Dan Wakefield!

Here is the list of Dan’s titles, and a link for more information is below:

Under The Apple Tree: A young  boy ‘keeps watch’ over the girlfriend his big brother leaves behind when he goes off to fight in WWII.

Going All The Way: “. . . wonderful, sad, funny, a scathing portrait of middle America through the eyes of a new fictional character” – Gay Talese

Starting Over:  This story of divorce  is “a modern Pilgrim’s Progress . . .with all our contemporary hangups, frustrations and temptations. . .” - Chicago Tribune.

Home Free: My novel of the ‘Sixties – read it while listening to Janis Joplin as the hippies and hangers-on search for a new meaning of “home”

Selling Out:    “”. . .killing-funny, killing-sad, fires everywhere.  War is hell, maybe, but so is L.A.” – Tim O’Brien

New York in the Fifties (Memoir):  “A precise and moving recreation of a time and a place when the world seemed small and we knew everyone in it.” – Joan Didion

For more information and to order: http://www.openroadmedia.com/contributor/dan-wakefield/

To read more about Dan Wakefield: http://danwakefield.com/