Such a joy to be part of my friend Lee Ann Berardi Smith’s wonderful videos that celebrate National Poetry Month! Lee Ann has shared other poems of mine going back to the early days of the pandemic, and it’s such a pleasure to hear her read from my work.
Check out this video, where she reads my poem, “Matteo Runs Ahead,” as well as her other fantastic videos celebrating the art of poetry and many talented poets this month.
Free-stock Photo courtesy of Daiji Umemoto on Unsplash
A few years ago, I had the great pleasure of being included in a wonderful poetry craft-essay volume, called Far Villages: Welcome Essays for New & Beginner Poets. The volume was edited by talented Abayomi Animashaun through the marvelous Black Lawrence Press.
If you’re a poet, an educator, an interested reader who wants to learn more about the poetic craft, and/or are looking for a gift that’s sure to bring much inspiration to the poets in your life, I highly recommend this anthology. It’s the kind of book you’ll want to keep on a close shelf to page through for motivation and ideas.
Get your copy now—it’s on sale through this month while supplies last. Clickety-click! Write on!
Cotton-candy-colored blossoms and publication: sweet treats of April
So pleased to share that my nature poem. “It’s the Kind of Thing,” has been published in the current, April issue of The Bluebird Word.
Here are the opening lines, and clickety click to read the rest. Also, check out the work of the marvelous, talented fellow writers in the issue, including dear friend Antonia Albany’s wonderful Spent Water Balloons.
To this continued writing life! ✍️
“It’s the Kind of Thing”
if I wrote it you might
not believe me, but I’ll
write it anyway.
For a second, I mistook
riffs of an electric guitar
on the radio
of a passing car
for a stray cat or kitten
and looked up
from my book
for a tail and a lean cat needing care.
Read the rest and the entire issue at: The Bluebird Word.
Splendid news! This month, I have poetry at both Flowers of the Field and New Contexts 8: An Anthology Check out these brief excerpts of a poem from each literary magazine and then hop on over to the literary-magazine websites to read the rest and the excellent pieces by talented writers in each issue.
Excerpt from Flowers of the Field:
“All the Women Who Write Letters in Oil Paintings”
by Vermeer and other Dutch masters
call out to me today. I know what the internet
says about symbolizing interiority and love, but
what I see most when I see their pensive faces, the lull
of the lemon light splashing in from a window their desks
face, their fountain pens poised above
pristine paper with wax and seals surrounding, at ready,
probably not what the painters wanted me to notice:
uninterrupted time…
Excerpt from New Contexts 8: An Anthology:
“For my nieces, 13 and almost 11, as they embark on learning the potter’s wheel”
I always wanted to sit where you will soon sit.
The closest I came at your age was
making pinch pots—tidy, slightly lop-
sided, shallow dishes we in regular art period
glazed with our brushes, dunking into plastic jars of glaze,
after an afternoon at a nicked wooden group table.
I recall pushing the pads of my thumbs
against the damp, cool clay, trying to stretch it out,
then pressing it smooth into a thinning barrier to air…
I have some other pieces that will be published in two additional journals this spring. Stay tuned, and write on! ✍️
Photo courtesy of Photo by Patti Black on Unsplash.
So happy that my latest article was published at Women on Writing today!
Fabulous Food Lingo and 5 Sumptuous, Savory Prompts to Try
By Melanie Faith
Most writers are word lovers. We delight in the fun of stringing each little consonant cluster together.
What might writers adore just as much as the flair of finding just the right synonym or antonym to tell our tales? What pairs well with an appetizer of theme and a garnish of motif and a heaping helping of diction choices with a fresh ooey-gooey slice of second-draft pie?
Why, food, of course!
Food combines a topic that is both highly relatable and rigorously individualistic. Food writing promises: Sure, we’ve all had salad, but we’ve not all described this heavenly pasta salad from Café Romano on Spruce Street or that delectable BBQ Uncle Ross used to bring to every family function with a tangy sauce so top-secret aunts, uncles, and several second cousins are still trying to figure out and reproduce it (almost successfully) for each year’s reunion.
Food is inextricably connected to memory, place, and time. Food is both growing up and growing into our better selves.
Food is also undeniably literary. From Proust’s super famous madeleine to the descriptions of bread, cookies, and cakes (along with those mouth-watering photos) in your favorite print cookbooks or online recipes, food is tied to expression, especially self-expression in relation to our connections with others. Food is also the guilty pleasure stashed in the top or back shelf of the pantry (Shh…, I won’t tell).
Yes, just like writing, the foods and meals we make, buy, and/or share (or keep for ourselves) provide endless possibilities for creativity—from the individual ingredients to the finished dish on the platter someone gave to great grandma so long ago no one knows where she acquired it but now this treasure is yours.
We often speak of food enthusiastically in conversation with family and friends, so why not write about food the same way?
Try a few of these ideas the next time you’re searching for something to write and want to get words flowing in yummy formation:
Food-jar fiesta: Get a glass jar (recycled or new) and fill it with scraps of food phrases, one on each small piece of paper. Or page through a print cookbook for topic ideas. Love surprises? Get a friend, partner, child, or fellow writer to contribute ideas to the jar for you. Draw one scrap a week for a free-write. If you really enjoy choosing from the jar (like the best sweets, it can get kind of addictive), feel free to dip into it a few times a week. Once you’ve worked your way through the jar, reload it and write on!
Make a food-word alphabet: Write A-Z down the left-hand side of a piece of paper. Quickly jot down any food-related word you can think for each letter. Feel free to do a second draft of this list where you use a search engine to add additional words to the list from recipes, cookbooks, or watching cooking shows. Keep this list handy at your desk for future free-writes.
The recipe nobody wants: Write down four or five places where people meet. Then, pick one as your setting. Write for fifteen minutes about a recipe that your character doesn’t want and that others don’t want to eat, and yet…circumstances or traditions dictate they must make and eat this dish. Include body language and some dialogue in a second draft. This prompt is great for exploring tone—from humor to dread—and an excellent way to practice describing various textures of foods we don’t enjoy.
The nose knows: Write for 15 minutes about a food you would recognize anywhere, from smell alone. This is a great way to practice descriptive writing and making your readers hungry!
Ask, and it’s yours: Write down a few food-related questions to ask someone in your family or friend circle. Conduct an informal interview where you supply the treats (or a favorite meeting-place does) and you take notes on your friend’s (and your own!) answers one afternoon. You can also do this exercise as a free-write and then swap each other’s answers to read aloud after writing. Some fun options may include: asking if they recall a favorite food or recipe from growing-up years and its origin; asking how, when, or where they learned to cook; asking them to describe a recipe they made that went wrong and what happened (be ready to laugh). This exercise can also be repeated at various times of year, with both longtime friends and new.
Also, check out my latest online writing class (beginning Friday, Oct. 10th): clickety-click.
Courtesy of Women on Writing.
Beautiful photo collage courtesy of Women on Writing.
Super excited that my latest article about writing poetry was published today at Women on Writing. Read on for some tips to spark your writing practice.
Poetic Play: Exploring Space, Line, and Stanza
By Melanie Faith
Poetry presents itself visually, just as people stand in front of a closet each morning and choose a linen suit, a plain white T-shirt, a bright floral skirt, or a favorite pair of soft jeans. Even before reading the title or the first line, poetry takes up room on the page in such a unique way and offers opportunities for communicating spatially.
Let’s take a look at some exciting ways form, line, and stanza can be used to enhance our writing.
It’s not only the words chosen; it’s the chosen lack of words, too. Say what?! Unlike prose, the majority of poetry includes purposeful use of blank space which gives ideas room to breathe, can offer emphasis, can create a shape, and so much more. Where and how are the words grouped on the page? Where are the pockets of blank space?
While writing a first draft, poets often instinctively create these blank spaces, such as by beginning or ending a stanza. These spaces can stay throughout all subsequent drafts, or they can be added to or omitted.
Asking ourselves questions like: If I leave a space here, how does that affect the way this line reads or the emphasis this image or word has for readers? What if I include a blank space between words within the same line? What if I indent the first and fifth lines in each stanza throughout the poem? How will that positively or negatively impact the way readers approach the poem?
I often experiment most with blank spaces during my third drafts. I will consider where an extra pause of blank space—whether midline, before a certain word or phrase or after, or indentations—might enrich a reader’s experience of the poem. I also give myself room to delete or to reorganize any white space that I try but which I don’t think best serves the poem.
Keeping a copy of earlier drafts in a single file so that I can scroll back and compare/contrast drafts is a tip that has really worked well in my writing practice. Printing an early draft and a latest draft to compare and contrast off-screen can also work very well when adding, moving around, or deleting white space from a poem.
Line by line by line. Poems can benefit from paying close attention to where a poetic line opens or closes. There’s no rule that a poem’s original opening words or phrases in a line or stanza have to stay that way forever.
Look within your lines to see if there’s a particularly interesting word, image, or phrase that could have more emphasis if opening or closing a line instead. Feel free to dig into the line, move openings and closings of lines around, and also to insert new stanza breaks to see how the poem looks on the page.
After playing with new openings or closings to lines, it can be helpful to read the poem aloud to see how the new lines and line breaks affect a reader’s movement through the poem. Another fun exercise: have a friend read your poem aloud to you. Are there any places where the reader pauses or any awkward spots? Conversely, where are the spots where the emphasis on certain words or images feels just right?
Stanza bonanza. Some poems have a single stanza with lines of approximately the same length and meter, called a “stichic.” Many other poems use multiple stanzas. New stanzas can be started to pivot into a new idea or to emphasize a certain theme, phrase, or image. Or starting new stanzas can also innately seem like the best way to move a reader through a poem.
There’s a variety of approaches for knowing when to open and close stanzas. I recommend keeping a few poetry books or anthologies handy, or perusing websites like The Poetry Society of America or The Poetry Foundation, the latter of which has a searchable database and a daily poem. Studying a few different poets’ approaches to opening and closing stanzas can give you ideas for where you might include stanza breaks and openings in the next draft of your poem.
In your chosen poems, study how long or short stanzas are. Consider counting how many words per line a poem uses. Count lines in stanzas to see if each stanza has the same amount of lines or if there’s variety. Where and when does the poet break a stanza for a new one or even break a pattern among stanzas? Which stanza break do you like best? How does white space between stanzas add emphasis to key words, phrases, or images within the poem?
As we craft and edit our poems, keep experimenting with the way your poems look on the page and feel when read aloud until the work presents its best formation to you.
Try this exercise: Read three to five poems by different poets. Then, take a first draft or a stalled draft and apply two of the line, stanza, or white-space patterns you notice from the other poets’ writing to your own. This might include having three lines per stanza or opening a stanza with a color image or a concrete noun or creating a poem with two stanza breaks. Compare and contrast drafts, and try editing another poem with other poetic patterns you notice from your reading.
***
Care to learn more? Check out my August poetry course:
Never Again the Same: A Poetry Class
4 week workshop: August 8 - August 29, 2025
Instructor: Melanie Faith
Beautiful photo collage courtesy of Women on Writing.
Excellent news! A poem of mine with a new character in a historical poetry series I’ve been working on was just published today at Songs of Eretz!
Check out the poem, and then head over to the issue to read my complete notes about the poem, to see a historical photograph of an iron lung, and to read the work of the talented fellow poets in the issue, which is dedicated to dramatic monologues. 🎉
Flora in the Iron Lung and the Mirror
Melanie Faith
I don’t want to be a complainer. It’s good,
it’s exceedingly good that you’re here. You
came all this way. You look well. You look
so handsome, but then, you always did. I wish
I could reach out of this machine and touch you
after all this time. I wish… well,
let me dwell on something
easier. Let me tell you something nice
Sister Mary Joseph, the afternoon nurse, did.
She’s the young one who wrote to you. Yes,
her penmanship is impeccable. Well,
she sat reading to me. One day,
out of nowhere, she stopped
mid-sentence, and she looked over
and something like sunlight broke over
her face: You know, I see no reason why
we couldn’t jimmy-rig a mirror
right up here. She put the book
upside-down on her seat. That’s how
my machine grew this mirror. She left the room,
came right back.
Sister Mary Joseph’s the tall one—
you haven’t met her—
it didn’t take much for her to reach up and
add it to my machine. You could call it
a fancy modification for my entertainment,
my instant twin and constant company.
I make faces at myself now
into the long hours when there’s nobody
and nothing else.
You’d be surprised on
an endless stretch of days, how many faces
you can pull—butterfly-pinned as I am
inside this darned machine—with just a nose,
two lips, a tongue, and two eyes that
never stop seeing.
Poet’s Notes: This poem is a part of a recent collection I’m working on writing about (among other things): an iron lung, a librarian, and a love triangle. This poem explores polio patient Flora, whose childhood flame, Harry, visits her sickbed. This visit sets off the conflict between Harry and his current love, Helen (the protagonist librarian).
Read the rest at Songs of Eretz, Winter issue.
Thrilled that my article, “Finding Your Fiction Draft’s Best Beginning,” was published today at Women on Writing. Read the article below, and take the exercise for a spin.
Also check out this link to my new online class, FROM BETTER TO BEST: Writing Fictional Beginnings that Hook Readers, that begins Friday, January 24th. 😊
Without further ado: ta-da! 🎊
“Finding Your Fiction Draft’s Best Beginning”
By: Melanie Faith
Here are three things that share a commonality: home renovation, finding a supportive life or business partner, earning a degree. What’s their similarity?
While you think about it, let’s ponder our attention spans, which have grown quite a bit shorter in recent years. Think about how quickly we move onto the next book, song on streaming, or post on social media if it doesn’t grab our attention and hold it. Add to that the fact that publishers receive thousands of manuscripts a year, all vying for attention, and it’s pretty staggering.
So, what do our initial three examples have in common? They all require a big time investment (often much longer than anticipated) and tend to test our patience at various steps until we reach our goal. If there are consistent through lines in life, it is that most of our efforts require regrouping, refining, and numerous revisions.
With so much streaming content and instant entertainment available and so few minutes of free time each day, it’s even more important than ever that we writers intrigue our readers from the start or else there’s a world of other options they’ll choose from. Gone are the days of the slow-burn build-up of a few pages. While it takes more time and effort to rewrite opening pages, it’s well worth it to hook our readers.
What should we do to ensure that our beginnings make a positive, have-to-keep-reading-this impact?
· Bring in the Buddies: Have you looked so often at your draft that your brain is tired? Or are you moderately sure your opening is fine, but then again… An external reader can be invaluable, either way. Props if they are another author, but they don’t have to be. Give your first pages/chapter to willing friends or colleagues and ask what one passage they liked best; this is the element that should front-end your next draft. Feel free to get the opinion of another reader or two, but don’t ask so many readers that you get numerous conflicting opinions, which can be confusing. In my own experience, asking between one and three readers is a sweet spot to get the perfect amount of feedback on whether my current opening works well. If your readers are also writers, make sure to return the favor for them sometime. Another option: send just the first page and have them note what they think is the most interesting or important line. This really zeroes in on whether the current opening lines flop or fly.
· Heed the Hunch: You know that line that made you smile when you wrote it? That line that sort of shimmered from the page or made you stop and feel surprised? That little jolt of wow or that little tickle of hmmm is your inner writer letting you know that something impactful has just landed on the page. If that passage is already on your first page, great! Leave it there. But if it’s not, what if you moved it forward? I’ve often moved favorite lines forward and then either cut out the original opening and written transitions to the latter parts of the chapter or merged the original opening into other parts of the manuscript. Either method can work well, depending on the story’s needs and your own preferred editing methods.
· Skip Ahead: Newsflash: your first chapter doesn’t have to be your first chapter. Let me rephrase that: the chapter that’s currently first may actually not be the best final-draft opener. Instead, a second, third, or even later chapter might hold a more compelling way to open your narrative. Feel free to move a scene or a whole chapter forward.
Try this exercise! Reread your draft’s current opening page or two and answer these questions (or ask a friend) to see if you might have a better opening that’s currently much later in your draft:
· Is there action in the opening scene?
· Is there immediate conflict for the protagonist to struggles against?
· Is it clear from the first page or two who is telling this story?
· Is the protagonist compelling in this first chapter?
If the answer to any of these questions is “not really” or “not as much as there could be,” then it’s likely you have a faster-paced, more absorbing opening scene that you could move forward. Remember that editors, agents, and readers need your opening hook to grab their attention on page one or else they could stop reading. Sharpen the imagery, characterization, dialogue, or setting that will keep those pages turning.
Photo courtesy of Eilis Garvey and Unsplash.com.
Happy Holidays! I hope this season finds you all inspired, resting, and excited for 2025 ahead in less than a week.
I’ve worked on a doodle project for the past year that I’m set to complete on Tuesday. I’d love to share about it now, with some coordinating drawings. Without further ado:
“13 Things I Learned from [Almost] a Year of Daily Doodling”
It just feels good to draw. Period. I knew this intrinsically as a child, and I got to relearn it this year.
The less pristine, the better, the more confidence. During January to around March, I frequently made a soft under drawing in pencil, which I would then trace with a pen or marker before erasing my guiding lines. By around April, my confidence had grown so that I rarely grabbed a pencil first. From July onward, I can’t remember grabbing a pencil to start at all.
Ink-feel is a thing. Some days, I wanted slippery, twirly gel ink or a smooth ballpoint or the gentle flutter of wooden colored pencils while other days I liked either the blunt ooze of a thick marker or highlighter or the waxy appeal of crayons that slowed me down. Just like picking hues to use, my mood could dictate the material I grabbed. Once or twice, I bought new markers or pens to play with. There’s something very affirming and soothing to the nervous system about making marks on paper, even if the drawing doesn’t turn out. Okay, especially when the drawing doesn’t turn out.
Limits open you up. The most time I spent on a drawing was 20 minutes, but that was mostly in January-February. After that, my daily doodle journaling tended to be less than 10 minutes, including any coloring with colored pencils/markers/coupy pencils/crayons. The more I intuitively trusted that I could make good marks, the easier it got to increase my speed.
Phones are great for reference photos: Sometimes I could draw using my mind’s eye, but for other days, a quick image search on my phone yielded many options for reference photos that really helped as I considered various angles and shapes and details to pick and choose from for my own doodle. I reminded myself that professional artists have long used references to research, prepare, and/or draw. No shame in the game.
Yeah, this is drawing, but feel free to combine with captions whenever you want to: Sometimes, I drew little captions or a sentence or two of explication or just arrows and words to label my drawing. I’ve read a few artists’ (published) notebooks and drawing how-to craft books since 2020 that show other artists who integrate small bursts of prose as well, which gave me the idea (and the permission) to mix and match.
Prompts are magical: I have two or three sketchbooks I’ve made intermittent doodles in over the past two or three years, but having a daily page with a specific prompt on it took the what-should-I-try-to-make decision away and opened me up to whatever the prompt asked for each day. After drawing, I made it a ritual to mark the next day’s prompt with a page marker, but I didn’t read the prompt until it was time to draw each day.
Ditch or amend prompts whenever you want to: Now and again, I didn’t know how to make what the prompt asked or didn’t feel like following the prompt, so I didn’t. Like the day I decided to draw a bunch of stars. I just made something else up on the spot. Also liberating.
Some drawings can’t be improved with more focus or more effort—that’s fine, let it go, and you’ll draw more tomorrow and the next day.
Some drawings can bloom with more effort or focus. You’ll know the difference. One day, I skipped a space and labeled the new drawing as “take 2.” If you want to keep trying, then keep going.
Watching the pages accumulate, even if most of the drawings are still not braggable or even what you’d hoped, is one of the best feelings ever. Before starting the daily doodling, I had more of a when-the-mood-struck drawing practice. Not exactly the best way to grow one’s art. Becoming stronger at an art requires more than just dabbling when the mood strikes. I knew this from my writing, and I had the chance to relearn this with my drawing.
Imperfect? Who cares? The journey was for the fun and for the growth in it, both of which have paid back handsomely.
Drawing every day makes me want to draw more. Once I finish the year this week, I know that I’ll want to continue to draw regularly. Paging through my daily doodles from January 1st to late December, I can see how my drawings have gotten more secure, more space-taking, and also more okay with the mistakes in perspective. Here’s to more doodles ahead!
Recently, I had the great pleasure to speak with Literary Titan about my writing path, what inspired me to write my latest poetry book, what I hope readers will take away from my work, and what I’m most recently working on.
Path of Discovery Interview at Literary Titan Clickety-Click!
Looking for a riveting read and a great holiday gift for the readers in your life? Copies of Does It Look Like Her? are available now at Amazon or for signed copies, check out my Write Path Productions Etsy page.