✨On Developmental Editing: More of the Scoop at …But I Also Have a Day Job ✨
Photo Courtesy of Laura Chouette, unsplash.com
Wonder how a developmental edit works? The answer by super talented writer and fellow Daria aficionado Ian Rogers at …But I Also Have a Day Job. @IantheRoge 🙌
While you’re there, read his insightful interviews with inspiring writing advice from cool writers, such as Gina Troisi.
Also, check out TRAM, the awesome indie zine out of Toyama, Japan that Ian co-edits.
Also, get ready for his debut novel, MFA Thesis Novel, dropping in April 2022 at Vine Leaves Press @VineLeavesPress --it's fantastic and funny. I’m excited for readers and fellow writers to get their hands on this literary gem. 📘📚🖊
Photo Courtesy of Laura Chouette, unsplash.com
Great News: Beyond Words Literary Magazine Second Printing
So pleased that this issue of the stellar international literary journal, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, from last June has now gone into a second printing! 😍📸
I have photography in the June 2020 issue as well as in their current May 2021 issue.
Get your copy/subscription today @beyondwordsmagazine . Also, consider submitting your words or art.
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
❄Featured in Snowflakes in a Blizzard ❄
Pleased to share that my craft book, Photography for Writers, is featured this week in Snowflakes in a Blizzard, a wonderful book blog.
Learn more about the blog as well as check out their other great featured books here and here.
🌟National Poetry Month Ekphrastic Project 📸🖊
Know what’s just around the corner?
National Poetry Month. (Making April everyone’s fav month for 25 years and counting.) 😊
Know what else? I’m thrilled to say that I’ve been asked to take part in Film Shooters Collective’s rad project that pairs film photographers’ work with poets’ verse each day in April. That’s right: I’ve penned a poem based on the amazing art of a fellow photographer. Stay tuned! 📸
Be sure to check Film Shooters Collective’s Insta and website each day for your daily dose of delicious inspiration.
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Care for some sweet poetic inspiration in the meantime? Check out my book—filled with oodles of tips and prompts created with poets in mind:
Poetry Power
Now also available in the 3-book series for e-readers!
Signed copies available at: WritePath Productions, my Etsy store
✨Switch it up with Journaling Power! ✨
I’m pleased to be a part of talented Mari L. McCarthy’s WOW! Women on Writing Blog Tour today. I love getting to share info about books that make a difference in writers’ lives. 😊📚 Ta-da, and read on!
“Switch it up with Journaling Power!”
“Life can only be understood backwards,
but it must be lived forwards.”
--Soren Kierkegaard
One of the coolest aspects of teaching creative writing and as a nonfiction writer myself is connecting with talented authors whose work inspires my own writing journey.
I’ve lost track of how many writers I’ve recommended Journaling Power: How To Create the Happy, Healthy, Life You Want to Live, because it’s the kind of book that I recommend so frequently to writers.
No matter what genres my students write—from poetry to nonfiction and novels to flash fiction and screenwriting—the wise tips and advice offered in Journaling Power sustain a hearty writing process with insights for all writers. It encourages writers to switch up their current thoughts to make and meet goals right now, right where writers are in their lives.
From mindful eating to reversing years of repressed emotions and from overcoming the Inner Critic to positive self-talk and encouraging your Inner Coach, Journaling Power is both warmly inviting and unafraid to tackle the big opportunities for development and healing that are present through an ongoing journaling practice.
Spend time with Journaling Power and two things become immediately clear: 1. Mari has an authenticity and a zest for living and she’s candid about how journaling boosted her own life journey that has had significant bumps and shifts in plans, such as MS and her long-ago music teacher’s careless comments (you’ll learn more about both in her book), and 2. Mari’s enthusiasm for helping others live their best lives is inspiring and ever-present in her writing, in her courses, and on her website.
Lucky readers!
Journaling Power is packed not only with personal anecdotes and motivating quotes (including the one that opens this blog) that will interest readers, but also with journaling exercises that leap off the page and spark writers’ pens.
No wonder it has won numerous writing awards, including a 2018 COVR Visionary Health and Healing Award, a 2019 NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite, and a 2019 Nonfiction Authors Association Silver Award.
Grab a journal, a pen, and a copy of Journaling Power today. It’ll inspire one of the best gifts you can offer yourself and your writing: the promise of your growth from this day forward.
As Mari says, and it’s brilliant advice: #JustWRITEON!
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Journaling Power is available in print and e-book on Amazon, Create Write Now, and Barnes and Noble.
You can also add it to your GoodReads reading list.
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About the Author, Mari L. McCarthy
Mari L. McCarthy, Founder and Inner Work Tour Guide of CreateWriteNow.com shows curious health-conscious people how to use Journaling For The Health Of It®️ to heal the emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual issues in their tissues and to know and grow their True Self. She’s the multi-award-winning author of Journaling Power: How To Create The Happy, Healthy Life You Want To Live and Heal Your Self With Journaling Power. She’s also created 20+ Journaling For The Health Of It® Inner Journey Workbooks that include Who Am I?, Declutter Your Life In 28 Days, and Take Control Of Your Health In 24 Days.
Find her online at:
Website: http://createwritenow.com/
Facebook: http://facebook.com/CreateWriteNow
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwtlBKKHXAfl_fZjLtOGMHA
"4 Inspired Reasons for Teaching an Online Class" ☕
Excited to share that my article, “4 Inspired Reasons for Teaching an Online Class,” was published today at Women on Writing.
To learn more about my class, starting March 5th, click here: Creating an Online Creative-Writing Class.
Read the article below.
4 Inspired Reasons for Teaching an Online Class
By: Melanie Faith
“When one teaches, two learn.” –Robert Heinlein
Like most of us, I’ve held many jobs and learned something about myself from all of them: choir-music librarian, research assistant, camp counselor, and journalist to name a few. By far the most creatively-enriching job I’ve ever had is teaching creative writing online. Let’s look at some motivating benefits for teaching an online class that might just inspire your own course in the near future.
Why teach an online writing class?
Online classes are flexible.
Online classes are wonderful for just about any schedule. Some courses operate over Zoom, Skype, Google Hangouts, and other platforms at particular times of the day like in-person classes, say 7-8 pm. Other classes are scheduled asynchronously, via message boards, discussion posts, and other posted content like PDFs which students can access at a time that suits their schedules.
As an online instructor, you have a lot more freedom to choose how you’ll present your class—such as through posted videos on an asynchronous class or a group meeting/lecture at 3-4 in the afternoon or a mixture of the two—than if you were assigned a brick-and-mortar classroom in a lecture hall.
Your home office and your students’ abodes are your classrooms. You’ll have no commute. You can invest that extra time into our lessons, student communications, handouts, or even your own writing.
Online classes are great fun.
Writing is a topic that’s endlessly fascinating. Each writer brings their own style, themes, characters, projects, and/or goals to the course. There will be a great variety of skill levels and native talents brought to your classroom.
Part of the marvel of teaching an online class is the opportunity to nurture the best skills writers have to offer while challenging and inspiring fellow writers to enhance their writing.
Writing students tend to be diverse, lively, and creative thinkers. They’re often widely-read, curious about life and others, and visionary thinkers. What’s not to love about any of these attributes?
Online classes are a wonderful way to build a writing community.
One of my favorite aspects of teaching writing online is when my students email me, even after our class has ended, to let me know that they continue to write, that they have submitted work to literary magazines or agents, that they have gotten acceptance letters.
During the weeks I spend with my students, our class becomes a community and a support network, and this network often continues in some form after our course. For example, several students have become friends and found writing critique partners in my classes, and they’ve continued to encourage each others’ novels, poetry, and/or memoirs long after the final day of class.
Group dynamics vary in any class, but creative writing students tend to be generous with their time and efforts.
Students have been some of the greatest supporters of the nonfiction craft books I’ve written for writers, and their interest in my past, current, and future projects continues to hearten and inspire me.
Online classes are a great way to evolve as a working writer.
Teaching creative writing provides the occasion to talk about a subject that I’m passionate about with a target-audience of people who actually care about the same topic.
Who else in my daily life would care about the latest interviews with my favorite authors who dish details on their writing process? Who else would want to take for a spin a writing prompt I just wrote? Who else understands the challenges of a third draft as compared to a first one and wants to bounce ideas for a better editing process? Or to share ideas about marketing out literary brainchildren?
There’s camaraderie and inspiration when teaching writing online. We may not be sitting in the same room, but we’re experiencing the same joys and struggles with our works in progress (WIP). Any frustrations my students are having with their protagonists or antagonists or scenes I can identify with because I’ve either had the same frustrations or may even currently be experiencing the same with my own WIP.
Interacting regularly with motivated writers supports my own growth as a writer. I can’t tell you the amount of times when, after having a great discussion with students about some aspect of the writing or editing process, I’ve suddenly known exactly the next step I should try in my draft.
✨ "3 Suggestions on a Saturday Night" ✨
I have the pleasure of guest blogging today at Nicole Pyles’ wonderful blog, World of my Imagination.
Check out my “3 Suggestions on a Saturday Night” for some literary, movie, and audio amusements.
"Journaling as a Discovery Tool for Current Projects" 🖊📕
Splendid news: I’m guest blogger today at CreateWriteNow!
My article, “Journaling as a Discovery Tool for Current Projects,” was published this morning.
Also check out journaling prompts, Mari’s marvelous book, Journaling Power, and other inspiring journaling resources at CreateWriteNow!
Photo courtesy of Nick Morrison at unsplash.com
