Portable Muse Cards: Relaunch! 📓🖊
One of my fun summer projects has been this box redesign of my Portable Muse cards. This time, I used my own photography for the box front and back and chose another, clearer font. Ta-da! The Portable Muse.
Same great prompts to get your Muse moving! The perfect gift for you and the writers in your life.
More deets below:
“Are you a creative writer whose Muse has gone into a sputter? Wondering: "What should I write about today?" Or are you a teacher with a classroom or workshop filled with eager scribes who need fresh prompts? Wonder no more!
What are they?
• A series of 30 prompts on handy-dandy, beautiful cards. One varied prompt per card. Some include quotations, some situations, others a title or a setting.
• Sure to inspire fiction, essays, poetry, and more!
• Very portable! Slip into your pocket, purse, backpack, or tote and carry them with you to write in cafes, waiting rooms, on your commute, or wherever the day takes you!”
Check out these and other fine products at my Etsy store: WritePathProductions.
✨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
❄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.
"Within Reach"--Ekphrastic Work Featured Today 📓🖊📸
I’m thrilled to announce that a poem I wrote, “Within Reach,” based on a fantastic photograph by talented film photographer Martí Blesa was published today as part of Film Shooters Collective’s NATIONAL POETRY MONTH, DAY 5.
***
Check out all of the posts each day during April at Film Shooters Collective!
***
Within Reach
by Melanie Faith
It is, indeed,
something
good to be
one and small
Photo courtesy of: film photographer Martí Blesa
of many who are
one and small.
It is, indeed,
filled
with gray
potential,
elemental
to advance
in ordinary sandals
against cement.
More and more
rectangles
await our future.
Stacked lenses
mirrored,
so when we wave—
that pleasant
pain bloomed
there in the back
of the neck—
we wave back
looking up.
🌟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.
***
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
My Poem, "Wobbly," Featured ☕📚
So pleased to announce that my latest poem, “Wobbly,” was featured tonight as part of Lee Ann Berardi Smith’s wonderful series on Facebook of poetry videos during the pandemic, with the hashtag: #poemdemic.
Check out Lee Ann’s amazing video reading (clickety links above), my poem text (below), as well as other excellent videos of Lee Ann sharing verse from many inspired poets.
“Wobbly”
the stack of books
beside the nightstand
beside the bed
got wobbly again
I wouldn’t know why—
I only added three new
hardcovers last week
to the tippy-top
so I sat on the floor
this morning
on the carpet
with the tea stain
my knees tucked in a way
that would let me know
when I stood up
that they loathed to be tucked
that way, and I sorted
and pulled two or three mid-stack
volumes of softcover poetry
to send to an out-of-state poet friend
and a thick historical novel
that had been so-so
but a swap with another friend
and the memoir
about the 1980s painter
to toss into the free
book box by the gift shop
the next time I go past
and the rest,
like elementary-school
friends, I set out
for indeterminate recess
I let them group together
still holding hands
beside the printer
I know, despite my efforts
at any minute,
they might sing that song,
might play that game,
that goes
we all fall down
Photo Courtesy of Alfred Kenneally on unsplash.com
✨ "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
"3 Ways Receptivity Leads to Authentic Writing" 🙌📕
Great news! My article about authentic writing was featured today at Women on Writing. Read on!
“3 Ways Receptivity Leads to Authentic Writing”
By: Melanie Faith
We writers tend to be natural observers. Sometimes, that means noticing little nuances of behavior or movement that others might not pay attention to at all. Other times, that includes thinking about an overheard conversation or wondering about the tension within someone’s voice minutes, hours, or even days later.
This receptivity often leads to amazing results and renewed vitality in our writing. According to vocabulary.com, “Your receptivity is your ability and willingness to take in information or ideas.”
Why receptivity? Overall, we writers are meaning-seekers and meaning-interpreters. Not only do we have to choose (or be chosen by) our subject matter, but also we write and edit to bring out symbolism, metaphors, and resonance so that readers will connect to the main ideas and themes we explore. People who are closed off, even partially, tend to miss countless excellent ideas that come their way. The world is jam-packed with ideas waiting for you to notice them.
Here are three top tips for staying open to quality material you might be bypassing:
1. Receptive writers cast their nets widely first and narrow down later.
Since March, millions of workers around the world have worked from our home offices. Conferencing online at a distance has become an ordinary new feature of how the workplace functions in 2020 and into 2021. It can be pretty easy to feel isolated and in one’s own bubble when the majority of social interactions after the workday are also often at the click of a button rather than in our living rooms or at restaurants.
As much as my inner introvert rejoices at a good curl-up-and-read fest, I recognize the need for hanging out and absorbing ideas from friends and fellow creative makers. Nobody is an island, even with Covid-19 social distancing. We need to keep coming into regular contact with others’ everyday conversations about hopes, dreams, fears, complaints, and even the seemingly silly minutiae or anecdotes that used to be more commonplace before quarantine.
Art thrives on community and the spontaneous mingling of ideas. Cast your net wide and get a few recommendations to keep ideas flowing.
If you’re not conversing or overhearing juicy, disparate, random or rambling conversation on the regular, you’re probably missing out on some very important ideas that could positively impact your writing. Don’t immediately scroll past an argument or debate on Twitter or Facebook—read through strands of comments, even if you don’t comment.
Put your favorite podcast on while you work out at home or take a quick run around the block. If you don’t have a favorite podcast or book or song at the moment, text a friend or ten and find out what they’re listening to or reading recently.
2. Slow and steady: receptive writers listen and give themselves time to reflect before creating.
I’ll admit: this is a hard one for me. My mind is almost always bursting with ideas, and never more so than when I read an article that inspires me or watch a video or overhear a conversation that strike a chord. It helps my writing, though, to remind myself that when I come across new inspiration that I need to tune in and give the information a little bit of time to settle before reacting.
Give yourself some time to take in new ideas by keeping a notebook handy to jot down initial impressions, conversation snippets, or notes, but then give that information some hours or even days to rest in your notebook before using them in a new piece. This little grace period between gleaning exciting ideas and integrating or exploring them will deepen your pre-writing period. Your subconscious mind will make connections between ideas that may surprise and delight you.
Great news: often, in the hours or days in-between first hearing or learning of something and beginning to write, several other tangentially- related ideas or pieces of information will also cross your path and enrich or change the focus of your initial idea, enriching your theme in the process. We’re a fast-paced culture, but our writing process doesn’t have to be rocket-launch speed.
We hear not nearly often enough: slow it down, reflect. I’ll say this again because it’s just so soothing: slow it down.
3. Receptive Writers don’t put too much pressure on a single idea.
Here’s something we don’t tend to talk about much, but it’s as true today as it was a hundred or even a thousand years ago for scribes: don’t expect your entire writing career or reputation to be built on one magnum opus. Realize that there are many, many ideas out there and likewise a multitude ways to interpret, structure, and create art from those ideas.
Think of your writing as a marathon run, rather than a sprint. Explore each idea to the best of your ability with what you know now, but realize that you have many chances to edit and/or add to your ideas during the course of your writing career. Also, if the piece doesn’t immediately gel or if it changes focus or shape, that’s a natural part of the process. If this project doesn’t pan out after endless weeks or months of struggling, it’s okay to let it go and begin another project. There are endless other possibilities to pursue at any given time that may refresh your writing—remain flexible and open-minded about beginning again.
Ease off the pressure for the latest project to showcase every single one of your writing talents, and ease into the openness to each idea’s potential to bring out new qualities in your writing during the writing process.
Using our natural observational skills will deepen our writing. In addition, such receptivity will work wonders for creating fresh, authentic writing again and again.
Care to learn more? Clickety-click: Developing Your Authentic Voice. Starts January 8, 2021. Sign-ups now open!
