“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!
Photography for Writers Class 📸
Looking for a fun online class this month? I’m teaching Imagery Power: Photography for Writers that starts next Friday, July 16th.
Just a few spots left—reserve your place today. I’d love to work with you. 📸 Learn more here.
📚🖊My Flash Article Published Today🖊📚
It's a great news kind of day! My article, "The Inherent I: 4 Reasons for Using Fabulous First-Person POV in Flash," was published by Women on Writing today. Read the whole article below, as well as a free prompt to try. 😎
Interested in more? I’m taking sign-ups for my April Flash Fiction course: clickety!
“The Inherent I: 4 Reasons for Using Fabulous First-Person POV in Flash”
By: Melanie Faith
Both flash fiction and nonfiction often feature first-person narrators. What are the advantages of using I speakers when writing flashes?
First person is focused. A speaker in first-person narration showcases their own inner landscape, feelings, and outlook. Whether fiction or nonfiction, a first-person speaker follows one person’s tightly-woven motivations, blinders, opinions, hopes, and goals. There’s no head-hopping involved!
Since flash is so small, it’s helpful to have a narrow, beam-of-light approach rather than several POVs competing for the very limited space available under 1,000 words, but often much less.
First person is natural to the ways we think and already form stories. From the time we start to talk, I, me, and my are some of our first words we learn to speak or to write. When we tell friends about the picnic we enjoyed or the meal that went terribly wrong, chances are very strong we frame our anecdotes in first-person. It’s often our default mode when communicating via text, email, or video conferencing as well. Humans inherently express our own experiences using I statements. Why go against the grain in our writing?
First person includes room for surprises. Yes, it’s first-person narration, but in the case of flash fiction especially, that doesn’t have to mean the character presented has to share all of your own experiences, feelings, or beliefs. In fact, it might be more fun to play devil’s advocate and writing a character who is your polar opposite.
Say, you are a marathon runner who’s just had an injury and has been limited to moderate exercise and no training for the next six months during physical therapy. You’re itching to get back on the track, back to your passion for the sport, to your next race. Flip it and reverse that energy as you recuperate. What if your protagonist has never run a marathon in his life? What if he actually detests running? What if someone dares or even bribes him to run a marathon or else there will be consequences? Yep, you can write this in first-person POV to see life from his perspective. Or perhaps from the perspective of his coworker, Meghan, who has issued the challenge/bribe. What’s her perspective like, and why is she making this request/demand?
First person could include any of these details, just not all of them at once. You never know what you’ll learn about yourself—or others—or your favorite sports, hobbies, pastimes, and more through leaping into another person’s eyes.
First person includes promising limits. Yes, first person can be limited, but that’s also part of its charm.
In a nonfiction flash essay, for instance, the reader does not get to delve deeply into the feelings or actions of many others, unless those are in relation to—and shed important light on—the first-person speaker’s journey. It’s all about the speaker, baby!
The reader gets to intuit and experience the speaker’s limits and foibles as well as their strengths and fears.
What a writer reveals in first person as well as what must be left out because it is told in first person provide a compelling insight into human behavior, both for the individual and for people in that setting or time period or group the speaker belongs to, or wishes to, or never will.
Try this prompt! Set a timer for fifteen or twenty minutes. Write in first person about a time when the I speaker—whether you or a made-up character—felt left out of a group. Do not use the word disappointed anywhere in the flash; instead, demonstrate it with the I statements the person uses, their astute observations about why they wanted this inclusion but it hasn’t come to be, and/or in their actions or refusal to act. Go!
Photo courtesy of Nathan DeFiesta on Unsplash.com
"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 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!
"Sharpen Your Sensory Writing with Food Writing" Article Published :)
Great news! My article was published today at Women on Writing. Read on, and savor the prompt at the end.
“Sharpen Your Sensory Writing with Food Writing”
By: Melanie Faith
Photo by Brooke Lark at unsplash.com
Food, glorious food! I’ll tell you a secret: I’m certainly not the world’s best or most adventurous cook, but I adore food in all of its gooeyness, crispiness, savoriness, sweetness, smoothness, chewiness, cheesiness, and freshness. I even sometimes love its greasiness (here’s looking at you, beloved French fries with a dollop of salty-sweet Heinz ketchup).
Food is variety and memory and creativity. Food is innovation and tradition and resilience. Food has meant even more recently as it’s meant comfort.
Since quarantine and COVID-19, I’ve found myself, like many writers and creative folks, considering the great value of any certainties and peace-givers amidst the many uncertainties. Food has brought structure to days that, otherwise, would have felt adrift.
Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks happen every day, however much our schools have closed and gone online, our jobs have gone away or gone online, and our everyday activities, like meeting friends at our homes or at the movies, have been reduced to streaming alone on a phone.
Food remains a constant that has cheered my days, and I’m not the only one—many of my writing friends have noted the uplift food has brought them. We’re trying new recipes or breaking out older ones. Families now spend more time at home without getting take-out and as a result are cooking together, making amazing desserts, main courses, and side dishes that have filled my Instagram with awe.
Friends and family from afar have had motivating, friendly “competitions” to see whose chili recipe or chocolate cake turned out the best; some of us have even Zoomed or Skyped our creations, like a long-distance picnic, while talking or watching TV together. It’s a new world, and yet food shows us that it is also still a connected, social one.
I don’t even have to make or eat the meal myself to enjoy it. Lately, I’ve been watching lots of Netflix cooking shows and the Food Network: from The Great British Baking Show, Crazy Delicious, and Nailed It! to Beat Bobby Flay; Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives; Chopped; Amy Schumer Learns to Cook; and The Pioneer Woman. Some of these shows are competitions while others take viewers into restaurant or home kitchens (or sound stages) where the host offers pleasant explication and a feast for the eyes every time.
As writers, we don’t have to own restaurants or host shows to be experts on the topic. We all eat numerous times a day. We have all eaten hideous dishes that we’re not anxious to repeat as well as delicious food we wish we could eat every day. We all have had the dish that turned out great and the recipe that, despite our best efforts, bombed. We all have memories of food connected—for good or bad—to friends, family, and places (school and hospital cafeterias certainly have their own distinctive tray-bound dishes).
Authentic human emotions are often tied to eating. Many of us have experienced food anxiety, food disorders, food pressures, or struggles with our weight—this is meaningful terrain that can be incorporated into food-writing pieces.
As creatives, writing about food awakens our senses. Food descriptions, symbolism, and images are often profound and resonate with readers. Food has the obvious plate appeal, but it also has scents, textures, and sounds: that sizzling of steak or fajitas, for instance.
One of many things I savor about teaching my Food Writing course is the vast variety of writing food inspires. Writing about food is a wonderful way to deepen our descriptive skills in many genres (fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction essays, to name just three), because writing about food includes incorporating many senses and sensations. It’s also often very, very fun to write.
Food writing is a scene from a novel where characters partake in a protagonist’s going-away potluck dinner. Food writing is a poem about plums in the rain. Food writing is the creation of a new recipe or an essay exploring the cultural and familial history of a beloved tried-and-true recipe.
Food writing is also a short story where a character must learn how to cook within two weeks to impress his in-laws. Food writing is a review of the paneer and the chicken tikka masala at your local Indian restaurant. It’s also a blog about missing your mother and never quite being able to replicate her recipe for macaroni and cheese no matter how hard you try.
Food writing is all of these genres and more; its variations are endless as well as its enjoyment. Food writing is available to refresh the writing of every writer in bite-sized portions or by the baker’s dozen.
Care to learn more? Join my Food Writing class. No previous cooking experience necessary. :) More details here: Food Writing for Fun and Profit.
Try this exercise: Write a list of three or four of your favorite foods. Now, write a list of three or four foods you find obnoxious. Pick one food from your favorite list and one from your least-favorite list and compare them in a scene, a story, a poem, an essay, or any other genre of your choosing. Go!
Photo by Cayla1 at unsplash.com
My Article Published: "4 Photo Hacks to Inspire Your Writing"
Great news! My article was published today. If you like writing & photography, then this one’s for you. Enjoy the writing exercise at the end.
“4 Photo Hacks to Inspire Your Writing”
By: Melanie Faith
Last week, I shot my first roll of film in over a decade.
Up to this point my photos, like a lot of my writing drafts, were entirely digital and screen-manipulated. This analog film process was nothing like that computerized process, refreshingly; it shook up the way I thought about crafting my work.
That first roll of film last week was also a lot of other firsts: first roll of black-and- white film, first time loading 120 film (I used to shoot 110 and 35 mm), first time shooting medium-format square negatives, first time using a cute, plastic Diana F+ camera.
120 film has just 12 negatives per roll. Unheard of in the digital world of endless do-overs and deletes. I still love digital, but practicing image-making on film is teaching me to approach my making creatively.
What can photography lend to our writing process?
• Renew your beginner’s mind.
I’ve been photographing since I was a teen, and yet here I was, trying several new photographic styles that were entirely fresh to me.
Many of us have been writing creatively for years, yet we, too, can capture that beginner’s mind and use it to create innovative drafts.
If you normally write prose, give poetry a shot. If you often write novels, try a short story or two.
Or pick a genre you’ve never practiced: perhaps flash memoir or writing a graphic novel or jokes for a stand-up routine.
Or switching POV from your standby third-person to first-person or second-person.
Or it could be as simple as writing a first draft longhand.
These changes won’t necessarily be permanent; they will, however, bring out new ideas and imagery that will surprise and motivate.
• Add a few restrictions to your art and watch it flourish.
In both photography and writing, sometimes if you put obstacles or limitations in your path, you can create something remarkable.
I know: paradoxical.
When shooting with film, I had just 12 clicks of the shutter. I also couldn’t preview it after taking the shots; the Diana F+ camera has a tiny viewfinder, but it’s not entirely accurate to what the lens will capture—it’s more like playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey than aiming at a dartboard. It’s a machine made for teaching how to approach and then let go of expectations.
I had my film for four days before I took that first roll for a spin; four days of narrowing down possible subject matter “worthy” of my twelve little compositions. Seven turned out well enough to submit to a literary magazine. I certainly don’t approach my digital photography that way.
• Approach your writing with more of your full attention.
Because the camera and the shutter-release (on the side of the plastic lens!) and pretty much everything else about the camera was new to me, I had to slow down… and then slow down again… and then a third time. I watched a YouTube tutorial on loading the film about 12 times; no joke.
I quickly learned to trust my instincts more and to rule out certain subject matter in favor of other options, because I knew that I was paying $7.50 for the roll of film and almost $20 for developing.
Even though the cost isn’t exorbitant to practice film photography (especially getting third-hand cameras at an auction site like I did), that it COST me something made each shot precious.
What does your writing cost you? Sleeping in? Time out with family or friends? We value our art more when we sacrifice something for it.
• Think thematically.
Just like writers begin a novel, short story collection, poetry manuscript, or series of essays that surround the same theme or characters, photographers often challenge themselves to create a series based on the same subject, setting, or motif.
The other day, I took a twenty-minute walk with my new camera and then found, in storage, two lawn chairs that had almost been thrown out several times—their worn green webbing and silver metal bases redolent of my parents’ youth and endless picnics and fireworks displays. Yet they’d been stored away.
Gleefully, I dug them out from behind the staircase and arranged them in various configurations on the lawn. Six of out my twelve shots became a mini-series about the chairs.
If I’d had limitless shots would I have found the chairs as compelling, especially for a series? Maybe. But probably not.
It’s very common for writers, like photographers, to take part in creativity challenges that encourage such project-based thinking. Practicing your art with a group of like-minded people for consecutive days will more likely yield workable results.
We writers have NaNoWriMo in November and NaPoWriMo each April. Photographers have challenges like the 365 Project and monthly challenges, such as at Instagram where photographers post themed lists of ideas.
These challenges are often informal but incredibly liberating.
Both writing and photography rely on intuition and self-exploration. A mixture of knowing some things and making up the rest. Both arts often include elements of self-doubt or curiosity that are assuaged with practicing your craft on a regular basis.
Try this exercise: Make a list of five themes you could explore as a series in prose or photography.
Want to learn more? Try my May 2020 online Imagery Power: Photography for Writers class.
Take a perusal of Photography for Writers, my exercise-packed, creativity-fueling book. Signed copies also available at my Etsy: WritePathProductions.
Courtesy of Women on Writing https://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/classroom/MelanieFaith_Photography.php
National Poetry Month <3
Break out your pens! Happy National Poetry Month!
Here are a few ideas for sharing, writing, reading, and enjoying poetry while quarantining.
Let’s make bunches of verse this month!
Image courtesy of Nicole Honeywill at unsplash.com
"Four Qualities of Authentic Writing" Craft Article Published at WOW Today :)
“Four Qualities of Authentic Writing”
By: Melanie Faith
I read 99 books for fun in 2019. If you’re an avid reader, too, you probably identify with the joys of reading when the minutes dissolve and the pages just keep turning and turning. Conversely, you probably also recall books that plodded so sloth-slowly that you kept counting the number of pages left to the end of the chapter.
As writers, we want our work to have all of the former’s pizzazz and none of the latter’s plodding.
What makes the difference between writing that flows and excites readers compared to writing that falls flat and bores? Authenticity, my friend.
Just like making friends is all about connection, so too writing that resonates creates a bond between author, writing, and reader/audience.
While defining authenticity within prose can be a little bit like getting gelatin to stick to a wall, there are still definite patterns to authentic writing. We can apply these qualities as a litmus test to gauge the authenticity in our own drafts:
Authentic writing includes imagery that makes the personal universal.
We all have many emotions and experiences. Boring writing tells us explicitly the name of the emotion, such as “He felt happy” or “I was mad.” Vibrant writing, on the other hand, suggests those emotions and experiences with specific visual images or symbols that express ideas subtly.
Many authors, for instance, use color imagery numerous times within a scene to underscore feelings or experiences, such as blue for sadness, green for security or growth, and red for passion or anger. While we are all individuals, we’re not as individualistic as we might at first think.
As Henri Nouwen and psychologist Carl R. Rogers once said, “What is most personal is most universal.” Authentic writing capitalizes on this knowledge to demonstrate our collective joys, struggles, shame, and healing.
Authentic writing tends to be understated, rather than overstated.
Ever read a paragraph that was over a page long? What was the result? Probably skimming over or through the paragraph and yawning. Lots of yawning. Rambling writing is the equivalent of the new friend at a party who expounds about everything at great length while listeners look longingly for the nearest exit.
Authentic writing doesn’t meander. It doesn’t cram everything but the kitchen sink into the paragraph or page, either. Instead, it has a theme and a point it wants to communicate to readers and omits details that are off-topic or redundant.
Authentic writing writes through, and not around, a subject. We’ve all read through paragraph after paragraph to get to the big revelation of an article or chapter or novel, only to have the author back away from the topic or to take a left-turn after barely any revelation at all. Talk about frustrating! Evasions don’t tend to endear people to each other, whether in person or on the page. Authentic writing includes elements of bravery.
Authentic writing risks something on the page. Authentic writing doesn’t hint at bigger analysis ahead and then offer the reader little or no fleshing out afterwards. Yes, there are many topics that are terribly scary to express and which take great courage to share with readers, whether through a character’s POV or our own.
On the other hand, risk earns readers’ respect; even if they don’t always love what the author writes, they find deflection and barriers worse. One reason readers read is to find connection (“I’ve thought that/done that, too!”); abruptly backing away from a topic or theme you’ve set up is a fast way to alienate readers and friends alike.
Authentic writing has focus and a take-away without cliché or overly-easy advice or
solutions.
Authentic writing conveys a point without hammering it out by being repetitious. Readers tend to find repetitious writing boring or, worse, self-righteous and sanctimonious; authentic writing, on the other hand, subtly provides a purpose or a take-away and then moves on swiftly for the reader to think further about the topic on their own.
Trust your reader to make personal meaning based on the literary devices you’ve skillfully crafted and move on, to keep the pace popping.
Practice more authentic writing in my online class, beginning Friday, March 13th. Sign-up today!
Welcome to the World, Photography for Writers!
At long last, it’s release day for my new book, Photography for Writers!
Buy your copy today at Vine Leaves Press. Signed copies also available, via my WritePathProduction Etsy Shop or via pm.
Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash .
