Image by Jon Tyson on unsplash.com.
Interview :)
Great news! I was interviewed by writer Annalisa Crawford. We dish on writing, new projects, and more. Check it out: interview.
Enjoy Annalisa’s amazing book: Grace and Serenity.
Also, check out Photography for Writers and my other writing craft books to get that inspiration flowing: Books.
Image by Nacho Capelo on unsplash.com.
"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 Poem Featured :)
Cool news this week: I was honored that a poem from my This Passing Fever collection was chosen and read online by Lee Ann Berardi Smith as a part of an awesome poetry project. Catch it here.
Care to get your own signed copy of This Passing Fever? I’ve got you. Here.
Want to learn more about writing poetry? I’ve got that, too: here.
I’m in the midst of exciting music collaborations with the poems. More details later this year. Stay tuned!
My Photos Published in Burgundy Balloon :)
Pleased to announce that I have some photos (including this one, called “Next Steps”) published today in Burgundy Balloon.
Check out all of the images and some stellar creative writing, too (and consider submitting your own work) at: https://burgundyballoon.org/ .
Poetry in a Time of Pandemic
It’s my honor to have a poem published in the St. Charles Arts Council’s project, Poetry in a Time of Pandemic. My poem, “Quarantine III,” was just published. May these poems bring comfort, insight, and hope to us all as we wait out this terrible virus.
“Quarantine III”
I cracked open a window, to be touched
by chilled arms: shrill April winds better
than nothing. Sister says she’s started
having nightmares about social distancing.
She wandered through a hall, body shaking,
shaking a fist at duos in sweaters carelessly
entwined in chaste hugs. Last night, I dreamt
of an anniversary party in a giant ballroom.
I asked at every festooned food table for
pretzel rods. I was that specific; they weren’t
just pretzels. The punch was Hawaiian red but
all I could scoop into my cup was pale pink,
square ice pellets that tasted of run-off and
blankness. Not even water could quench
as it vanished. I took more anyway.
Photo Published in Aji Magazine
My black-and-white photo was recently published at Aji Magazine on page 102.
Check out the whole awesome issue, with work by over 50 artists and writers, here. They are also currently reading submissions for their fall issue, for anyone interested.
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
Backchannels
It’s been a terribly difficult, tiring, anxious, confusing time, hasn’t it? Feels like we went to sleep at the end of February, and woke up in a stark dystopian novel in March.
My emotions are a snarl of quicksilver uncertainties and kindnesses and fears and back again. I feel so inarticulate, because even this attempt at description doesn’t come anywhere near close enough to the realities we’re living in.
We’ve been self-quarantining for three weeks here on the East Coast, and the governor has just issued a stay-at-home warning through April 30th; I know many states and communities have already been stay-at-home quarantining. May this keep us safe and save many, many lives. <3
As we all try to adjust to unprecedented circumstances that COVID-19 has triggered, sending you my best.
A special shout out to medical personnel, emergency crews, store clerks and other necessary-business personnel, my fellow teachers, and parents at this time— your compassion and bravery make a difference.
I’ve been making art, pondering and reflecting, walking into rooms only to stare into space with perplexity, sharing with students and friends and family, trying to listen more than I usually do, grateful for work online, and attempting to get rest whenever it’s possible (sometimes, it’s just not been possible, as we all know).
How are you coping, dear ones?
I’ve waited to blog until I had GOOD NEWS. Can’t we all use some good news right about now? One of my poems was just published at Backchannels.
Please feel free to share your good news and gratefulness, no matter how big or small, to uplift us in the barrage of near-constant virus coverage.
Sending big virtual hugs (I so miss hugging) and much love and health to you all.
By Ron Smith on Unsplash