⭐ My Narrative Poetry Article Published at Women on Writing's Craft Corner! ⭐

Super excited that my article about narrative poetry was published at Women on Writing today in the Craft Corner. 🪻🥳

I had a blast talking about this meaningful type of poetry as well as my own writing practice, and I packed it with tips for writers exploring this exciting form of verse!

Signed copies of Does It Look Like Her? available at my Etsy store: clickety-click. Also, available (unsigned) through Amazon: clickety-click.

Also, If you, your friends, or your students or writing group are interested in learning more about writing poetry, I have a lot more writing advice and fun prompts for poets in my Vine Leaves Press book, Poetry Power (scroll to the second book on the page for links to Poetry Power ) ! Check it out: Poetry Power: clickety click and at Amazon:clickety-click.

Does It Look Like Her? Book Birthday! 🎂

It’s book-birthday time! 😊So excited to release my little-book-that-could out into the world of readers. It’s available now at Amazon: clickety-click. 🥹📚

Photo: Free Stock at Unsplash.com, courtesy of Laura Adai

For anyone who’d like a signed copy, I have some books en route: I’ll post that link to my Etsy when I have copies in hand, likely later this week or early next, so sayeth the postal estimate. 😉  

If you’re on Goodreads, please consider adding my book as a want-to-read and/or leaving some stars and a short review at Goodreads or Amazon—reviews make a huge difference in championing a book and are much appreciated. 💗

 A poem from the collection to celebrate book-launch day🎊 :

Alix Encourages a Discouraged Student Who Stays After Class at the Art League 

 

it’s okay

to be tired

of it all and

yet to keep

showing up

 

in fact, what

they don’t

tell you is

we all do,

it’s how we get

to a breakthrough

 

Photo: Free Stock at Unsplash.com, courtesy of Ashe Walker

Sneak Peek: "Does It Look Like Her?"

Care for a glimpse at my poetry collection’s plot? Ta-da! 🎊📚

Alix briefly meets an accomplished artist at a coworker’s dinner party and subsequently sits for a painting that becomes well-known. But Alix is neither a one-trick pony nor an ingénue; she’s 47 and embarking on her own painting and teaching journeys while starting her life over with her young son.
 
This collection of narrative poetry spans years and POVs—including Alix; her son, Sam; her ex; and her colleague, Meghan—and explores what it means to pursue artistic passion, the personal meanings we overlay onto art and artists in a society not conducive to art-making, ambition at midlife, the indirect route to so-called overnight success, and more.
 
Includes Questions for Discussion, Reflection, or Journaling as well as Additional Reading Suggestions.

"Buy the Fanciful Ones: A Tale of New Shoes" Published!

Excellent news! A light-hearted CNF flash memoir piece I wrote a few months ago about new shoes was just published at The Bluebird Word.

Read the piece here: “Buy the Fanciful Ones: A Tale of New Shoes” [clickety-click].

This has been a wild and wonderful week so far: I got a rejection letter this morning for some poetry, then I got word this afternoon that my shoe piece was published, and I have another piece that was accepted a few weeks ago which will be published this week as well. Stay tuned, and thanks for all of your continued support!

Write on through all the lows and highs of this writing life—you just never know what’s next. 🎉

P.S. Here are the mentioned shoes. 😁

Reach 🤩

Reach

Sketch in colored pencils & black felt-tip pen.

I haven’t shared a doodle in a while, so I figured it was about time to break out my sketchbook and play a bit.  

I was thinking yesterday, too, about swing-arm lamps. The kind architects often have on their desks, but sometimes also students and offices. I didn’t know that they were referred to as “swing-arm” lamps until a quick search-engine search delivered that little golden nugget into my life, which I now share with you. 😉

Speaking of innovation and knowledge, I read a book two or three years ago about the Bauhaus, a German school of design, arts (including theater, sculpture, pottery, stained glass, wooden toys, and poster design), and architecture in 1919-the early 1930s. Fine arts and crafts and some very sharp-looking designs were created by young students and their professors which continue to inspire designers of furniture and architecture. They made innumerable creations in their carpentry and metal-working workshops, from chairs and swivel lamps and photography and arts posters for theater performances given at the school to coffee-and-tea sets and glassworks and weaving and you name it. If the design was geometric, spare, innovative, and functional during that time period, it was probably cooked up and refined at the Bauhaus.  

I’ve never owned a swing-arm lamp, nor a gooseneck lamp (which I think of as their fanciful second cousin), but I’ve often admired both. There’s something very appealing about the way they’re designed—form and function working hand-in-glove. They don’t just sit there stationary, but offer instant flexibility for the user. Wherever the light is needed, le voilà! Here we go; instant warm spotlight. Then, economically pushed back when not in use—until the next time.

Continued growth as a writer often requires a reaching process that combines a hearty blending of the initial sizzle of the imagination intermingled with the stability and support of consistent application, mixing the heat of creating with the cooler temperatures of refining and editing the vision into new forms for sharing.

This end-of-year time gets all of our gears turning with goals we’ve finished and those we haven’t and those we’d like to dream up for next year. Without putting pressure on ourselves (because nobody needs more of that!), it’s a good season for this kind of if-you-can-imagine-it-you-can-make-it-happen reflection.

It’s a good time for downshifting, daydreaming, and putting some plans into action for the coming months.  I have the kind of mind that needs no encouragement to cook up a project or ten and imagine the endless permutations and exciting possibilities. I also have the kind of mind (and enough experience as a writer and creative) to know it takes time, organization, trial-and-error patience, and planning to see a project to its conclusion so that it’s ready to share. I try to give my imagination free reign for a while, and then I begin to organize that wide expanse into a series of steps (accounting for setbacks and a learning curve along the way).

I’m cooking up some fun projects for 2024 that I can’t wait to share. At the moment, one project in particular is very new, wobbly, interesting ground for me, stretching what I already know with the many, many things I don’t. It includes a-million-and-one steps that I’m learning (and reading about and trial-and-erroring and trying-again-and-againing).  Stay tuned!

I am delighted to share that I have three online classes that I hope will inspire fellow creative writers and artists to invest in their own dreams and goals and talents as well as to try new creative goals that will inspire reaching into new territory as well.

If you have a friend you haven’t purchased a gift for yet or would like to invest in your own artistic process, I’d love to work with you and a friend! Mark your calendars. All three courses accepting sign-ups now 😊:

*In Tune: Writing about Music in Fiction (starting Friday, February 2, 2024; 4-week class; NEW!):

https://wow-womenonwriting.com/classroom/MelanieFaith_Music.php

*An Inside Look at Launching as a Freelance Editor (one-afternoon webinar; 1-2 pm ET; Friday, April 12, 2024)

https://wow-womenonwriting.com/classroom/MelanieFaith_FreelanceEditorWebinar.php

*Art Making for Authors (starting Friday, August 2, 2024; 4-week class; NEW!)

https://wow-womenonwriting.com/classroom/MelanieFaith_ArtMaking.php

I also have craft books aplenty that make excellent gifts, such as: From Promising to Published:

Here’s to reaching into our imaginations and cooking up the projects that will interest and sustain our creative growth both now and throughout 2024!

Write on!

 

In Tune: Writing about Music in Fiction! 🎶

I’m crafting some exciting new projects for 2024, including a delightful 4-week online writing class at WOW! for February.

Introducing: IN TUNE: Writing About Music in Fiction!

If you’re looking to treat yourself to some writing motivation or looking for the perfect holiday or birthday gift for the writer in your life, look no further! This class will rock! 🤩🎸🥁

Course description:

“Fiction is filled with references to music: from high-school dances and music-school students, singers, music teachers and lessons, garage bands and musical instruments to records, rock concerts and folk/indie festivals and coffee-house performances, opera and musical-theatre performances, and so much more. Many of us spend our happiest hours with music in the forefront or background of our lives as soundtrack. There’s a type of music-inspired prose for as many musical genres as you enjoy.

Whether you’re writing a scene or story about a music practice, a novel with a musician or music fan as a protagonist, or just want to know more about how musical fiction works and/or add musical references, vivid characterizations of vocal performance, or music-centered scenes or references to your writing, this course will explore how music culture, sound, setting, POV, and more are portrayed within fiction to enhance and inspire your own rhythmic, compelling prose. Knowing how to read musical notes isn’t required for this class—just the desire and sincere appreciation for both music and literature and to add another tool to your literary toolkit.

Students will choose one novel with a musical plot to read independently, and the instructor will provide excerpts from music novels as well as handouts and a weekly writing assignment to get the muse melodically flowing! Join us for this new course that’s sure to strike a chord.”

To the great joy of writing and music! Sign-ups open now! Clickety-click: IN TUNE: Writing About Music in Fiction!

Give Yourself a Break 🍂

Here's the nudge you've been waiting on. Go ahead. Give yourself a little break today.

My daily and weekly to-do lists run off the page; I'm sure most of yours do, too. I so seldom decide to clear some time in my afternoon for a slowdown, but I knew when I woke this morning that it was just what I needed to rejuvenate my artistic well.

For an hour or two, I'll continue to play with my photos and maybe start some poetry or prose, too. And perhaps read or listen to music.

Even if you can only squeeze in twenty minutes and you schedule it in for tomorrow or a weekday or an evening after work or at 4 am before work, give yourself the gift of a pause to daydream, create, nap, listen to music, reflect, take a walk, take up space.

You, too, deserve an unexpected respite. 🥳 #artistslife #artistslifeforme #createeveryday #rejuvenate

My Silhouette Portrait Published in Suspended Magazine & Giveaway Reminder 📸🥳

Very pleased to have one of my photos, “Open Space Silhouette Portrait,” published in the current issue of Suspended Magazine. Check out the issue, and consider submitting poems, art, or short fiction to this amazing literary magazine: details here.


More insights from the magazine about my photo: “I’m interested in the numerous exciting permutations portraiture and self-portraiture can take. From precise likenesses to figures that could be a stand-in for almost any character or human form, the possibilities when documenting the self and others are encouraging for photographers who wish to explore. I took this self-portrait using a Nikon 35 mm DSLR, creating a window reflection and then playing with filters that introduced light leaks that offered a compelling interplay between buoyant, yellow warmth and movement against deep, calm shadows of introspection and stillness. I’m intrigued by how the finished photo suggests both anchoring and spaciousness.”

***

Also, just a reminder that Women on Writing’s Thankful for Books Giveaway runs up to November 20th! 🍂📚

Copies of my book, From Promising to Published , will be part of the prize packages for three lucky winners.

Read more and enter the contest at: Thankful for Books Giveaway!

Strawberry Doodle and Poem

Trying something new today--a poem I wrote to coordinate with this doodle I made and then colored in this week. 🎉

“Strawberry”

 

Remember

how Grandma’s lawn

although about an acre

expanded, endless

in bare feet, the orange

tiger lilies that grew almost

as tall as you

wild in a tangle

of July sun

in the far corner

of the garden?

 

You can return

anytime you like

in your mind’s eye,

even more than

twenty years after

the land, the house

was sold

when you were already

an adult

 

you keep this

summer, this sweet

strawberry taste on your tongue

as if seven again. Recall

all the days and days

awaiting then

into a new millennium, faraway

feeling as the spangled cosmos.