Feeling Quote-ish 😁
"Teaching online is also great if you, like me, are an introvert who enjoys communication but also some personal space and time alone to replenish."
--From my latest book, Writing It Real: Creating an Online Course for Fun and Profit @vine_leaves_press .
Available at Amazon; signed copies available at my Etsy store: WritePathProductions.
My Article Published: "Delicious to Dish: 4 Ingredients That Make Food Writing Fabulous"
Excited that Women on Writing published my article today and to share it with you:
“Delicious to Dish: 4 Ingredients That Make Food Writing Fabulous”
Photo courtesy of Vincent Rivaud from Pexels
By: Melanie Faith
What does cooking and writing have in common? A richness of inviting language.
Think about the sheer number of words to describe something “delicious,” for instance. From “decadent” to “delectable” to “delightful” to “exquisite” and “appetizing” and “tasty” and “flavorful” and even “mouthwatering,” each word underscores a very particular quality about the dish.
Speaking of which, even the word “dish” has numerous shades of meaning, tones, and definitions that can lead to descriptive and delightful writing. From the cooking containers to the food itself to an attractive person to giving a friend the scoop by sharing gossip to punishing, as in “you can dish it out but you can’t take it,” the variety of descriptors, contexts, and diction choices make the pairing of writing and nourishment a natural fit. Much like ice cream and the waffle cone that conveys it, they can be a great symbiotic duo.
· Food writing has ample diction options. Our descriptions of the foods we stir, spoon, swirl, chew, or slurp tend to be precise and as varied as the salad of verbs we can choose from to denote how we compose or eat our meals and certainly how we feel or felt about them and/or the people who made them. One of the reasons writing about food is so fun is that there are endless words that bring our passion, distaste, or other emotions about making or eating food to vibrant life on the page.
· Food writing has point of view. Some types of writing are easier than others to denote a clear and strong point of view. Food writing tends to have a very focused and clear POV. For instance, people tend to have complicated relationships with certain foods, such as durian fruit or sauerkraut, and it’s often easy to spot the point of view and tone of the author—whether like, love, confusion, or loathing—often in the first few sentences.
· Food writing has theme. One of my favorite qualities about food writing is that however much the focus is on creating or imbibing or not relishing some eating experiences, it’s never ONLY about the foods at all. Much food writing is rich in setting, imagery, and contextual details that tell the readers something deeper about the speaker’s life or the characters’ lives. Food writing covers a dynamic array of topics, from cultural celebrations and birth stories to addiction, divorce, office romances, first jobs and first apartments, and you name it. Food is present at just about every turning point in our lives, so when writing about food we are presented with endless possibilities, not only for what dishes have meant in our lives in the past but also now and what it might mean in the future. Personal essays, recipes, chapbooks of stories or essays, and/or characters describing foods for children and grandchildren are all food writing. Just about any topic or theme you can imagine from your everyday life will have at least one ingredient, dish, meal, holiday recipe, or family barbecue/picnic/party or road trip associated with it that could make vivid and meaningful prose or poetry.
· Food writing is not genre restricted. We often think immediately of recipe books or cooking shows when we think of food writing, both of which are kinds of food writing, but that is just the very, very, very tip of the food-writing iceberg. Poems are also food writing. One-act plays with a dinner scene, also food writing. Restaurant reviews, too—food writing. Flash fiction and flash memoir and hybrid pieces, all food writing. Guess what: so are jokes, comedic essays, scenes from novels or novellas, and just about any other genre you can think of. If it has something about eating or being unable to eat, someone making something to eat and failing or succeeding at it, people congregating to eat, people rejecting what’s on the table to eat in favor of something else, the struggles of eating and cooking, people learning to cook, and so on, then it’s food writing. Period. The vast variety of food writing makes for especially fun writing and reading experiences.
Considering the rich themes, descriptive language, focused point of view, and genre possibilities, food writing is one of the most exciting writing experiences an author can have. Like a meal to savor, food writing invites a writer’s imagination, memories, and talents to the table, month after month, year after year.
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My Food Writing class begins on Friday, April 8th. I’d love to have you and a friend join me for this delectable and fun class. Click for more details and the sign-up link.
Upcoming Writing Class: Flash Writing! 📝
Super excited to offer my Flash Writing class this summer! Mark your calendars now, and I’d love to have you and a friend join me for this online workshop, starting Friday, July 1, 2022.
Sign-ups are now open.
More info: Featured Online Flash Writing Workshop: In a Flash!
I’ll be using the book I wrote on this topic, which is also available and handy-dandy for all writers, whether you’re in the market for a class or for a prompt-filled read to get those words flowing.
Upcoming Writing Class: Food Writing! 🍓
Who doesn’t love food?! 🥕🥔🥑
But what, exactly, is food writing?
It includes a diverse multitude of writing projects and styles to savor, including (but not limited to):
*fiction
*memoir
*review
*personal essay
*free-verse
*flash
*blog
*graphic novel
*recipe and/or cookbook
*haiku
No previous cooking or restaurant experience necessary for the class. If you relish words and the flavors of fabulous food (and haven’t we all?😋), this class welcomes you.
Join the nourishing fun in my next online writing class: Food Writing for Fun and Profit.
Starts: Friday, April 8, 2022. Sign-ups open now!
Featured Today on I've Got Questions 🥳
Great news! To celebrate my book birthday today, I’m featured on Clifford Garstang’s wonderful site, I’ve Got Questions.
It was a joy to talk about Writing It Real: Creating an Online Course for Fun and Profit as well as teaching, food, and other elements of the writing life.
Check out Cliff’s many excellent books as well as other interviews with talented authors.
It's Book Birthday Time! 🎉📚
I couldn’t resist staying up to ring in the book birthday of my next book: Writing It Real: Creating an Online Course for Fun and Profit! Woot! 🎉
Available at Amazon as well as signed copies at my Etsy shop, WritePathProductions.
Many thanks for celebrating with me and for all of your wondrous support!
Updates on the Writing It Real Series 🎉
🎉Just one more month until my book birthday @vine_leaves_press for Writing It Real: Creating an Online Course for Fun and Profit! Can't wait! Preorder today at Amazon.
It's even more awesome in person! 📕🎉@vine_leaves_press That holding the first printed copies feeling: priceless. Props to my amazing cover designer @jessicabelldesign . Couldn't resist sharing this moment with all of you. Writing It Real: Crafting a Reference Book that Sells has a book birthday in April, and it's available for preorder now at Amazon.
My Article Published Today: "Why Try Writing Graphic Novels?"
Excellent news! My article was published this morning in the WOW newsletter. Happy to share this fun topic with you, and if you’re interested, my next online class begins Friday, January 14th (details here: Fundamentals of Graphic Novel Creation).
Photo courtesy of Kelly Sikkema @kellysikkema at Unsplash.com
“Why Try Writing Graphic Novels?”
By: Melanie Faith
The initial answer is simple and direct: graphic novels are an exciting mode of storytelling and can encompass several genres. There are comics that are based on vignettes or flash fictions. There are comics that are fully autobiographical and others that are semiautobiographical and based on some real-life events. There are comics that are memoirs. There are comics whose protagonist is entirely fictional as well as comics based on historical figures and events from the past. There are animal comics. There are comics whose protagonist is otherworldly (science fiction and fantasy), from another realm or distant galaxy, from another time period or dimension. There are comics that have everyday protagonists who get stuck in traffic and hate certain foods, like you and me, and comics where the protagonists transcend the daily drudgery as secret superheroes who whip out their cosmic powers just in time.
Even more than that initial answer, however, graphic novels share key traits of meaningful literature that you’re already probably writing to hook readers into these visual stories, such as:
--Graphic novels have strong characters with a perspective and a problem that’s not easily (or forever) solved: whether from a down-on-her-luck office worker who just can’t catch a break or a fairy queen with magical abilities who leads her fellow fae to victory, if you can dream up a protagonist who has something to say and a perpetual conflict to try solving, then you can craft a strong plot for a graphic novel. The office worker decides she’s going up for the big promotion, only to get bested by the office bully, but only for a few panels before she cooks up another plan to aim for that promotion or something equally important to her growth. Even when the fairy queen swoops in to save her folk today, another destructive force must appear—in the next chapter, page, or even the next few panels—to challenge her abilities and give her a reason to test her powers and lead her fellows past obstacles to victory all over again. Struggle, momentary victory, struggle again is a good motto for graphic-novel planning.
--Graphic novels often have characters who are delightful oddballs or passionate outcasts who question their place in the world through their actions, dialogue, and their inner doubts and fears as they move through these challenges, however slowly, haltingly, or while bumbling sometimes. Insecurities, fears, limitations, frustrations, self-consciousness, anxieties—call them what you will, but graphic novel protagonists are often recognizable and loveable for the very sensitivities that keep readers reading (and putting themselves into the protagonists’ shoes). Just like in short stories and movies, nobody roots for a character who is picture perfect in every way and has it all figured out every step of the way. Graphic novel protagonists are often thrown into new environments where they feel overwhelmed for much of the narrative or cannot escape their home environments where they have never felt the same as others. In both situations, the protagonists demonstrate their character, mettle, sass, and wit through how they cope (or barely cope or mostly fail to cope) with not having complete (or even partial) control over their lives. Humor and pathos both result from tales of protagonists doing the best they can as fish out of water.
--Graphic novel characters and narratives touch on universal truths. Whether your novel is set on a distant star or in Chicago of 2130 or in your own home office this very year or in Boston in 1850, one of the hallmarks of graphic novels is that they illuminate what it means to live in an imperfect world with others who frequently have different goals that conflict with one’s own. Readers want to identify with and cheer on the situations protagonists navigate through and, as a bonus benefit, feel a sense of investment in the protagonists’ struggles and triumphs and encouragement about their own lives.
Yeah, but comics are written by people who are whizzes at drawing, right? Nope. Graphic novelists don’t have to have the most up-to-date software or even be skilled at drawing or anywhere near professional-artist level. If you can sketch a table or shapes and/or draw a stick figure, you can get your point across based on the story your graphic novel tells and the strength of your protagonist, antagonist, conflict, rising actions, and story arc. Plenty of writers team up with professional or student artists to make their comics, which is another option. Comics can also be created from photography and collage as well as simple line drawings and from various forms of drawing software and apps.
So, if you have elementary artistic skills or can take a photo or sketch basic shapes and draw a stick figure, possess an interest in making good literature with a strong, identifiable protagonist who gets in hot water and feels hesitant about their vulnerabilities and yet finds their own way, bit by bit, it’s likely you can turn a strong character and story premise into an entertaining, meaningful graphic novel. It’s well worth dipping your toes into the graphic-novel waters to give it a try.
Image courtesy of Kelly Sikkema @kellysikkema at Unsplash.com
Pre-Order Time! 📚
Super excited to announce that the pre-order for my next book is all set!
Whether you’ve never taught an online class before or if you’ve been an educator for years, if you’ve ever thought about launching your own online course or brushing up on your teaching skills to bring extra pizzazz to your classroom this book is for you.
I’ve packed it with tips, advice, exercises, humor, and lots of can-do motivation to inspire the class-creation and class-launching experiences from choosing a theme through syllabus creation through marketing and more! Also, it’ll make the perfect gift for the favorite educator friend in your life this holiday season.
To pre-order and learn more: Amazon Paperback and Amazon E-book .
