My Photo Published, "Moment Series--Wish and Shadow" 😎
Thrilled to say that my photo, “Moment Series—Wish and Shadow,” was published today in the art gallery of Songs of Eretz Poetry Review.
Check out a few reflections I made about my photo as well as the work of the amazing poets, such as my dear friend Charles A. Swanson, and artists featured in this Summer 2021 Love Issue.
✨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
"3 Ways Writing and the Visual Arts Inspire Each Other" 🖊📓📸
Thrilled that my craft article, “3 Ways Writing and the Visual Arts Inspire Each Other,” was featured today through Women on Writing. [Article below.]
Also check out my July-August online Imagery Power: Photography for Writers class that starts Friday, July 16th. Sign-ups open for a limited time! I’d love to work with you and your creative friends. 🙌📸📕
“3 Ways Writing and the Visual Arts Inspire Each Other”
By Melanie Faith
Over the years as a writing teacher, I’ve discovered that many of my talented writing students are also visual artists. From fellow photographers to sculptors, painters, and collage artists, there’s something about the skills used to write vivid imagery and/or scenes that also translate well into other art forms, and vice versa.
So, what can a writer learn from photography (or another visual art) that will enhance their prose or poetry projects?
· Focusing on bite-sized portions create resonance. When you write a scene, chapter, stanza, or paragraph, there’s a format you have in mind—after all, a single chapter or poem can’t last forever. Just as you can’t include everything into a single scene or chapter or poem, you can’t include everything in visual art. A visual artist focuses on parts of a scene for a landscape photograph or painting; it has to stop somewhere. As writers, we make decisions, especially in later drafts, about both what details are extraneous to the whole as well as details or images that must remain to create a unified whole that speaks to a reader’s/viewer’s own experience.
One of the many definitions for “resonance” at Dictionary.com, states: “The ability to evoke or suggest images, memories, and emotions,” while Merriam-Webster.com defines the term as “a quality of richness or variety” and “a quality of evoking response.” Ultimately, in both writing and visual arts, this is exactly what we want: layers of meaning from the writer/artist that are interesting and hook the reader/viewer so much that the imagery presented stirs their own emotions just experiencing our art.
Made with my ‘90s Canon and Kodak Gold 200 film: “Curlicue L3.” 📸✨
That’s one of the great joys of reading, writing, and making art: the more specific and focused our own works are, the more others will click with the work and want to spend time with it. Creating bite-sized portions of art informs, entertains, and captures the human need to be understood. What could be better than that?
· Layer it up: the more meaning the merrier! In an essay or poem or novel, no matter what the theme is, there’s more going on in the writing than just a sentence-or-two synopsis of what literally happens or what its main idea is. Reaching into the grab bag of literary analytical terms, there might be one or several concurrent elements that contribute to make a scene, chapter, poem, or visual arts piece seem so real-to-life, including but not limited to: symbolism, auditory or taste or visual imagery, synecdoche, metonymy, juxtaposition, simile, and/or metaphor, and more. Below the immediate level of what the work is “about” literally, the deeper, gooier, more subterranean meanings reside and represent where the creator does some of their best work.
Working subtly to show something deeper about human life beyond the immediately obvious—indeed, the word crafting is splendidly apt here—writers and artists work emblematic representations of ideas, emotions, and conflicts into their work to deepen and connect with reader/viewer experience. Real-life ain’t easy or simplistic, so our writing and art better not be either—there should be more-than-meets-the-eye occurring concurrently with the easier-to-spot initial image or dialogue.
As writers/artists, we shape and sculpt ideas so that they are both what they appear to be and also much more than they at first suggest. That kind of composing requires both literal and figurative decisions that make the utmost of each word, each line, each paragraph/stanza, each page, or each canvas, digital chip/pixel, and/or paint.
· Both writers and visual artists actively compose reality. That is, we consider how parts of a whole interact with each other, we leave in necessary imagery and crop out unnecessary or cluttering details, we omit and/or change the pace of reality by slowing down/zeroing in focus on some elements so that others fade into the background, and more.
The element of careful and mindful composition is somewhat subconscious (at first draft, before editing, anyway), and it’s also where a lot of the plain fun of being a writer or artist occurs in the conscious stages of making.
Some subjects, themes, and ideas we might be innately drawn to, such as trains, but the majority of our work revolves around recurring ideas or symbols from an array of life experiences that seem to recur, both in our lives and later in our work—to take the train example further: the artist’s father might have been a 9-5 commuter for many years and so the recurrence of trains in the artist’s work may suggest a whole host of ideas from family responsibility related to jobs, feelings of missing a parental figure, to what it means to live in the suburbs but work in a city, and more.
Writing and the visual arts integrate many decisions at both the conscious and subconscious level of creation: exciting and complex composition that continues to inspire, mystify, challenge, and motivate our work from the first experiments in each medium through all of the works we produce and share.
Clearly, writing and the visual arts are meaningful, rich explorations into self-discovery and also important genres for commenting on and sharing ideas about the complexity of human experience. One art form—writing—can inform and inspire growth in visual arts as we reach to become better self-expressing writers and insightful communicators to a wider audience.
Ekphrastic Magic Project 📸📓
Super excited to have a poem I wrote in a fantastic project, “Ekphrastic Magic," a photography and poem collaboration, this summer. It is part of an international photo festival in Barcelona, Spain!
Many thanks to the amazingly talented Amy Jasek at Film Shooters Collective for the artistic camaraderie, for her vision and hard work in putting this project together, and for the wonderful invitation to take part.
Learn more about Revela’t and their festival.
Photo Courtesy of Markus Winkler at Unsplash.com
Great News: Beyond Words Literary Magazine Second Printing
So pleased that this issue of the stellar international literary journal, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, from last June has now gone into a second printing! 😍📸
I have photography in the June 2020 issue as well as in their current May 2021 issue.
Get your copy/subscription today @beyondwordsmagazine . Also, consider submitting your words or art.
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
❄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.
✨Switch it up with Journaling Power! ✨
I’m pleased to be a part of talented Mari L. McCarthy’s WOW! Women on Writing Blog Tour today. I love getting to share info about books that make a difference in writers’ lives. 😊📚 Ta-da, and read on!
“Switch it up with Journaling Power!”
“Life can only be understood backwards,
but it must be lived forwards.”
--Soren Kierkegaard
One of the coolest aspects of teaching creative writing and as a nonfiction writer myself is connecting with talented authors whose work inspires my own writing journey.
I’ve lost track of how many writers I’ve recommended Journaling Power: How To Create the Happy, Healthy, Life You Want to Live, because it’s the kind of book that I recommend so frequently to writers.
No matter what genres my students write—from poetry to nonfiction and novels to flash fiction and screenwriting—the wise tips and advice offered in Journaling Power sustain a hearty writing process with insights for all writers. It encourages writers to switch up their current thoughts to make and meet goals right now, right where writers are in their lives.
From mindful eating to reversing years of repressed emotions and from overcoming the Inner Critic to positive self-talk and encouraging your Inner Coach, Journaling Power is both warmly inviting and unafraid to tackle the big opportunities for development and healing that are present through an ongoing journaling practice.
Spend time with Journaling Power and two things become immediately clear: 1. Mari has an authenticity and a zest for living and she’s candid about how journaling boosted her own life journey that has had significant bumps and shifts in plans, such as MS and her long-ago music teacher’s careless comments (you’ll learn more about both in her book), and 2. Mari’s enthusiasm for helping others live their best lives is inspiring and ever-present in her writing, in her courses, and on her website.
Lucky readers!
Journaling Power is packed not only with personal anecdotes and motivating quotes (including the one that opens this blog) that will interest readers, but also with journaling exercises that leap off the page and spark writers’ pens.
No wonder it has won numerous writing awards, including a 2018 COVR Visionary Health and Healing Award, a 2019 NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite, and a 2019 Nonfiction Authors Association Silver Award.
Grab a journal, a pen, and a copy of Journaling Power today. It’ll inspire one of the best gifts you can offer yourself and your writing: the promise of your growth from this day forward.
As Mari says, and it’s brilliant advice: #JustWRITEON!
***
Journaling Power is available in print and e-book on Amazon, Create Write Now, and Barnes and Noble.
You can also add it to your GoodReads reading list.
***
About the Author, Mari L. McCarthy
Mari L. McCarthy, Founder and Inner Work Tour Guide of CreateWriteNow.com shows curious health-conscious people how to use Journaling For The Health Of It®️ to heal the emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual issues in their tissues and to know and grow their True Self. She’s the multi-award-winning author of Journaling Power: How To Create The Happy, Healthy Life You Want To Live and Heal Your Self With Journaling Power. She’s also created 20+ Journaling For The Health Of It® Inner Journey Workbooks that include Who Am I?, Declutter Your Life In 28 Days, and Take Control Of Your Health In 24 Days.
Find her online at:
Website: http://createwritenow.com/
Facebook: http://facebook.com/CreateWriteNow
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwtlBKKHXAfl_fZjLtOGMHA
📚🖊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
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