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Showing posts from June, 2011

On Tap: "Finding Water" & "America Walks into a Bar"

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Finding Water, by Julia Cameron  –  a very interesting workbook designed for "recovering artists". And so I've begun my search for water. A friend of mine gave me this book and so far it's proving to be helpful. Cameron has an excellent section on the inner critic  –  which as you may have noticed in my last post  –  is a topic that has captured my attention. She suggests that you get to know your inner critic: What does it say? What tone does it use? Where is this voice coming from? If this inner critic had a face, what would she or he look like? Well, I went ahead and did this exercise because I come up against this inner critic a lot in my fiction. (Poetry doesn't seem to present as big a problem.) You'll never guess who my inner critic is....and I won't tell you. The point is I was completely surprised with where this exercise led...try it and you also might be surprised at what you uncover. I've been following Cameron's idea of &quo

Who is the Editor?

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Last Friday the Moosemeat writers descended upon the Arts & Letters Club for our annual chapbook launch. Note to organizers: if you want a great event  –  do it at the Arts & Letters Club! You have to experience it to believe it. I was mesmerized by the readings...then I was off to a poetry weekend up north the very next morning. At one of our afternoon workshops, one of my friends who rarely writes poetry, asked me why we edit poems. She wanted to know because she felt that in the moment of writing she was expressing something  –  whereas when she went to edit  –  it felt like manipulation - a kind of false tinkering with the original intent. A great discussion ensued among all of us at this point. Everyone had a different idea about the editing process. A few people spoke about how they had ruined their poems by editing. I've done it myself and seen others ruin their work too. As you weed out all the "mistakes," you can sometimes pull the poem up by its root

Reality

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You may have noticed I deleted my page "News in the Writing Community"  –  as I realized I can post all the news on Twitter. I just finished posting a bunch of noteworthy items in the writing world  –  not the least of which is the fact that my brother, Mark Young, is going to be published in Measure   –  a highly esteemed magazine. I also tweeted about Sarah Selecky  –  she has some great tips for writers! Everyone should read her article, "The Ten Biggest Mistakes Short Story Writers Make"  –  which is available on her site now (as a gift to new subscribers of her free email dispatch). Click here to go to her site. Follow me on Twitter to find out all the news. So what is this post "Reality" all about? Good question. It's about the reality of working on a poetry manuscript. It's a very different reality  –  full of surprises and steep learning curves. This is my first time going through this process  –  so it's all new to me!