Celia Lisset Alvarez's Blog, page 8

The 2011 Big Poetry Giveaway

Thanks to Kelli Russell Agodon at The Book of Kells, poets everywhere are giving poetry books away for free!



Yep: FREE!



In this exciting campaign, meant to promote the poetry we love during National Poetry Month, participating poets are giving away a book of their own and one of a poet they admire. All you have to do is leave a comment below by midnight, April 30, with your name and contact information (at least an email address), and I will choose two winners at the end of the month to rec...

The Coolest Month

In honor of the beginning of April, National Poetry Month, I've decided to shelve the sequence of posts on dialogue for the moment and get you started on poetry. You wouldn't want to feel left out.

You know something's in trouble when it gets a month. National Poetry Month started in 1996, and, like all one-month dedications, it's simultaneously a celebration and an awareness campaign. It's no secret that people read less poetry than prose here in the US and in many other places, that, in...

Dialogue Basics, Part II: Hold the Cheese, Please

"I love you. You set my soul on fire. It is not just a little spark—it is a flame, a big, roaring flame. Ah, I can feel it now."

Gotta love it when Tom says these words in the 1946 Tom and Jerry episode, "Solid Serenade," all the while failing to notice he is declaring his love to Spike, who has taken the place on the balcony of the beautiful white cat Tom is attempting to woo. That was back in the good ole days when cartoons were violent, when cats where cats and mice were mice.



To...

Dialogue Basics, Part I: Fancy Fontwork & Other Mechanical Mishaps

Dialogue is one of those basics of good writing you must learn to master, and yet, for some people, it's the most difficult. Some people believe you have to have a "gift" or "an ear" for dialogue. Perhaps. Even if you, like, totally suck at it, however, there are some moves every writer can try to improve what gifts your ear has received. It's going to take more than one post to work through them, but here is a good start:

The Mechanics

First of all, my little grasshoppers, learn the...

5 Lenten Meditations on Writing

Whether you're Catholic, Christian, some other religion, or a hard-core atheist, you've probably heard of Lent, the forty-day period beginning on Ash Wednesday and ending on Easter in which Christians prepare for the feast of the Resurrection. Preparation consists, basically, of self-examination, of looking critically at your life, seeing what needs changing, and taking steps to do so. You give up something that entails a sacrifice, you are generally somber and contemplative.

See where I'm...

Creativity & Grammar

Insistence on correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling kills the creative spirit. How many coulda-been Shakespeares have bled to death at the jab of the red pen? How many innocent children have been soured on writing when their precious expressions were "corrected" by a cruel rulemonger? If you think you "can't write" because you don't know what a prepositional phrase is, you, too, might be a victim of this evil conspiracy of grammar, and you should spread your wings and just write!



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From Once upon a Time to Happily Ever After: Tips on Basic Plotting

Before you got all cutesy and experimental, you knew what a good plot was, although you may have simply called it "a good story." You knew it began with "once upon a time," and that after those words would come some people in some kind of trouble, like a princess stuck in a castle or an evil queen who abused her subjects. You knew that the next part of the story would involve a twist, some kind of event, that would affect this opening scenario, like meeting a wizard or finding a magical...

10 Sexy, Yummy Reads

Guaranteed to be 100% fat-free and smoking hot, these books will make your mouth water and your knees go weak without making you fat or getting you pregnant. Listed below (in no particular order) are my current students' favorite creative nonfiction reads.

Eddy really, really enthusiastically recommends God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything  by Christopher Hitchens. He insists that it's not a manual on how to be an atheist, but rather a sort of spiritual memoir with a sociohistoric...

Sex & Cheesecake

If lust and hate is the candy,

if blood and love tastes so sweet,

then we give 'em what they want.



So their eyes are growing hazy,

'cause they wanna turn it on.

So their minds are soft and lazy—

well... who do you want to blame? —10,000 Maniacs, "Candy Everybody Wants"

"See? Kids love pizza, and they love squalor."—Master Shake, "Spirit Journey Formation Anniversary"

Walking through Dadeland Mall is an assault on the crotch and mouth. Go in through the main entrance, and you're...

Sex & Cheesecake

If lust and hate is the candy,
if blood and love tastes so sweet,
then we give 'em what they want.

So their eyes are growing hazy,
'cause they wanna turn it on.
So their minds are soft and lazy—
well... who do you want to blame? —10,000 Maniacs, "Candy Everybody Wants"
"See? Kids love pizza, and they love squalor."—Master Shake, "Spirit Journey Formation Anniversary"
Walking through Dadeland Mall is an assault on the crotch and mouth. Go in through the main entrance, and you're flanked by...