Chris Abouzeid's Blog, page 18

Tracing the Line Between Poetry and Prose

By Kim Triedman It’s national poetry month, and the dogs are intoxicated.  These two things are not totally unrelated, or at least not in my universe.  After a too-long winter, April means I finally get to write my poetry out on the front stoop while my dogs get to hurtle ...

What Film Teaches Writers about Editing

By Dell Smith “A movie is a novel turned inside out. A novel directly describes the invisible inner motives and emotions of characters, and leaves it to the reader to formulate a mental picture of the physical world. A movie, conversely, depicts the visible and implies the unseen.” (1) I ...

Dear Margie: Advice On The Beast With Two Books and Other Blurb Grotesques

    Dear Margie, I am a writer soon to publish my second novel, and am wondering what is the protocol on blurbs.   Is it considered good or recycled/passe to get blurbs from writers who’ve blurbed you before? Are you supposed to be getting fresh opinions? Are you supposed to ...

Going Solo

by Bethanne Patrick My high-school vocal teacher was a rigid and viciously unhappy woman (case in point: When a fellow alum recently wrote her first novel, she sent it to that teacher, who returned it with redactions and chastised the author for “taking my Lord’s name in vain”). From the ...

Writing For Good

By Randy Susan Meyers  “I go along with Albert Camus, who famously said, ‘The responsibility of the writer is to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves,’ ” Matthiessen said. “And that’s always been kind of my informal motto.” Listening to the soundtrack of my life this weekend (Yes. ...

April in Paris: Learning from Lyricists

By Laura Harrington In the northeast spring is finally beginning to make itself (shyly) known. So let’s talk about a song that defines this month. April in Paris was composed during the Depression by Vernon Duke with lyrics by E.Y. (Yip) Harburg for the 1932 musical Walk a Little Faster. ...

For Writers: 20 Prompts That Pack A Promise

By Nichole Bernier One of the more interesting things I learned on book tour is that there’s a tremendous number of people out there who want to write – they’re just not sure how to begin or what to say. By writing I don’t necessarily mean novel or memoir or ...

Writing Prompts That Pack A Promise

By Nichole Bernier One of the more surprising things I learned on book tour is that there’s a tremendous number of people who want to write – they’re just not sure how to begin or what to say. By writing I don’t necessarily mean novel or memoir or personal essay, ...

5 Tips for Running a Writers’ Circle

This is the first in a series on writing groups — the variety of ways they can be organized, the rules we do or don’t impose, the techniques for maximizing useful critiques, what’s worked, and what hasn’t. If you’re interested in joining the conversation, we invite you to write a ...

Narrative Medicine

“Not unlike acts of reading literature, acts of diagnostic listening enlist the listener’s interior resources—memories, associations, curiosities, creativity, interpretive powers, allusions to other stories told by this teller and others—to identify meaning. Only then can the physician hear—and then attempt to face, if not to answer fully—the patient’s narrative questions: “What ...