#creative writing workshop

Dear Gus & Magnus,

I picked Mom up at the airport around 12:30, drove to the hotel in the CBD, walked to lunch, then perused the art galleries on Julia Street. We went to a French bistro for dinner, then got me a cappuccino so I'd be ready to read at Gold Room -- my body doesn't respond to an 8pm event like it used to.

I'd planned to read "Dear Lands End," but minutes before I walked on stage, Mom and I realized this audience wouldn't respond well to it, so I found "Dear Sears" on my phone and read that instead. This was the best reading I'd had in a while, and I needed a good reading. The only people I really knew at the reading were Kelly Bones Jones and her husband Ted, and Neal Walsh, whose latest book has been adapted for the screen as a television show that will appear on Apple TV this spring.

Dad.

Unless your workshop is specifically geared towards memoir/creative nonfiction, stop handing out prompts where the theme is Your Real Actual Life.

Example: today, we were given two prompts. The first: write down four memories of your childhood, quickly, whatever comes to mind first. The second: write down the first two words that come to mind when you think of your parents. This was the basis for our scene.

Fucking come on. How hard would it be to literally just reword this so it’s not explicitly writing about self? “Write down, very quickly, four memories of childhood your character considers important to them” “think about your character’s guardian/s, what two words come to mind?”

Writing does not have to be deeply and literally personal to be important! Writing a story about yourself is not inherently more meaningful than writing a story abstractly based on your own emotions, or--get this-- making up a story!! Making up a story is not lazy writing, for fuck’s sake. It’s the FICTION part of FICTION-writing, you know, the title of the workshop?

And yes, I know you can ignore the prompt, but I don’t go to a writing group for freewriting, the prompt is the whole draw. The prompt and the feedback section, which I didn’t participate in, because I didn’t feel comfortable sharing my childhood memories and so I didn’t read my piece aloud. (It was off-topic, I ignored the prompt.)

Three New Poems in DOOR = JAR Magazine

Door = Jar magazine recently published their Winter 2021 issue and there you will find three new poems by yours truly. A snippet of one can be found in the image above. These are the first poems that I’ve written after earning my MFA from the University of New Orleans to find a home with a publisher. I take some comfort in the fact that my poetry might still find its way out into the world…

Why I Started an Online Workshop

When I started my Creative Writing MA in 2017, I never considered teaching the subject to anyone, but now I’ve set up an online workshop. Like most people in lockdown, especially those involved in the arts, my work dried up this year, along with my book sales. If I had a regular job to fall back on, it wouldn’t have been an issue, but I had just taken the plunge from making a part-time income —…

I’m pleased to announce that three of the poems from my thesis manuscript have just been published in the Mojave River Review. You can read them here. “Like Bison” was written years ago when I first met my wife’s paternal grandmother. The poem has always intrigued me, which led me to revise it while in graduate school at UNO. In many ways it was the poem that gave me the confidence to apply to…

Yes!Plapp– The coolest startup in Chandigarh that connects you with like-minded people, while you find your passion and indulge in your favorite delicacies! So, to start with, I joined the Plapp’s Creative WritingWorkshop! The workshop was hosted by the collaboration of Plapp with the two writers from “The Anonymous Writer!” The duration of the workshop was around 4 hours.