Screen Time: How That TV Habit Could Help Your Writing, By Ash Flaim
As writer, you’re always told to read, read, read. You’re told to steal and learn from fellow authors. For some, this gives the impression that one can only learn how to write from written words. Wrong! You can learn a lot from watching TV shows. I tend to watch TV...
Writer’s Block: 7 Famous Writers Prove You’re Not Alone, By Liv Kressler
When it comes to writer’s block, we authors, poets, and the like, tend to avoid the subject like a fatal disease. As if when we talk about it, it will catch us. The mere thought of locking up with a pencil in hand, blank computer screen, or empty mind, frightens...
Twin Cities Open Mic Comedy: 5 Places to Practice Your Funny, By Danny Andrews
Writers need to be able to speak in front of an audience if they ever hope to get their work read. For many of us this is a daunting task not easily achieved. Many prefer the seclusion of a coffee shop to being center stage, but eventually you may have to read your...
Not Too Close: Emotional Distance In Creative Nonfiction, By Connor Byrne
While reading through our creative nonfiction submissions, the topic of emotional distance of the author from their work, is brought up more than anything else. Sometimes we feel a piece is too emotionally close to the subject matter; other times it feels too distant...
Using Personal Tragedy In Your Work: Tension is the Heartbeat of the Story, By Courtney Yokes
Everyone has experienced tragedy in their life. Whether it was devastating, damaging, unforgettable, and maybe in the end repairable, we’ve all experienced pain. We have to in order to appreciate happiness, love, and y’know all that crap worth living for. Here’s the...
3 Hip Hop Songs That Must Be Read On The Page, By Alex McCormick
Many music listeners are primarily exposed to the music that is promoted by streaming services like Spotify, TV Shows, and radio stations. Unfortunately much of what is promoted on these services is dictated by what is going to make them money, and history has...
Writing Outside of Yourself, By Taylor Elgarten
Living in a world surrounded by people that don’t quite share your beliefs, you find yourself stopping. Having to write from a perspective that is commonplace to you, but “other” to the person sitting next to you. I write as a Jewish person. I write from that place of...
Seven Gift Ideas For The Poet On Your List, by J.R. Selmi
Whether it’s for an upcoming holiday or a birthday, here are 7 gift ideas for celebrating the main poet in your life—from the unique to the necessary—that they will love. Empower Tools Let them know their poetry is better than that cheap plastic stapler they’ve had...
A Case for Fanfiction, By Kaitlin Hatman
Fanfiction has a certain stigma in the literary community as being Less Than original works, written by tweens with Mary Sue’s and self inserts, or just riddled with typos and clichés, but it fulfills two very specific purposes in the lives of young writers and...
Write What You Know: The Benefits of Journaling, By Alex Werner
Every single person that will come across this post is guaranteed to understand stress, be it in their work, their studies, their schedules, or their relationships with others. Recently, I have had some trouble with each of these and I found additional stress in...
5 Ways to Survive (And WRITE!) in Our Political Climate with a Sense of Humor, By Alex McCormick
As we all know, the last year has been a trying time for Americans who care about their own future well-being, and it can be hard to feel safe in a country where the fan-favorite former host of Celebrity Apprentice’s main political strategy, is to fire those around...
Is Sexualizing A Character So Bad? By Maya Wesman
Writers often hear about how sexualizing a character reduces them to nothing, and that no one will take them seriously. Many argue that a character can’t be both empowering for the reader, and sexual. I reject that notion. I challenge that idea. Let’s take a character...