Writing Forward newsletters

Here are the latest Writing Forward newsletters for my followers to peruse:

Writing Forward | Weekly Digest Excerpts: How to Critique Other Writers’ Work As a writer, it helps to be thick-skinned. Professional writing is a highly competitive and saturated field in which criticism is omnipresent for two important reasons: 1) It’s the most efficient way for writers to improve their skills, and 2) Written work is often positioned to receive widespread criticism upon publication. And guess what? Everyone’s […] Read on » Writing Resources: Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones “I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it.” — Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones Ah, words of wisdom. I was assigned Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg for a creative […] Read on »     Recent Articles: Poetry Prompts for Ranting and Raving Fiction Writing Exercises: Step Out of Your Shoes Story is Conflict How to Construe and Convey Tone in Poetry Is It Plural or Possessed? When to Use Apostrophe -S   Share   Tweet   What's the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing is available from your favorite online bookseller.     Adventures in Writing: The Complete Collection       101 Creative Writing Exercises Copyright © 2018 Bookworms and Wordsmiths, All rights reserved.

Writing Forward | Weekly Digest Excerpts: Poetry Prompts for Ranting and Raving It’s easy to think of poetry as soft, flowery, and convoluted. It’s the stuff of Shakespeare, greeting cards, and children’s books. It’s precious, sweet, and erudite. But some of the most exciting modern poetry defies all those stereotypes, and you need look no further than the slam poetry and spoken word communities to see how […] Read on » Fiction Writing Exercises: Step Out of Your Shoes I recently shared a writing exercise that encouraged you to get into a character’s head. Today’s exercise asks you to go a step further and explore characters and ideas that are your polar opposites. One of the most exciting and challenging aspects of being a writer is creating characters. It is an opportunity to step […] Read on »     Recent Articles: Story is Conflict How to Construe and Convey Tone in Poetry Is It Plural or Possessed? When to Use Apostrophe -S 20 Creative Writing Careers Critiques Make Your Writing Better, So Grin and Bear Them   Share   Tweet   What's the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing is available from your favorite online bookseller.     Adventures in Writing: The Complete Collection       101 Creative Writing Exercises Copyright © 2018 Bookworms and Wordsmiths, All rights reserved.

Writing Forward | Weekly Digest Excerpts: Is It Plural or Possessed? When to Use Apostrophe -S It’s one of those grammar glitches that makes English teachers twitch, and it’s a perplexing punctuation problem. Knowing when to use an apostrophe and when to use apostrophe -s can be tricky, but this grammar quickie provides all you need to know about plural versus possession when it comes to apostrophe -s. Pluralization You can […] Read on » 20 Creative Writing Careers If creative writing is your passion, then you’d probably enjoy a career in which you could spend all day (or at least most of the day) pursuing that passion. But creative writing is an artistic pursuit, and we all know that a career in the arts isn’t easy to come by. It takes hard work, […] Read on »     Recent Articles: Critiques Make Your Writing Better, So Grin and Bear Them Writing Tips: Show, Don’t Tell Creative Writing Prompts for the Young at Heart Writing Resources for Naming Your Characters Philosophical Journal Prompts   Share   Tweet   What's the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing is available from your favorite online bookseller.     Adventures in Writing: The Complete Collection       101 Creative Writing Exercises Copyright © 2018 Bookworms and Wordsmiths, All rights reserved.

Writing Forward | Weekly Digest Excerpts: Story is Conflict If a story were a bus, conflict would be the driver. Conflict steers a story, moves it forward, reverses it, stops it in its tracks, and slows or accelerates the pacing. More importantly, conflict keeps readers glued to the page. Readers want to see how the characters will deal with conflict. Will they find solutions […] Read on » How to Construe and Convey Tone in Poetry In literature, tone is the mood, attitude, or emotional sensibility of a written work. In poetry, tone expresses the narrator’s disposition toward the poem’s subject, the reader, or the narrative itself. We might describe a poem’s tone as irreverent, relaxed, sarcastic, solemn, jubilant, or desperate. Tone can be any emotion or state of mind, and a […] Read on »     Recent Articles: Is It Plural or Possessed? When to Use Apostrophe -S 20 Creative Writing Careers Critiques Make Your Writing Better, So Grin and Bear Them Writing Tips: Show, Don’t Tell Creative Writing Prompts for the Young at Heart   Share   Tweet   What's the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing is available from your favorite online bookseller.     Adventures in Writing: The Complete Collection       101 Creative Writing Exercises Copyright © 2018 Bookworms and Wordsmiths, All rights reserved.

Writing Forward | Weekly Digest Excerpts: Critiques Make Your Writing Better, So Grin and Bear Them Today I’d like to share an excerpt from my book 10 Core Practices for Better Writing. This excerpt is from “Chapter Seven: Feedback,” which offers tips for giving and receiving critiques as well as coping with public criticism. The excerpt I’ve chosen to share today explains how to use critiques to make your writing better, […] Read on » Writing Tips: Show, Don’t Tell The first time I heard the advice “show, don’t tell,” I was young and it confused me. Show what? Isn’t writing all about telling a story? At the time, I shrugged it off as some kind of mysterious double-talk, but the phrase kept popping up: show, don’t tell. It rolled off my teachers’ tongues. I […] Read on »     Recent Articles: Creative Writing Prompts for the Young at Heart Writing Resources for Naming Your Characters Philosophical Journal Prompts Five Things Your Characters Need Finding Meaning in Poetry   Share   Tweet   What's the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing is available from your favorite online bookseller.     Adventures in Writing: The Complete Collection       101 Creative Writing Exercises Copyright © 2018 Bookworms and Wordsmiths, All rights reserved.