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For Those About To Write (We Salute You) #2: Prompts!
For Those About To Write (We Salute You) will present a writing exercise to the Ploughshares community every few weeks. We heartily encourage everyone reading to take part! Alrighty friends, it’s been...
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For Those About To Write (We Salute You) #7: Show & Tell
For Those About To Write (We Salute You) will present a writing exercise to the Ploughshares community every few weeks. We heartily encourage everyone reading to take part! Okay. This last exercise,...
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For Those About To Write (We Salute You) #8: Cut & Paste
For Those About To Write (We Salute You) will present a writing exercise to the Ploughshares community every few weeks. We heartily encourage everyone reading to take part! Last month’s exercise was...
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For Those About To Write (We Salute You) #10: Everything You Always Wanted To...
For Those About To Write (We Salute You) will present a writing exercise to the Ploughshares community every few weeks. We heartily encourage everyone reading to take part! Heyo, friends! Did everyone...
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For Those About To Write (We Salute You) #15: Eat, Drink, and Be… Something
For Those About To Write (We Salute You) will present a writing exercise to the Ploughshares community every few weeks. We heartily encourage everyone reading to take part! Holy smokes, pals, we’ve...
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For Those About To Write (We Salute You) #16: Bring On The New Year(s)
For Those About To Write (We Salute You) will present a writing exercise to the Ploughshares community every few weeks. We heartily encourage everyone reading to take part! It seems ridiculous,...
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Eye Want
“Cupid in a Wine Glass” by Abraham Woodside. Source: Wikimedia Commons In honor of Valentine’s Day later this week, and my first post in a series of writing prompts, I present to you this ever so...
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That’s What She Said?
“Eavesdropping” by Vittorio ReggianiniSource: Wikimedia Commons It’s not polite to eavesdrop. But how many gold nuggets of dialogue have you overheard in your life? I always feel at a loss when I don’t...
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Story as Architecture / Architecture as Story
Staircase in Alberta ielā 12, Riga, Latvia. Photo by Hans A. Rosbach via Wikimedia Commons “Think of revision as architecture rather than interior decorating,” my teacher Sonia Pilcer used to tell her...
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The Magic of Objects
Simon Renard de Saint-André, via Wikimedia Commons “I would say that the moment an object appears in a narrative,” Italo Calvino writes, in Six Memos for the New Millennium, “it is charged with a...
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Dancing with Myself
Dino Ahmad Ali, 2008 http://flic.kr/p/6WFoLh Anyone who has had a dance party alone in their room can attest to the helpfulness of an impromptu hoe-down. In her textbook Writing Fiction, Janet Burroway...
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Dancing About Architecture
“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture,” said Elvis Costello once, probably quoting someone else. And yet, and yet… It is apparently a strong urge to write about (or somehow with)...
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Writing Lessons: Sarah Sherman
In our Writing Lessons series, writers and writing students will discuss lessons learned, epiphanies about craft, and the challenges of studying writing. This week, we hear from Sarah Sherman, an MFA...
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Walking to Write
Avenue of Oaks, SC. 2013. Melanie Masson. It should be no surprise that walking relieves stress and anxiety and increases creativity, but now a recent study at Stanford University has found that...
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Follow Your Nose
Francis I of France was apparently also known as Big Nose Francis. Portrait by Titian. In my previous post, I suggested the possibility of creating an olfactory map of your neighborhood. I want to...
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Summer-Inspired Writing Prompts
Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Summer. We’re deep into summer. So how are you going to get any dang writing done when everything is so easy-breezy? That’s how it feels in Seattle, at least, when, after ten...
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Writing with Abstract Art
Amy Frierson In her essay “Art Objects,” Jeanette Winterson challenges readers to experiment with looking at an original work of art (ideally something you like, at least a little) for an entire hour....
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Back to School Special: Thoughtful Imitation
Mimicry in South African Butterflies – chromolithographic frontispiece of The Colours of Animals by Edward Bagnall Poulton, 1890. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons I didn’t study...
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Escalating Conflict
Adriaen Brouwer (circa 1605/1606–1638) [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsIn fiction, only trouble is interesting. For the conflict averse, instilling a story with juicy conflict may take some...
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The Tangible, The Visceral
Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450-1516) Touch is the sense common to all species. So wrote Aristotle in Historia Animalum and De Anima. And so is the premise for the art show Ann Hamilton: the common S E N S E,...
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