When you receive a “Listenback” from a critique on your work, what can you do next?
Use the feedback you’ve received to set up exercises to try things out.
Use this releasing question: What other poems are inside this poem?
Editing and re-writing are like sculpting.
Erwin A. Thompson, author of Thompson Western Series and Folk Treasure
I will share my secret of being able to write when there is no time for writing.
When I am in a boring job that only requires my presence, when I wake up at night and tend to remember all of the dirty deals that people […]
What do singing on Broadway, training dogs, and mastering the art of the business pitch have in common? Patience, preparation, and perspective. I learned this valuable lesson from a young friend Annemieke Farrow (daughter of Stephanie and John Farrow of Albuquerque, New Mexico).
Annemieke transitioned from a successful theater career in New York City to running […]
To complement Eden Maxwell’s excellent advice today on making rejection work in your creative life, look in Riehlife’s WRITE PEN! archives for more solid advice on using rejection by Nancy Connally, Janet Muirhead Hill…and (the other Janet) myself. My article “Relishing Rejection” was posted on “Eliot, a Literary Blog” as well as www.ezinearticles.com.
August 24, 25, […]
Wizard Altar, by Janet Riehl “Thinking as if…magic is real.”
If someone gave you a million dollars, what would you do with it?
If you could be a character from any book, who would you be?
What is the silliest thing to ever happen to you?
Every writer needs a writing room. What about a burrow…a hole or tunnel dug into the earth to create a space of temporary refuge….and where your thoughts and feelings can inhabit themselves freely, on paper.
Dig a deep hole to bury your sorrows. Bury them, do not forget them. For, they are alive and will burrow […]
When Jake Lorfing and I were talking yesterday about some long ago work I felt would be worthy writing material, he said, “But I don’t remember anything; it’s too long ago.”
I suggested he do a Sensory Scan. You can do this, too.
1) Take each sense in turn: sight, sound, taste, touch, smell.
2) Scan each sense. […]
Janet Riehl with her book “Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary” (see sidebar)
This aphorism is something I said at a book evening at Left Bank Books in the Central West End, St. Louis…when the conversation turned to writing. The author of the evening urged me to write it down, so I did. (One of the foundational rules: […]
Demian Farnsworth invited me to join the chorus of rejection advice and insights on the St. Louis Writers Guild’s keynote blog Eliot, a literary blog (named, of course for T.S. Eliot, for whom St. Louis was a home town.) Head on over there to find out eight ways to put a dollop of relish on […]
I dove face down into the potato salad and…
You finish the story.
