Share Your Writing Advice

[RedRosa]

Those of us who write, whether prose or poetry, creative non-fiction or fiction, please share your advice for what works for you.

I have two suggestions for writing short texts that capture the reader. One is: figure out the planet you come from. I come from Planet Girl. The second suggestion is: figure out the movies that describe your experience of life. Mine are: North by Northwest, a case of mistaken identity. And Gaslight, where you have to accept the mistaken identity or swallow the idea you are crazy. Then write funny and don't ask the reader to do you any favors.

[RedRosa]

“Poetry must sing or speak from authentic experience. Of all the streams of civilized tradition with roots in the Paleolithic, poetry is one of the few that can realistically claim an unchanged function and a relevance which will outlast most of the activities that surround us today. Poets, as few others, must live close to the world that primitive men [sic] are in: the world, in its nakedness, which is fundamental for all of us -- birth, love, death; the sheer fact of being alive.” ~ Earth House Hold, Gary Snyder