Guest Blog Posts at Madam Mayo

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--->Travel writer and writing teacher Richard Goodman
5 Favorite Books on Soul
--->Travel writer and power walker L. Peat O'Neil
5 + Links on Walking
--->Writer Nani Power
5 Interesting Facts About the Monarch Butterfly
--->Poet Sandra Beaseley
5 Poets Turned Prose Writers--->Sociology Professor Clara Rodriguez
5 Latino Stars of Early Hollywood
--->Writer and Mexico City Aficionado David Lida
5 Secrets of Mexico City
--->Visionary librarian Jane Kinney Meyers
5 Links About Lubuto
--->Novelist, Anthologist and Blogger Daniel Olivas
5 Influential Writers in "Latinos is Lotusland"
--->Baja Buff and Business Writer Greg Niemann
5 Favorite Websites
--->Novelist Gayle Brandeis
5 Works of Fiction that Explore the Senses in Fresh Strange Ways
--->Writer and editor Jennifer Silva Redmond
5 Favorite Baja California Writers's Websites
--->Historical novelist Sandra Gulland
Top 5 Research Sites for Historical Novelists
--->Mexico historian Tasha Tenenbaum
"Kahlo de Rivero" and the Long List of World-Class Mexican Artists
--->Novelist and blogger Leslie Pietrzyk
3 Dos and 3 Don'ts for Writers's Blogs
--->Writer, editor, translator, graphic designer Tom Christensen
3 Dos and 3 Don't for Writers's Blogs
--->Poet and playwright Grace Cavalieri
5 Favorite Venturesome and Vivid Movers of the Earth
--->Writer Paula Whyman
5 + 1 Sites on Baking for Writers--- and Other Breadheads
--->King of the Baja Buffs, adventure travel writer Graham Mackintosh
5 Favorite Websites
--->Novelist and lit-bloggerLeslie Pietrzyk
5 Favorite Guest-Blog Posts on Work in Progress
--->Travel writer and Mexico expert Isabella Tree
5 Favorite Books About Mexico
--->Journalist and highway historian Steven Hart
5 Sites at the Crossroads of History, Industry, Commerce and Art
--->Writer, musician, composer, philosopher David Rothenberg
5 Whale Music Links
--->Poet Cathleen Calbert
The 5 Members of the Providence Area Writers Group
--->Novelist Eric B. Martin
5 Links On the Next Roberto Bolaño: Guillermo Fadanelli
--->Travel writer and essayist Richard Goodman
5 Favorite "Collected Letters of..."
---> Medievalist and author Jeff Sypeck
On other writers's blogs
---> Writer and documentary film maker David Taylor
Top 5 Books Read in 2007
---> Children's book writer Nancy Levine
5 Favorite Pug Websites
---> Playwright and writing coach Roy Sorrels
5 Reasons San Miguel de Allende is a Writer's Heaven
--->Poet, writer and teacher Sheila Bender
Top 5 Books On Writing
--->Short story and nonfiction writer John Kachuba
5 Spooky Sites
--->Short story writer and novelist Janice Eidus
5 Favorite (mas o menos, directly or very indirectly) Mexico-Related Websites
--->Comedy writer and stand-up comic Basil White
Top 5 Laugh Links
--->Poet and visual artist Christine Boyka Kluge
Top 5 Websites for Hybrid Writing, Collaborations, and Experimental Work
--->Travel writer Jim Benning
World Hum's Representative 5
--->Short story writer Kate Blackwell
5 + Summer Reading
--->Poet Kim Roberts
Top 5 Litblogs
--->Feng Shui Expert Carol Olmstead
5 + 1 Feng Shui Tips for Writers

--->Want to guest-blog for Madam Mayo? Guidelines here.

Guest-Blogger Sheila Bender's Top 5 Books on Writing

As an avid reader and recommender of books on the craft of writing and the creative process (see my current lists here), I am delighted to have poet, writer, editor, publisher and teacher extraordinaire, Sheila Bender, guest-blogging today. Her poems and essays have appeared in anthologies and literary magazines around North America, including Boomer Girls, Poetry Northwest, The Seattle Review, The Bellingham Review, Northern Lights, and Tiny Lights, among many others, and she has written for Writer's Digest Magazine and The Writer Magazine.. She publishes Writing It Real and offers online classes at www.writingtireal.com. Her most recent instructional book is Writing and Publishing Personal Essays.

As a personal essayist and poet who teaches and writes instructional books and articles, I find myself returning to particular books frequently for the way the authors and/or contributors speak about writing and the inner world we must access when we write. I am pleased to have the opportunity to share five of them with you.

#1.) I read How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love With Poetry by Edward Hirsch just as I was about to teach a university course in poetry for non-English majors. I decided to use the book as one of the texts. My students learned what poetry is by reading a superb poet's appreciation for the way poetry opens us to experience, to spirituality, to the deepest emotions we will ever have. In Hirsch's chapters, I "met" poets I had not yet read and I "re-met" many I'd studied long before. We all got to sit with poems and the way, as Hirsh says lyric poetry "instills us with a feeling of what cannot be possessed, and it lets the soul have its way with us. The poem is a soul in action through words."

#2.) Several months ago, I reviewed In Pieces, an anthology of fragmentary writing, edited by Olivia Dresher, and I have been returning to the pages of this 382-page anthology ever since to inspire my own writing. Forms the collected fragments take: diaries, notebooks, aphorisms, vignettes, selections from letters, an essay written fragmentarily on postcards. Tone the collected fragments take: psychological, philosophical, poetic, spiritual, political, mixtures of the above. What inspires the fragments: abstract thought, nature, travel, tangible aspects of a moment or simply playing with words. What fragments do: break off "a point of their own choosing; "happen by themselves." Each fragment, many sentences inside the many fragments, call forth moods, thoughts, and associations about much I have wanted to say. And I know for any mood or thought or association I have, I'll have a variation or entirely new one the next time I read the fragment. I am affirmed reading In Pieces about the way I often read--holding up a fragment of the story or textbook like a jewel in the light, carrying it to other light, looking again. I cannot take my mind off the fragmentary writing In Pieces offers--- velvet bag of gems spilled onto the jeweler's bench.

#3.) Most recently, I finished reading Incognito Street, How Travel Made Me a Writer by Barbara Sjoholm. The narrative evokes a 1970s-style Bohemian travel life and arouses memories about how knowing I wanted to write colored the way the world looked and felt. Reading Sjoholm's honest account of her meandering way of finding her art is a reminder that we often understand who we want to become even if for awhile we have no idea of how we are going to get to be that person.

#4.) Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola’s book Tell It Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction offers a fabulous discussion of the forms of creative nonfiction available to essayists. Each chapter is introduced with a short personal essay by one of the authors, which grounds the book’s instruction and makes reading the book an experience similar to reading personal essays. Whether the authors are talking about the value of metaphor for helping a writer go deeper or the reason they dubbed a particular kind of essay “the hermit crab” essay the tone is accessible and rich. The book’s anthology of essays is a real treasure and the authors never go on too long--each discussion leaves me ready to write.

#5.) Finally, because I both attend and lead writing workshops, I find Joni B. Cole's Toxic Feedback a joy to refer to. She says, "… the value of feedback isn't limited to advice about structure and wordsmithing. Feedback is just as much about bolstering the writer's faith in himself and excitement about his project along the way. It is about getting some external validation." I know I need that and count on my writer's group to let me know where they are interested in what I've written and where they are sidetracked. Both are validation, because they let me know how I can get on target. In an interview I did with Joni for Writing It Real, she said, "My opinion? The Club of Real Writers is a club where no one who wants to write should ever feel like an outsider. We all need to do our part to create a stronger writing community. Published, unpublished, literary or genre writers, young or old--- what difference does it make? I think anyone who has the gumption to write belongs to the Club of Real Writers. And a rejection letter should earn you a free drink." Yup, sounds good.
---Sheila Bender

To Read Madam Mayo's other guest-blog posts, click here.

Janice Eidus's 5 Favorite (mas o menos, directly or very indirectly) Mexico-Related Websites

Guest-blogging for Madam Mayo today is short story writer and novelist Janice Eidus, who has, by the way, just published a crackerjack novel, The War of the Rosens. Enthusiastically recommended!

I've been delighted, over these last few years, to discover how many things the wonderful and ever-productive Madam Mayo and I have in common. Among these things are our love of good writing in a wide range and variety of forms; our love of the art, literature, language, culture, and the day-to-day world of Mexico; our love of laughter; and, our belief in nurturing good friendships. I'm thrilled to be a guest blogger on Madam's extraordinary blog. I've chosen five (mas o menos) sites to recommend that--- either directly, or very indirectly--- relate to Mexico.

#1. Behler Publications, a new publisher based in Southern California (not that far, geographically, from Mexico), is publishing some very interesting and exciting new work. My new novel,The War of the Rosens, about a volatile and eccentric Bronx Jewish family, is just out from them. Behler has also recently published the very original and offbeat coming-of-age novel, Teched, written by my good friend, Thaddeus Rutkowski. The very indirect connection to Mexico here is that Thaddeus and I have both enjoyed good times writing in the Mexican sun.

#2. Casa Karmina is a beautiful, large, sunny, art-filled house in Mexico that's inspired the many writers who've stayed there over the years. It's an absolutely perfect writer's retreat.

#3. Roy Sorrels is a talented and versatile writer and writing coach who lived in Mexico for many years, and who now lives in New York. Sometimes when he and I are in New York at the same time, we meet for coffee at a West Village café and pretend that we're sitting in a café at the Jardin in San Miguel, sipping tequila. (In the interest of "full disclosure," I will mention that Roy just reviewed The War of the Rosens for CultureVulture online.

#4. Sheila Bender's website magazine, Writing It Real, is a treasure for writers--- she teaches, chats, and inspires. She and I have been friends for a long time. We met in Port Townsend, Washington, when I was teaching at the Port Townsend Writers Conference. Sheila and I have had some mighty good schmoozes in the Mexican sun and shade--- and, she and I have both been happily involved with Author's Sala in San Miguel de Allende.

#5. My friends, Jim Johnston and Patrice Wynne, live in Mexico and both divide their time between Mexico City and San Miguel de Allende, and both are creative in many fields. Jim's an artist and writer, and Patrice is a photographer, clothing and textile designer, and fabulous Mexican tour guide, among other things.

--- Janice Eidus.

To read Madam Mayo's other guest-blog posts, click here.