Blogs Noted: Karen Benke, James Kunstler, Reading the Past, Karen Maezen Miller, Work-in-Progress

Huffington Post's Karen Benke
On creativity. P.S. Check out her guest-blog for Madam Mayo here.

Right-reading
By Tom Christensen. And this post on his new book, 1616.

Clusterf**k Nation
(Will those twin asterisks fool the google robots? One does hope so.) By James (The Long Emergency) Kunstler. Doom, gloom, general disaster, and deflation and, alas, though my take on human nature is a sight more charitable, I usually concur with his overall diagnosis. (Recently: "the only change Americans want is from the cash register at Wal-Mart." Ouch. This week, he had Senator Dodd slurping the bean soup in the Senate cafeteria.) P.S. For a vibratory antidote, Cute Overload usually does the trick. I am not kidding.

Cute Overload
Best ever: the voiceover for the Carnitas video.

Reading the Past
Like the title says.

Work-in-Progress
By my amiga novelist Leslie Pietrzyk, blogging consistently and informatively on matters all & sundry about creative writing. With a beautiful, all-new cherry-pie-red design! (P.S. Leslie, thanks for the mention.)

Karen Maezen Miller
Zen. But I am not sure about the laundry part.

Mini Blog Vacation This Week

Meanwhile, read my guest-blog post over at Work-in-Progress (with an intro by my amiga novelist Leslie Pietrzyk, that is way too nice... ) Thanks, Leslie...

Guest-Blogger Leslie Pietrzyk's Top 5 Work-in-Progress Guest-Blog Posts

This post makes me blush, but what the heck! Guest-blogging today is my DC amiga, novelist and fellow-blogger Leslie Pietrzyk. If I just celebrated the second anniversary of my blog, it's thanks to her--- she's the one who urged me, despite my disdainful resistance, to take literary blogs ("litblogs") seriously. One of the questions newbies to the blogging world ask me is, how do you know which blogs to read? Start with the ones I recommend, I always say--- meaning, well, start with the ones someone recommends! Leslie gave me my start by recommending several (click here to read her list of favorite blogs back in 2006). And now she, too, is celebrating the anniversary of her blog, Work in Progress and I do very heartily recommend it. One of the most outstanding litblogs on the Net (on my top 10 list of writers blogs), it focuses on the creative process and all things literary. Over to you, Leslie.

My blog, Work in Progress, is a year old, and I have our own dear Madam Mayo to thank for this auspicious event. While I was reading literary blogs for several years, trying to hook others into my obsession, I had never imagined I might actually write one: too much work... too hard to format italics... too much responsibility... too many links. I had plenty of excuses.

Then I started reading Madam Mayo, who made blogging seem effortless and fun and an exciting (and necessary) part of the future for writers. Finally, I took the plunge directly from her site, clicking on the innocuous “create blog” in her upper right hand corner, right up there still (you can start a blog, too, right now; that’s how simple it is). And that was a year ago!

To celebrate, I’d like to offer my five favorite guest posts over the past year. I’ve enjoyed—and am grateful to everyone who contributed a guest essay during my first year (and I’m always looking for pieces; contact me)--- but these are five posts that I absolutely can’t shake.

1. Liam Callanan, “After Words.” I still get teary when I read this evocative piece filled with yearning of the young and the old, the remembered and the forgotten.

2. Carolyn Parkhurst. I write fiction so I don’t have to deal with the issue of writing directly about people I know and care about. That question is even more complicated here when the story you think you might want to tell is about your own child.

3. Ryan Krausmann. What can I say? This one still makes me laugh. And I’m continuously inspired by Ryan’s story about how he boldly quit his job to spend the summer writing his first novel.

4. Anna Leahy offers excellent suggestions for how to create an effective writing group, a topic that I think is under-covered in the general writing magazines.

5. Katharine Davis, “Letter from Maine.” Kitty writes here about the intersection of art and writing, showing us that writers have much to learn from visual artists.

6. Bonus pick: Check out Madam Mayo’s helpful suggestions about how to get the most out of your writing workshop!

--- Leslie Pietrzyk

--->For the archive of past guest-bloggers on Madam Mayo, click here

Madam Mayo's Top 10 Writers's Blogs

Coming up Feb 9th: the Washington Independent Writers (WIW) All-Day Fiction Seminar at American University, Washington DC, for which I'm chairing the panel on writers blogs. So, what makes for a good writer's blog? I'm working on a list; meanwhile, here is a list of 10 that, though not necessarily my personal favorites, are outstanding examples of the genre.

#1. Design expert and author Edward Tufte's Ask E.T.
He calls it a moderated forum. Yeah, I'm calling the page a blog because I want to.

#2. Novelist and journalist James Howard Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation
Once a week, a zippy op-ed style essay.

#3. Novelist and creative writing teacher Leslie Pietrzyk's Work-in-Progress
Highly focused and meaty with helpful information. Frequently updated and features many guest-bloggers.

#4. Poet and literary magazine editor Deborah Ager's 32 Poems
Wide-ranging, quirky, frequently updated. Big on Web 2.0 tools.

#5. Childrens writer Erica Perl's Pajamazon
Childrens' book recommendations (and a bit more). Part of Offsprung news.

#6. Travel writer Rolf Potts' Vagabonding
Fun, daily updates, multiple bloggers working for him.

#7. Professor of History, Middle East expert and author Juan Cole's Informed Comment
One of the go-to places for news about Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. Updated daily with multiple links and commentary. (Boy howdy does he sell ads!)

#8. Novelist Laila Lailami's Moorish Girl
She's been around almost from the time blogging began.

#9. Editor, graphic designer, translator and writer Tom Christensen's Right-reading
Eclectic quality links, and he encourages both mail and comments.

#10. A cabal of crime novelists's Naked Authors
Regular posting by Paul Levin, Patricia Smiley, James O. Born, Jacqueline Winspear, and Cornelia Read.

------>Is there a writer's blog you think I should know about?

More anon. And meanwhile, click here for the Gone to the Litblogs archive.