Madam Mayo: writing workshop

This blog posts on Mondays. As of 2019 the second Monday of the month is devoted to my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing. (You can find my workshop schedule and many more resources for writers on my workshop page.)

We writers don’t just live in our heads, of course: we all have bodies. If we are uncomfortable physically in any way it is not impossible to write, but it doesn’t help! Count me a big fan of Annie Thoe’s YouTube channel “Sensing Vitalty,” which is chock full of her free, easy to follow, and highly effective Feldenkrais exercises. A recent one she offers is this simple exercise to relieve shoulder and neck pain––which we all get from sitting scrunched in front of a computer screen, no? Like all Feldenkrais exercises >>CONTINUE READING THIS POST ON THE NEW PLATFORM AT WWW.MADAM-MAYO.COM

Monday, November 11, 2019

A Working Library: Further Notes & Tips for Writers of Historical Fiction, History, Biography and/or Travel Memoir & Etc.

>> CONTINUE READING THIS POST ON THE NEW PLATFORM AT WWW.MADAM-MAYO.COM

Monday, August 12, 2019

August from the Archives: "Podcasting for Writers: To Commit Or Not (Or Vaguely?)

August 2019 finds me on vacation. Nonetheless, each Monday this month I will be offering posts from the archive (as usual, look for a workshop post on the second Monday, Q & A with a fellow writer on the fourth Monday).

PODCASTING FOR WRITERS:
TO COMMIT, OR NOT (OR VAGUELY?)

Originally posted on Madam Mayo blog, January 13, 2016

By C.M. Mayo www.cmmayo.com

Now that I’m working on my 54th podcast, I’ll admit, I love podcasting almost as much as writing. Starting back in 2009 I’ve podcasted many of my lectures, readings, and other events for my books, plus I created and continue to host two podcast series, “Marfa Mondays” and “Conversations with Other Writers.” It remains just as awesome to me now as it was with my first podcast that, whether rich or struggling, famous or new, we writers can project our voices instantly all over the world, while making them available to listeners at any time.

But first, what is a podcast? I often say it’s an online radio show. But the truth is, it’s a much wilder bouquet of possibilities.

>> CONTINUE READING THIS POST ON THE NEW PLATFORM AT WWW.MADAM-MAYO.COM

Monday, July 08, 2019

“Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less” by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

REST: My writing assistant demonstrates the concept. With snoring.

By C.M. Mayo www.cmmayo.com

>> CONTINUE READING THIS POST AT WWW.MADAM-MAYO.COM

Monday, June 10, 2019

A Writerly Tool for Sharpening Attentional Focus or, The Easy Luxury of a Lap Desk

By C.M. Mayo www.cmmayo.com

This blog posts on Mondays. As of 2019 the second Monday of the month is devoted to my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing. (You can find my workshop schedule and many more resources for writers on my workshop page.)

My writing assistant presents the lap desk. He likes the lap desk.
It means we all sit together on the sofa.

As far as the need for equipment goes, writing is not like casting bronze sculpture. All you need is a pencil and paper–any scrap will do. The formidable challenge most writers face is managing their attentional focus, that is to say, their ability to actually sit down and, ahem, actually write.

Sheer willpower isn’t the only thing needed, however. Habits, even tiny habits, can help enormously. Here’s where some writerly material tools can be useful… perhaps. I say “perhaps” because what works for one writer may not necessarily work for another.

What do I mean by “writerly material tools”? Well, you could have a special pencil and make a ritual of sharpening your special pencil– so there you have a pencil, and you have a pencil sharpener. Not a budget buster. If you don’t know what to do with your money, why, you could go gung-ho for such writerly material tools as a gold-plated typewriter with your name engraved in curlicues or, say, some rococo-rama iteration of George Bernard Shaw’s rotating writing shed. >>Continue reading this post at WWW.MADAM-MAYO.COM

Monday, November 12, 2018

Poetic Alliteration

By C.M. Mayo www.cmmayo.com
Read this article on my Resources for Writers: Craft webpage here.

As of this year the second Monday of the month is dedicated to my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing.

POETIC ALLITERATION

Poetic alliteration is one of the many techniques you can use to make your writing more vivid and powerful. The definiton of alliteration: "The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words."

[>>CONTINUE READING THIS POST AT WWW.MADAM-MAYO.COM]

From (of all things) a movie review by Desson Howe in the Washington Post:

"There he is, in all his glory, Brad Pitt, that beautiful, chiseled chunk of celebrity manhood. You want him? Go see Fight Club. You want action, muscle, and atmosphere? You want boys bashing boys in bloody, living color? Fight Club is your flick, dude."

To start with, we have "chiseled chunk" -- ch and then ch

In the fourth sentence we have "action, muscle, and atmosphere"-- ah and ah

Then "boys bashing boys in bloody, living color"-- b, b, b, and b

Then "Fight Club is your flick, dude" -- f and f

The point: the sound of the words-- alliteration-- reinforces the meaning.

Here are some more examples:

"...hold on with a bull-dog grip and chew and choke as much as possible"-- Letter, President Lincoln to General Grant

"When somebody threatens me, he says, I usually tell them to pack a picnic and stand in line." -- Mikey Weinstein quoted in Marching As to War by Alan Cooperman

"A competitor once described [mining engineer Frank Holmes] as 'a man of considerable personal charm, with a bluff, breezy, blustering, buccaneering way about him' -- Daniel Yergin, The Prize

"Small heart had Harriet for visiting" -- Jane Austen, Emma

As I cannot repeat often enough, as a writer, your best teachers are the books you have already read and truly loved-- the books that made you want to write your own. (These books or may not get the Seal of Approval from your English professor-- but never mind. Some academics may be artists, and some artists academics, but in general they are creatures as different from one another as a coyote and a horse.)

To repeat: As a writer, your best teachers are the books you have already read and truly loved. Pull one of those beloved books off your bookshelf, have a read-through, see where and how the author uses alliteration. Or not?

Once you recognize a technique you can often spot it in, say, a newspaper article, a biography, or an advertisement. More about reading as a writer here.

Help yourself to more resources for writers on my Resources for Writers page.

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Poetic Listing

Poetic Repetition

Diction Drops & Spikes

Monday, October 08, 2018

Poetic Listing

By C.M. Mayo www.cmmayo.com

As of this year, the second Monday of the month is dedicated to my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing.

POETIC LISTING

A much-celebrated poem that amounts to a list-- a luminous list-- is Robert Pinsky's "The Shirt."

[>>CONTINUE READING THIS POST AT WWW.MADAM-MAYO.COM]

How to make a list into something poetic? It helps to be attentive to and creative with diction drops and spikes, repetition, scansion, and alliteration. I've already posted on diction and on repetition; in future months look for posts on scansion and alliteration.

Herewith, taken from a few favorite works, are some examples of poetic listing-- and to get the most of this, to really hear the poetry, I would suggest that you read these aloud:

"During the first days she kept busy thinking about changes in the house. She took the shades off the candlesticks, had new wall-paper put up, the staircase repainted, and seats made in the garden round the sundial; she even inquired how she could get a basin with a jet fountain and fishes." Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

"We eat our supper (cold biscuits, bacon, blackberry jam) and discuss tomorrow. Tomorrow the kind of work I like best begins: buying. Cherries and citron, ginger and vanilla and canned Hawaiian pineapple, rinds and raisins and walnuts and whiskey and oh, so much flour, butter so many eggs, spices, flavorings: why, we'll need a pony to pull the buggy home." Truman Capote, A Christmas Memory

"Tonight he wished for little things, the chance to take a hot bath, a reasonable suit of clothing, a gift to bring, at the very least some flowers, but then the room tilted slightly in the other direction and he opened up his hands and all of that fell away from him and he wanted nothing." Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

"The carriage was crammed: waves of silk, ribs of three crinolines, billowed, clashed, entwined almost to the heights of their heads; beneath was a tight press of stockings, girls silken slippers, the Princess's bronze-colored shoes, the Prince's patent-leather pumps; each suffered from the others feet and could find nowhere to put his own." Guiseppe di Lampedusa, The Leopard

And an example I also used in the post on repetition (money, money, money):

"Tancredi, he considered, had a great future; he would be the standard-bearer of a counter-attack which the nobility, under new trappings, could launch against the social State. To do this he lacked only one thing: money; this Tancredi did not have; none at all. And to get on in politics, now that a name counted less, would require a lot of money: money to buy votes, money to do the electors favors, money for a dazzling style of living..." Guiseppe di Lampedusa, The Leopard

To take this further, as you are reading whatever you happen to be reading, note in your notebook whenever you find, in your view, any especially apt use of poetic listing. (More on reading as a writer here.)

P.S. More resources for writers on my workshop page.

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

On Seeing as an Artist or, Five Techniques for a Journey to Einfühlung

Blast Past Easy: A Permutation Exercise with Clichés

At the FIL or, the Mexican Megabookmashup

Sunday, July 08, 2018

Jaron Lanier's TEN ARGUMENTS FOR DELETING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS RIGHT NOW

As of this year, the second Monday of the month is dedicated to my workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing.

Jaron Lanier's
Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.

www.jaronlanier.com

If you know who Jaron Lanier is you will understand why he, and probably only he, can get away with such a title for a commercially published book, a title that most people today, and that would include writers with books to promote, would consider hoot-out-loud humbug.

But perhaps they would not if they more fully understood the perverse and toxic nature of the machine Lanier terms BUMMER.

BUMMER = Behaviors of Users Modified, and Made Into an Empire for Rent

Writes Lanier:

"BUMMER is a machine, a statistical machine that lives in the computing clouds. To review, phenomena that are statistical and fuzzy are nevertheless real."

And more:

"The more specifically we can draw a line around a problem, the more solvable that problem becomes. Here I have put forward a hypothesis that our problem is not the Internet, smartphones, smart speakers, or the art of algorithms. Instead, the problem that has made the world so dark and crazy lately is the BUMMER machine, and the core of the BUMMER machine is not a technology, exactly, but a style of business plan that spews out perverse incentives and corrupts people."

[>>CONTINUE READING THIS POST AT WWW.MADAM-MAYO.COM]

BUMMER sounds like science fiction. But alas, as Lanier explains, the business plan behind social media, and the use of proprietary algorithms to hook users into addiction and subtly distort and shape interactions among users, is both real and seriously icky. You've probably read or heard something about FaceBook's shenanigans, but in Lanier's Ten Arguments you're getting a far broader, more detailed analysis and argument, in a wierdly charming package, and not from some random TED pundit, but from one of the fathers of the industrial-cultural complex now known as Silicon Valley.

As Jaron Lanier states in his acknowledgements, the title Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now is inspired by Jerry Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. I, too, consider Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television a personal inspiration and a masterpiece. Call me a pessimist: I doubt that Lanier's book will have any more influence on the general public's social media habits than did Mander's on television watching, which came out in the late 1970s. But perhaps such works may assist you in marshaling your attentional power for your creative endeavors, as they did for me, and for this reason I enthusiastically recommend them to you, dear writerly readers.

Carpe diem.

BUT BY THE WAY...

I have not deleted my social media accounts. What I have done is deactivate Facebook (back in 2015) and now only very rarely use others (Twitter, LinkedIn, academia.edu). While I agree with Lanier's argument that social media is BUMMER, and I sincerely wish that I had never signed up for FB and Twitter in the first place, the fact is, I did, and because of that existing online record and username, I am not ready to hit the delete button. Moreover, I am still digesting some parts of his argument (in particular, I do not accept his hypothesis that the problem is merely what he terms BUMMER).

And by the way, yes, I know, this blog, on the Google platform, blogger, belongs to BUMMER. A better and paid platform is on my to-do list. [UPDATE 2019: Now on self-hosted WordPress at www.madam-mayo.com]

As for using Google search-- definitively BUMMER-- I switched to Duckduckgo as my go-to search engine a good while ago.

What's the specific strategy that would be right for you? I would not presume to say.

But what is clear-- and we don't need Mr Lanier to inform us on this simple point-- is that if you want to write anything substantive, and you don't have the abracadabradocity to summon up more than 24 hours in each day, social media can be a lethal time-suck. The years will scroll by, as it were... and funny how that is, though you Tweet #amwriting often enough, you never wrote what you planned to write... What's more, the visibility you can achieve with social media, and the sense of "community," albeit intermediated by proprietary algorithms of a corportation, are Faustian bargains: you will pay in the end, and on many levels.

I always welcome your comments by email. You can write to me here.

P.S. For those who have the inclination and/or sufficient cootie-proofing to handle esoterica, I can also recommend philosopher Jeremy Naydler's splendidly researched and elegantly argued In the Shadow of the Machine: The Prehistory of the Computer and the Evolution of Consciousness-- also just published. You might find it worthwhile to keep in mind, if you read In the Shadow of the Machine, that in his Ten Arguments Jaron Lanier mentions (oh so briefly, blink and you'll miss it) Waldorf schools. (More about that connection here.)

Cal Newport's Deep Work / Study Hacks Blog / On Quitting Social Media

30 Deadly-Effective Ways to Free Up Bits,

Drips & Gimungously Vast Swaths of Time for Writing

Why I Am a Mega-Fan of the FiloFax

Monday, April 09, 2018

Grokking Plot: The Elegant Example of BREAD AND JAM FOR FRANCES

Get this book from
The Seminary Coop Bookstore
...or your usual go-to online purveyor

As of this year, my posts for the second Monday of the month are dedicated to my workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing.

As those of you who follow this blog well know, I am work on a book of creative nonfiction about Far West Texas, a subject distant indeed from children's literature. But Russell Hoban's 1964 classic, Bread and Jam for Frances, is bright in my mind because in the recent days of my mother's final illness, I read it to her several times.

[>>CONTINUE READING THIS POST AT WWW.MADAM-MAYO.COM]

Bread and Jam for Frances was a great favorite of ours, a book my mother read to me when I was learning to read in the early 1960s. She always appreciated children's books, and often gave copies of her favorites as gifts. Other favorites of hers included DuBose Heyward's The Country Bunny and the Little Golden Shoes; Margaret Wise's The Little Fur Family; anything and everything by Beatrix Potter; and many other titles about in Hoban's series about Frances the badger and her little sister Gloria.

From 1939... still selling faster
than little bunnies can hop

In her last days my mother was unable to do more than listen to TV news-- and it pained me to sit in that room awash with reports of shootings, bombings, crashes, the latest tweets from POTUS, commercials for drugs and those breathlessly chirpy recitations of ghastly side effects, and even such absurd "news" stories as-- this one still makes me chuckle-- "Robotic Dinosaur on Fire!"* So I asked my mom if, instead, I could read to her from some of her favorite children's books and she said, delightedly, yes.

*(Robotic Dinosaur on Fire!-- That's the title of my next book of poetry.)

What brings me to mention Bread and Jam for Frances here is that, as I appreciated for the first time, the plot is at once simple and unusually elegant.

GROKKING PLOT

No matter whether one is writing an adult thriller, a romance novel, or a literary tour-de-force of an historical epic, plot is something a writer needs to grok, before writing, during drafting, and in the editing process. Where to go, what to cut? For many writers, particularly those working on a first novel, plot can seem more difficult to wrestle down than a wigged-out octupus.

The best and most complete craftmans' treatment of plot that I have found to date is in Robert McKee's Story, a book aimed at screenwriters, but almost every one of his yummy nuggets applies to novels as well. That said, it's a big, fat, doorstopper of a crunchily crunchwich-with-garlic- sweetpotatoes-on-the-side kind of book, not the most appropriate for a one day workshop, as I prefer to teach them.

In my workshops, for a necessarily brief introduction to plot, I prefer to start with the chapter in John Gardner's The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, which introduces the Fichtean curve, and then move on to Syd Field's Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, which introduces the three-act paradigm (which also applies to fiction).

Find these three and more recommended books on craft here.

Gardner's On the Art of Fiction is the best introductory book on craft I know-- over the past 30-odd years I have read it and reread it more times than I can count (and bought new copies when the old ones fell to pieces). However, on many an occasion, before I learned to first give 'em ye olde cold fish of a caveat, the more sensitive among my students would complain bitterly about Gardner's arrogant tone. And to those of you not in my workshop but who who have read and loathed Gardner, I say unto you: Buck up, kiddos, or consider that Gardner did you a favor so you can quit now because the literary world, like the whole big wide rest of it, makes snowflakes sweat blood! Then flash-fries 'em to a crisp! Anyway, Gardner died in a motorcycle accident years ago so you're unlikely to ruffle his feathers with your cranky review on Goodreads-- which only makes you sound like a flaming snowflake. SSSSsssss.

Seriously, have a laugh, shake off Gardner's tone like the peacocking silliness that it is; if you want to understand the art of fiction, I urge you to read what he has to say. (Also, by the way, you can ignore the subtitle, Notes on Craft for Young Writers. It's for anyone writing fiction, at any age.)

Of course, in a workshop it is necessary to talk about plot in reference to one or more specific novels. But one of the gnarliest challenges for a workshop is that reading a novel requires many hours-- no time for that in a one day format-- and even the most well-read writers may not have read the same books, nor share the same taste. Perhaps we have all read Edith Wharton, but for you it was Ethan Fromm, for me, The Custom of the Country. Willa Cather? Perhaps you read My Antonia and I read Death Comes for the Archbishop. And, Lord knows, there are perfectly intelligent and talented workshop students who have not heard of either Cather or Wharton. Lord also knows that, much as we may recommend our favorite novels to each other, even we roaringly avid readers may work but a fraction of the way down our towering to-read piles.

Edith Wharton and Willa Cather
Masters of American literature-- and plot
My uberly-uber faves
In an ideal workshop I would dissect the plot in any one or or more of their novels
(I should like to think that these ladies would have been charmed by Bread and Jam.)

What a fine thing then to have found a little book, so short and sweet, with such an expertly wrought plot as Bread and Jam for Frances.

But I cannot bring myself to do taxidermy, that is to say, a synopsis. For those of you looking to learn about plot (and/or find a worthy children's book as a gift for your favorite young reader), may I suggest that you buy a copy of Bread and Jam for Frances, then read it, which won't take you more than about 10 to fifteen minutes. Then return here, just below the triple hashtags.

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Bread and Jam through the FICHTEAN CURVE
Think of this as a triangle (curvy if you wish) where your story travels, episode-of-conflict by episode -of-conflict, up the hypotenuse to the big pointy CLIMAX. Then, with your denouement-- pronounced, raising your nose oh so slightly, day-noo-mahn-- slidey-slide down to...The End!

Episode o' conflict: At breakfast Frances does not want an egg; she only wants bread and jam.
E o' c: She admits she traded yesterday's chicken salad sandwich for bread and jam
E o' c: At lunch she offers to trade her bread and jam for a sandwich, is refused
E o' c: At snack time her mother gives her not a special snack but bread and jam
E o' c: For dinner there are veal cutlets but Frances gets... bread and jam

Climax: At the next dinner Frances cries and asks for spaghetti and meatballs!

Denouement: For lunch the next day Frances enjoys a lunch of a lobster salad sandwich and much more. She agrees with her friend Albert that it is good to eat many different things.

Bread and Jam through Syd Field's THREE ACT PARADIGM

I SET UP
Breakfast at home: Frances does not want her egg, only bread and jam. She admits she traded yesterday's lunch of a chicken salad sandwich for bread and jam
Plot point (what takes us to Act II): It's time for Frances to go to school

II CONFRONTATION
Lunch with Albert, Albert has a nice lunch while Frances has only bread and jam.
Snack time, it's still bread and jam.
Dinner, still bread and jam.
Dinner again, bread and jam
Plot point (what takes us to Act III): Frances cries and asks for meatballs and spaghetti

III RESOLUTION
Frances enjoys her meatballs and spaghetti
The next day, Frances opens her lunch box to find a very nice lunch with a lobster salad sandwich and, with her friend Albert, discusses how nice it is to eat many things

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Perchance this sounds silly. Am I saying that we can compare the simple little plot in Bread and Jam for Frances with that of such literary heavyweights as say, The Custom of the Country? Death Comes for the Archbishop? Or, for that matter, The Great Gatsby? Yes, dear writerly readers, that is what I am saying-- and moreover, that because the plot of Bread and Jam for Frances is so compact and simple, it is easier to see. And having seen it so clearly, you should then be better able to see plot in your own work.

What does your plot look like through the paradigm of the Fichtean curve? And of the three-acts?

Now your wigged-out octupus just might shed a few limbs, or at least, braid them together and sit up nicely and accept a cup of tea-- and in between sips, calmly inform you, in his bubbly French accent, what's to happen next. (Never a dull moment writing fiction.)

There are other ways of looking at plot, by the way, and one I cover in my workshops is the "Hero's Journey," a paradigm first eludicated by Joseph Campbell. The book I recommend on this subject is Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers.

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P.S. Check out "'Giant Golden Buddha' & 364 More Free Five Minute Writing Exercises." Today's five minute exercise:

"What's in the Kitchen Drawer?"This is a vocabulary expanding exercise— not about using new words, but rather words you already know but seldom use. List the objects in your kitchen drawer(s)— from the spatula to the grapefruit knife to the soup ladle.

> All second Monday posts

> Oodles more resources for writers at my Writing Workshop Page

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Ellen Prentiss Campbell writes:
"Love those books, and your essay! Hoban was featured in a display at Beinecke at Yale. I often think of Frances's difficult experience with Thelma, the bad friend, who trades for her tea set."

One Simple Yet Powerful Practice in Reading as a Writer

The StandStand: One Highly Recommended Way

to Keep on Writing While Standing

Ten Tools for Organizing a Novel-in-Progress

Sunday, March 11, 2018

For the Writing Workshop: John Oliver Simon and Nicanor Parra; Margaret Dulaney's "The Child Door"; Latest Stance on Twitter; Ten Hands

This year I continue to post on Mondays, the second Monday of the month being dedicated to a post for my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing.

# # #

REMEMBERING TWO POETS

John Oliver Simon has passed away, a great loss to the translation and poetry community in California and abroad, especially Mexico. Read his obituary here.

Back in 2008, for Tameme, I published John Oliver Simon's translation of a chapbook by Mexican poet Jorge Fernández Granados, Los fantasmas del Palacio de los Azulejos / Ghosts of the Palace of the Blue Tiles. Read an interview with him about that here.

And over at her blog, Holding the Light, poet and translator Patricia Dubrava remembers Chilean poet Nicanor Parra.

# # #

Some questions for you, dear creative writer:

How would you want your obituary to read?
What creative works would you be most proud of, and why?
Which ones would you not want to leave unfinished, no matter what?

# # #

MARGARET DULANEY'S PODCAST, BOOK, AND LATEST OFFERING, "THE CHILD DOOR"

Playwright, essayist and mystic Margaret Dulaney's monthly podcast, Listen Well, offers her beautifully written and beautifully read personal essays. (Check out her book, To Hear the Forest Sing: Musings on the Divine.) Dulaney's latest offering, "The Child Door," should be of special interest for anyone who might need a nudge for their creative process.

> Click here to listen to Margaret Dulaney's essay, "The Child Door."

# # #

JANE FRIEDMAN KNOWS ALL, TELLS ALL

For those looking to publish, I warmly recommend signing up for Jane Friedman's free and choc-packed-with-valuable information newsletter, Electric Speed.

You can follow her blog, too.

Her new book, The Business of Being a Writer, will be published this month by University of Chicago Press.

# # #

MY CURRENT, CRINGING-IN-THE-FAR-CORNER STANCE ON TWITTER

See "Twitter Is" by C.M. Mayo

As I slog through the backlog of email and, concurrently, contemplate the transcendent role of technology in Far West Texas and American and Mexican culture and my life (e.g., last week's post, Notes on Stephen Talbott's The Future Does Not Compute), I've been noodling about social media, Twitter in particular.

Back in 2009 when it was sparkly new, I wrote a celebratory essay about Twitter for Literal. I stand by what I said; Twitter has its creative possibilities. But then as now, to quote myself:

Fster than a wlnut cn roll dwn t roof of a hen house, were gng 2 see t nd of cvlizatn

It has become increasingly clear to me that, considering Twitter's attention-fracturing, addictive qualities, and general yuckiness (hashtag mobs, trolls, etc), on balance, it's not for me.

In fact, I sincerely wish that I had never bothered setting up an account with Twitter in the first place.

But I have not deleted my account, cmmayo1, because, after all, I have a goodly number of followers and therefore, when I run a guest blog, book review, or Q & A, I will tweet the URL to that post as a courtesy to the author. And I know that there are still a few thoughtful, readerly and writerly souls out there, checking in on their Twitter feed, now and then, who may see such tweets and find them of interest and value. You know who you are.

[UPDATE JANUARY 2018: I dislike Twitter's attention-fracking mobdom intensely, however I have decided to keep the account @cmmayo1 to tweet as a courtesy to those writers who have given me a Q & A; as a courtesy to their publishers; and, when the occasion calls for it, which is very rare indeed, I'll tweet as a courtesy to my publishers. That's it. I prefer to invest what I think of as my "communication writing energy" in this blog, email and, yeah verily, snail mail.]

P.S. Everything I have to say about Facebook I said here.

P.P. S. Nicholas Carr has two extra-extra-crunchily crunchy pieces on Twitter in Politico, this one in 2015 and this one in January 2018.

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TEN HANDS

Today's 5 minute writing exercise is "Ten Hands":

Describe five different pairs of hands. (Some things to consider might be color; texture; shape; symmetry; condition; scars; tattoos; jewelry; etc.) For each pair of hands assign a name and a profession.

> Help yourself to 364 more free five minute writing exercises on my workshop page here.

P.S. As ever, you can find many more resources for writers here, and recommended reading on the creative process here.

# # #

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Q & A with Leslie Pietrzyk

On the Siren Song of the Online World and on Writing Silver Girl

On Seeing as an Artist

Tulpa Max, or Notes on the Afterlife of a Resurrection

Sunday, February 11, 2018

New Resources for Writers

As announced in my last post of last year, in 2018 I will continue to post on Mondays, with the second Monday of the month dedicated to my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing.

CLICK HERE
to visit my "For Writers" pages

Get this book from
The Seminary Coop

Since the year 2000 I have maintained "For Writers," an ever-evolving series of webpages within my main website. Updates are now live on three of those subpages:

+ Recommended Reading on Creative Process
New on the frequently updated list: Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. I listened to the audio edition, read by the author, and it was such a trove of wisdom, I listened to it again.

> Visit the main "Recommended Reading: Creative Process" page here.

+ Resources for Writers: Tips & Tools
Updates on ye olde article "Ten Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Writing Workshop."

> Visit the main "Tips & Tools" page here.

+ Resources for Writers: On Publishing
Several updates on ye olde article, "Out of the Forest of Noise: On Publishing the Literary Short Story," including new links to a treasure of a resource, Clifford Garstang's Perpetual Folly Literary Magazine Rankings for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Thank you, Clifford!

> Visit the main "On Publishing" page here.

P.S. Help yourself anytime to "Giant Golden Buddha" and 364 More Free Five Minute Writing Exercises. The exercise for today: