Just a Photo

Farmers Market Bouquet 

The Fiddlehead Blog: 10 Rules for Submitting

The Fiddlehead Blog: 10 Rules for Submitting: If you missed the deadline for The Fiddlehead’s 21st Annual Literary Contest , fret not! The Fiddlehead accepts submissions year-round so i...

Carry Your Burden

Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall.  Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day.  Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down.  And this is all life really means.

 Robert Louis Stevenson

I have a lot of work to do this week and I woke up this morning feeling really crummy...maybe it's lack of sleep or lack of enthusiasm for my full plate. I'm taking a walk with the dogs in hopes that that will get me going. I just started reading Writer With a Day Job: Inspiration & Exercises to Help You Craft a Writing Life Alongside Your Career by Áine Greaney. How do you get going when you feel like getting back into bed? 

Lovingly,

The Writing Nag

the power of words

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=Hzgzim5m7oU&vq=medium

Using Software to Track Submissions: Part 4 — Online Submission Trackers

Using Software to Track Submissions: Part 4 — Online Submission Trackers

How to start a poem

Poets are good listeners. They find moments, experiences and images and write poems from what others might perceive as silence. Often poetry exposes the ugliness and the beauty of our world reminding us what we might have forgotten or what we never would have noticed. Poetry can spark political discussion, protest a wrong, affect change, be mindful of the natural world, expose the horrors of war, invite someone into a personal space or it can be a quiet voice that invokes a spiritual presence or a connection to a higher power. With all that poetry is and can be it’s easy to get overwhelmed with just starting a poem.

Places to start a poem

A line of one of your finished poems

A line or phrase from another poet

A list of your favorite words

American sentence: a sentence with seventeen syllables 

Encyclopedia
Foreign language dictionary

Google searches

I Remember i.e. based on Joe Brainard’s book length poem I Remember

Journal entries (yours or historical texts)

Letters or emails

Notes from a class or lecture

Old newspaper or magazine clippings (try a black-out poem)

Poem Sketching (Sandford Lyne’s book below)

Quotes

Receipts

With a title

With a collaborator

Suggested Reading

A Natural History of the Senses

Diane Ackerman

In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop

Steve Kowit

Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within

Kim Addonizio

Poem Crazy: Falling in Love with Words

Susan Wooldridge

The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide

Robert Pinsky

The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing

Richard Hugo

Writing Poetry from the Inside Out: Finding Your Voice Through the Craft of Poetry

Sandford Lyne

Whereof the Gift Is Small by Maxine W. Kumin : Poetry Magazine

Whereof the Gift Is Small by Maxine W. Kumin : Poetry Magazine