Creativity
Virginia Woolf as Mother
Portrait of the Artist as a Mother By Geri Lipschultz We Wanted to Be Writers’ call for favorite literary moms struck me, and famous mothers paraded by, mothers like the mother of Marcel, The Stranger’s mother who died, Akhmatova as mother, Toni Morrison’s Sethe—many mothers there are, and I thought of Molly Bloom as mother, [...]
Oregon Ho!
We’re coming to you, Eugene. Eric Olsen will present “Pumping Irony: Pros on Prose (and Running)” at the Willamette Writers Speakers Series, 7 p.m. Thursday, May 2, at Tsunami Books, 2585 Willamette St., Eugene, OR. Looking forward to meeting virtual friends Valerie Brooks and Tom Titus and lots of other northern neighbors. Hope to see you there.
Writers and Languages
Learning Another Language Can Only Improve Your Game By Eric Olsen A few weeks ago the writers’ website Redroom.com invited readers to blog about learning another language, the assumption being, I suppose, that writers are multilingual, or should be. Certainly there are all sorts of reasons why a writer should know more than one language. [...]
A Reluctant Writer
Rebelling Against the Self By Ginger Moran Ginger Moran is a teacher, published writer and single mom of two boys. Her areas of expertise are in fiction and creative nonfiction writing, editing, and creative survival. She holds a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston and Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in [...]
The Importance of a Writing Community
Bright Ideas Redux By Eric Olsen Writing may be a solitary gig, but making it good and making it count shouldn’t be. This post on the perks of writing peeps was a recent featured blog on Red Room.
What Writers Wear
Clothing and the Creative Process By Eric Olsen One of the nice things about writing is that it’s a private act, and so you can usually wear whatever you damn well please while you do it. For me, that usually means blue jeans and a T-shirt, plus a sweater or two since my office is [...]
Writer Interrupted
The Death of William Gay By Ross Howell Ross Howell followed a career in academic fund-raising, public relations, book publishing, and marketing after receiving his MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1978. He’s now freelancing non-fiction and fiction, and teaching at Elon University. He lives in Greensboro, NC, with his wife, Mary Leigh, English [...]
Food for (Creative) Thought
On March 2, Eric moderated a panel discussion at the annual meeting of AWP—this year in Chicago—titled: “The Creative Process: Can it Be Taught? Or Will Chicken Soup Do?” Panelists included Sherry Kramer, Gordon Mennenga, Jane Smiley, and Doug Unger. We were all classmates at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop 30-plus years ago, and the panelists are [...]
Eric Olsen’s Bright Ideas on HuffPo
Were you expecting to see Eric Olsen in this morning’s Huff Post Business? Don’t look at us; we were flying to Chicago for the AWP conference. Happy Leap Year! ” . . . At the heart of this process is, of course, something a little mysterious and unpredictable, that blessed ‘aha!’ when all the pieces [...]
Creativity Reading List
Need help beating the winter doldrums? These may help. They’re books and articles we used in researching We Wanted to Be Writers, prepping for our panel at AWP, “Can the Creative Process Be Taught? Or Will Chicken Soup Do?” and for inspiration in general. On Creativity, by David Bohm “The Creativity Crisis,” by Po Bronson [...]
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