1 :: 4 What’s Horrifying for Writers?

5 Major Horrors Every Writer Will Face, from Writer’s Block to Crash and Burn.

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5:40 / Fall into Poetry / Two Autumn Poems October 2, 2024
What sparks a love of poetry? The highbrow puzzles of e.e. cummings or the imagism of Ezra Pound. The lyrical music of John Keats or Christina Rossetti. The logical jumps and intellectual gymnastics of the metaphysical poets. The gimmick that marks Ferlinghetti. The emotions that lurk in a Longfellow sonnet. The intriguing story-songs that we […]
M.A. Lee
5:39 / Fall into Poetry / Sweet Wine September 25, 2024
Wine is heady stuff. A simple goblet of wine relaxes us; a mega-pint or a bottle can tip us into trouble. Do you prefer the creamy full-body of a fine cabernet or the bite of a sauvignon blanc? Perhaps a medium red like a spicy Zinfandel or a lighter Riesling? Or a fruiter, sweet-forward wine, […]
M.A. Lee
5:38 / Fall into Poetry / Sweet Lies September 18, 2024
Here’s an odd way to start a conversation about a song: the word moron. Hi all. It’s the third episode in our autumn series Fall Into Poetry. We’ve featured two story-songs (narrative poems) that are ballads, not the modern power ballad of the music world but the literature-based ballad with its focus on the subjects […]
M.A. Lee
5:37 / Fall into Poetry / Clown Faire September 11, 2024
Story-songs, like last episode’s “Read my Mind” by Gordon Lightfoot, leave a mark in our memories. Very little is needed to return them to the foreground of our mind. That’s also the case with this episode’s story-song, another ballad, this time for Broadway, written by the fantastic Stephen Sondheim, a great in American stagecraft. I […]
M.A. Lee
5:36 / Fall into Poetry / Read my Mind September 4, 2024
Every writer is after memorable writing, whatever will strengthen our words and ideas so they haunt our audience. We want our audience to return again and again to our writing, either to recapture that original impact or to puzzle out a question that wasn’t answered. Capture our audience, and they stay with our writing to […]
M.A. Lee
5:35 / Word Count Challenge / Check-In # 4 / Surviving that Horrible Week August 28, 2024
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the fourth check-in for the Word Count Challenge with the theme of Surviving that Horrible Week for Writing. I thought I was smart, earlier in this year, when I scheduled a Wednesday to Tuesday trip. The hectic weekend driving would be avoided. When most people would be arriving or leaving, I […]
M.A. Lee
5:34 / Word Count Challenge / 3rd Check-in / Challenging Problems August 21, 2024
Hello, everyone. It’s the 3rd Check-in for the Word Count Challenge here in August, and we’re discovering problems. I continue to meet my goal of 500 new words daily, no matter the interruptions. I’ve had to write fiction and nonfiction to achieve 500 new words, and other writing tasks are still occurring, all in a […]
M.A. Lee
5:33 / Word Count Challenge / Check In 2 / Managing August 14, 2024
Hi, Everyone. It’s the second check-in for the Word Count Challenge here in August. How have you done? Leave a comment about your goals and successes. I’ve managed to meet my goal of 500 words daily, no matter the interruptions, and they were many. Things tugged at me every day of the past week. The […]
M.A. Lee
5:32 / Word Count Challenge / Old Challenge vs. New Challenge August 7, 2024
Old Challenge vs. New Challenge ~ that’s the theme for this week’s episode. We say goodbye to the Summer Writing Challenge, which tracked all the pesky jobs that writers have to do in addition to the writing, and we welcome in the August Word Count Challenge, which is the kind of challenge that writers want […]
M.A. Lee
5:31 / Summer Writing Challenge / Check In 9 / Winding Down by Winding Up July 31, 2024
Hi, all. It’s the last full week of the Summer Writing Challenge. We’ll have one last day to report in our first August episode. This week, though, finishes out our challenge. Did I succeed? Did I fail? What can I do better? What changes can I make to be more successful in the future? Let’s […]
M.A. Lee

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