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Writers.com

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There But For The Grace of God

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The phone rings and you don’t know if it’s the phone or the new, beeping pill dispenser your husband bought so he could leave you alone in the house for long stretches of time.  Before that, you were in charge of knowing which gaily colored pill was which and when to take the Rasagiline, or […]

To Magic

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Every mother dreams of the day her daughter gets married. She prays it’s to a man that will love her with all his heart. A man who will take on the role of head of her family with certainty and a little fear. Someone who desires to uplift and encourage her. Today, I am overjoyed […]

Stick Figures

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12Grandmother. Ten years old and I’m kneeling on the carpet next to her. She smells like flowers with English Garden names: peony, jasmine, narcissus; she smells like black and white movies, where heroines smoke PallMalls like they mean it. She grips the pins between smudged red lips, her breath coming in emphysematic wheezes, moving on […]

Proof of Life

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There is a tiny person under my roof this morning.  She arrived two days ago, and I fussed and worried and sterilized and kept the appropriate social distance, until finally her mother placed her gently in my arms.  I cannot adequately describe how it felt to hold another human close, after the terrible, endless Covid […]

My Blessed Boy on the Streets…and my Teacher of all Things Good

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Previously Published in U.S. Catholic.  A sometimes lonely leftover phone booth stands on a street corner in Portland, Oregon. When a street person feels so inclined, he or she can use the one-time pay phone, now free of charge, to call friends and/or family anywhere in the world. And inside the phone booth, profound words […]

Interview: Barbara Henning Discusses “Prompt Book” and Finding the Inspiration to Write

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If you’re a writer looking for prompts, inspiration, or lessons on literary movements, then Writers.com instructor Barbara Henning‘s new book Prompt Book (Spuyten Duyvil Publishing, 2021) is your solution. Naturally, we were curious about how an author goes about collecting and publishing a book of prompts. Below is our full interview with Barbara on Prompt Book […]

Prose vs. Poetry: Their Differences and Overlaps

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The difference between prose and poetry seems easy to explain: one has blocks of text and fully-fleshed characters, the other has line breaks and pretty words. That’s it, right? Despite their visual quirks, prose and poetry share many similarities: prose can be musical, poetry can have plots and characters, and both are millennia-old traditions. As […]

How to Avoid Clichés in Writing

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A few weeks ago, we discussed the myth of originality as it relates to writing a compelling story. While no story is truly original, something all unoriginal stories share is the use of clichés. Countless clichés in writing exist, but the savviest writers know how to snuff out trite sentences and overused character tropes. This […]

Creative Nonfiction Writing Classes Online: 8 Things to Know

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Taking a creative nonfiction course online is a great way to improve your writing, or even just to hold yourself accountable to writing creative nonfiction. If you haven’t taken creative nonfiction writing classes online before, though, it can be difficult to know if a particular creative nonfiction writing class is the right fit for you. […]
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