WRITER’S WORKSHOP I, Week 4: A Celebration and My #1 Writing Tip

March 28, 2020.Reading time less than 1 minute.

We came, we saw, we measured—twice. We cut 10% of the excess—once. We twisted our opening lines to create grammatical tension. We have arrived. It’s …
WRITER’S WORKSHOP I, Week 4: A Celebration and My #1 Writing Tip

Cyber Dinner is Socializing

March 24, 2020.Reading time less than 1 minute.

How can we socialize today? This is so engrained in our everyday life. During this pandemic we need to find meaningful ways to connect with each …
Cyber Dinner is Socializing

New Feature: Tell Us Your Publishing Story

March 14, 2020.Reading time less than 1 minute.

Have you been published on a literary collective, an eZine, a journal, or a book? Go Dog Go Cafe wants to hear your publishing story. Many of us …
New Feature: Tell Us Your Publishing Story

WRITER’S WORKSHOP I, Week 1, The Fastball

March 7, 2020.Reading time less than 1 minute.

The Writer’s Workshop is live with our first prompt! Come sharpen your pencils and your prose at the godoggocafe.com. Share your thoughts and prompt responses in the comment section, and I will grab all the responses on Friday to link in next week’s post. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Go Dog Go Café

Something to think about:

My stepfather, a custom home builder, taught me the basics of carpentry: “measure twice, cut once.” Sounds simple enough, but it takes discipline and an investment in time to slow down and repeat the measurement, and the power saw can be unforgiving. Many are the boards wasted by a few mismarked millimeters. The lesson stuck with me, and I think about the concept often in other areas of my life, including my writing and editing.

For this prompt, I encourage you to slow down and measure twice. We are writers. We have stories to create. That creation requires an investment in ourselves, a belief in our ideas, a commitment to the hard work of writing so that we may communicate our creative babies effectively to others. In the words of Henry Miller, “open up…discover what is already there.”

Every man, when he gets quiet, when he…

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WRITER’S WORKSHOP, Get Ready

February 29, 2020.Reading time less than 1 minute.

A little teaser for the Writer’s Workshop I am hosting beginning next Saturday at godoggocafe.com…

Hope you will all join me there!

Go Dog Go Café

First Draft

I wanted to take this opportunity to invite you all to join me Saturday of next week as we start the Writer’s Workshop at Go Dog Go Café. Get your pencils and your prose ready and come prepared to be challenged and have fun.

(44 words. Never start with “I” and every knows this is the Go Dog Go Café. Needs tightening. I am cringing reading it out loud. Never a good sign.)

First Rewrite

Join me on Saturday of next week for challenging fun as the Writer’s Workshop is kicked off here in the cafe with the inaugural prompt. Don’t forget to sharpen your pencils and be prepared to sharpen your prose.

(38 words. Starts with “you”…better, but still clunky. Needs stronger verbals. “Kick off” is a mixed metaphor…we have a baseball theme. “Inaugural” is wrong imagery…feels political. Passive tense “is kicked off” should be changed to…

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Human Dreamer

March 25, 2019.Reading time less than 1 minute.

The poet’s soul bleeds words onto the page. I believe our most powerful words flow when that bleeding comes on behalf of others. I am a Human Dreamer. I dream of a day when we love our global neighbors as the human family they are.

I
am
human…
born of earth
and water
into air
to breathe
and form thoughts that reach
to clouds
floating
free of walls

collecting
into raindrop tears
that fall
into
closely gathered pools

pains
mingled

where
collected fluid
overflows
and
penetrates the soil
pleading with the ground
to swallow whole
the barrier
that restrains
paths
imagined
by
my
human
Dreamer

#DefendDACA

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