Notes on Creativity

Rules & Reminders

A few years ago, I ran across this list in Brainpickings, and was immediately smitten. The list was written by Sister Corita Kent, and can be found in her book Learning by Heart: Teachings to Free the Creative Spirit.

I was smitten, and provoked. Ever since coming across that list, I’ve kept my own list of Rules & Reminders to Myself. It’s a living document; every time I start a new notebook, I rewrite it. This past semester, I had my creative writing students cobble together their own Rules & Reminders over the course of the semester. I can’t show you theirs, but here’s mine. The rules are about writing, but most of them apply to making anything, really. 

If you want to show me your Rules & Reminders, I’d love to see them!

After the Draft: Resource List

Professional Development
The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide by John McNally

The Ultimate Guide to Getting Published in a Literary Magazine by Lincoln Michel

A Beginner’s Guide to Publishing by Aubrey Hirsch

Writers’ Center of Indiana (for classes)

Midwest Writers’ Workshop (classes)

Creative Writers’ Opportunity List (CRW-Opps)

Submittable Newsletter

Jane Friedman, Publishing Consultant


A Few Thoughts on Revision

Ethan Canin on storyboarding

Storyboarding by Cathy Day

Lev Grossman on Revision

Finding an Agent

The Big List

How to write a query letter (Query Shark)


Finding a Press/Magazine

Poets & Writers Small Press Database

Poets & Writers: Contests, Grants, and Awards

Chart of the “Big Five” Publishers & Imprints


Events & Series Around Town

Butler’s Visiting Writers Series

UIndy

IUPUI

Events at Indy Reads

JL Kato’s Calendar of Poetry Events


Self Publishing

Dog Ear Publishing

CreateSpace by Amazon


A Couple Thoughts on Literary Citizenship

Cathy Day

5 Ways to be a Good Lit-Cit by Allison Amend

Aaaand a Note on Promotion

19 Ways of Looking at Book Promotion

Quote

This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don’t get impatient. Even if things are so tangled up you can’t do anything, don’t get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread before it’s ready to come undone. You have to realize it’s going to be a
long process and that you’ll work on things slowly, one at a time.

Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood (via fawksianfella)

Sometimes I think that all my advice to students can be boiled down to two words: Slow. Down.

(Which is a lesson I need to re-learn at least twice a day, too.)

Quote

A major, usually rhetorical, question I hear during Climate Anxiety Counseling sessions is: “What can one person do?” The answer I’ve come up with is that “you” have to learn how to be more than one person. You have to listen to what other people need and want. And you have to act in unison with people to bring about the changes that will help us all survive—the snails and the humans, the rocks and the mountains.