Posted on by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 4 Comments

a bit of writerly advice

banner-2748305__480Today’s advice is for essay writing, specifically–and a little hard to swallow for those of us who enjoy telling personal stories…

Phillip Lopate‘s dictum: The trick is to realize that one is not important, except insofar as one’s example can serve to elucidate a more widespread human trait and make readers feel a little less lonely and freakish.

–found in the New Ohio Review 22 Feature: Of Essays and Exes called “Writing What You Know and Whom You’ve Known” by Joey Franklin

What do you think of that dictum? What’s your writing dictum?

Posted on by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 8 Comments

A bit of writerly advice

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free image courtesy of KathrynMaloney at Pixabay.com

Happy 2018! In honor of the new year, I’m beginning a new category here at Rust Belt Girl, “writerly advice.” Some entries will be not-so-sage advice offered by me (my days teaching English 101 should have taught me something!); some entries will feature advice from the experts. All will give me–and hopefully you, too–a little motivation to keep up fighting the good fight (i.e. writing the good write).

Today’s advice:

Show, with deftly-inserted bits of “tell.”

–Rebecca (Rust Belt writer)