OK Kids, Let’s Make a Chapbook

Chapbook_Jack_the_Giant_KillerChapbooks—those small booklets of twenty-five or so pages—have been around since the 16th century. Folk tales, children’s stories, poetry, and religious tracts, all manner of material became available once printed books were affordable by us common folk. These days chapbooks most often contain poetry, though collections of flash fiction or nonfiction are produced, too, or even a book containing a single story. Some chapbooks can be quite elegant, hand-sewn, hand-made paper, embellished with original art. But generally, chapbooks are inexpensively produced and inexpensively priced or even given away.

Continue reading

Writing Yourself as Character

Last night in our Wild Women, Wild Voices writing group, our focus was on Body Writing: Voice of the Senses. The session included several writing explorations, and as always, there wasn’t enough time to write all we wanted to write, discuss all we wanted to discuss, and share all we wanted to share.

One of our writing exercises, which I hadn’t done in a group before and which I found more than a little interesting, was to write a character description of ourselves.

Continue reading