分类: Process

I Built Lit Camp on the Cheap, and You Can Too

7/1/2025

by Stephen Harrison

Late night Starbucks lights are just enough to let you move around and know that you’re not meant to nap here. The customers typically look harried at 2 a.m., and the menu is limited. But Starbucks is open nonetheless. Fluorescent white lighting and soft talking mixed with honestly pretty shitty coffee served as a launchpad for the rest of my academic career.

Photo by Stefen Tan on Unsplash

During my education as a journalism major, I spent many evenings visiting an open all night location near Rutgers University, but I didn’t spend my time there alone. The three of us—Dan, Carl, and I—all aspiring writers, needed someplace where we could work together. The importance of this was lost on me at the time, but in retrospect, it was critical to my development. Somewhere in the late night coffees and arguments about the merits of this piece or that piece, something was brewing for me.

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Delusions of Discipline

1/1/2024

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Amanda Smera Welsh

If you are a writer, especially a writer in the middle of a graduate program, you will undoubtedly encounter many craft materials through the course reinforcing the need to establish a discipline to your own writing.

Sometimes, they can sound a little delusional, which was precisely my reaction when I read Robert Olen Butler’s “From Where You Dream.” It truly is the most overtold advice any writer has heard before: “You may not be ready to write yet, but when you’re in a project you must write every day. You cannot write just on weekends. You cannot write this week and not next week; you can’t wait for the summer to write. You can’t skip the summer and wait till the fall. You have to write every day. You cannot do it any other way. Have I said this strongly enough?”

Yes you have, dude, now please shut up!

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Zine Making Is for The Scatterbrained

7/1/2021

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by Julianna Holshue

via Unsplash

Ever since I can remember, I have always wanted to write, but never had the focus for a novel. I could write poetry, short stories, jokes, and rhymes, but my heart was never set on in-depth world-building, drawn out character development, or well-planned plot arcs. No, my mind thrives better when I create the transient, even the changeable, as I am prone to distraction and grow restless from dealing with the same pieces of a story for too long. This same approach applies to my illustrations, which I have recently taken up. I sketch what I write about, which includes anthropomorphized creatures, ill-proportioned characters, untamed fauna, and bubble lettered dialogue. My illustration style lends itself more to the pages of a choose-your-own-adventure book rather than the deliberate order of the adorned walls of an art gallery, which works for me, since I do not plan on making a living as a novelist or classically trained artist.

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Good Morning, Good Luck, and Get Writing

1/1/2019

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by Joe Gramigna

Discipline is hard. I’ve tried many times to reinvent myself via practices that I planned to follow diligently. The first few weeks, everything’s peachy. The 5 a.m. gym sessions get my blood flowing. The kale and green concoctions don’t yet taste like bug spray and depression. The lavender incense lightly laps against my nostrils to center a newfound meditation routine.

Image via pixabay

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I Built Lit Camp on the Cheap, and You Can Too

Delusions of Discipline

Zine Making Is for The Scatterbrained

Good Morning, Good Luck, and Get Writing

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