In this post, GrubStreet Instructor Ben Berman reflects on the importance of flexible thinking during the creative process.

On the very same day that my older daughter was born, my grandmother died. I have always wanted to write about this but for some reason I have never been able to figure out how.

At first, I thought it might lend itself to a philosophical meditation on liminality and what it means to simultaneously navigate birth and death or perhaps some sort of spiritual piece on the deep connections between generations.

The problem, though, was that the ideas ...

In this post, GrubStreet Instructor Ben Berman looks at how describing images in a poem can help you reveal the speaker’s mindset.

In her book, On Looking: A Walker’s Guide to the Art of Observation, Alexandra Horowitz walks around the block with eleven different experts, demonstrating how what we see is determined by who we are

The October 2019 edition of "Writing Life Essentials," a monthly hand-curated list of contests, grants, scholarships, submissions calls, and awards, with a focus on opportunities that are at least one of the following: local, free to apply, and/or committed to celebrating and supporting writers from historically marginalized communities. We do the research, so you have more time for what matters: the writing. Or, slaying zombies. That matters too.

With the arrival of October, we're looking forward to jacket season, caramel apples, and all the discounted candy after Halloween. Don't miss out on these November 3-hour seminars and 6-hour weekend workshops: 
 

• The Hook & the Book: An Intensive Two-Day Workshop On The Query and The First Five Pages (11/1 & 11/2)
• Novel Essentials: Arcs and Endings (11/1)
• The Joke’s on You: The Serious Work Of Using Humor in Your Writing (11/1)
• Love Letters and Recipes: Sources for Setting Your Scene (11/1)
• Creating Community Projects  ...

In this post, Ben Berman looks at the importance of embracing contradictions and mixed emotions when writing poems.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the great researcher of creativity, has written a lot about conflict and dialectical tensions in his research on creative personality traits. In his study of some of the most eminent creators of the 20^th Century (Nobel Prize winners in every field of study), he found that many of these people shared what he called antithetical traits, and he grouped these into ten categories. 

According to Csikszentmihalyi, creative people often exhibit these paradoxical traits – they ...