The Writing Path
A Guide for Creative Writers Who Want to Change the World
I Want to Help Creative Writers Reach Success.
That’s my mission. I have been teaching creative writing longer than most of my students were born, and along the way, I’ve picked up enough patterns and details to understand how Creative Writers successfully (or not) manage their writing careers. I know many writers on the verge of giving up the dream, because they are too stressed with work and family issues and frankly don’t have the time to write. I know writers who make a living using multiple side hustles to continue writing; I know many freeway fliers, writers who weave a modest living by driving from one college campus to another teaching multiple composition classes; I know writers who live off book sales and speaking engagements or have academic positions as creative writers at tier-one institutions, where they are valued not by their service or teaching, but by what they publish. I know a writer (you know him too) who was so critically acclaimed and prolific that all he had to do at his university was write –he didn’t even have to teach classes --because his value to the university was to be famous. I know other writers who have great jobs they love that have nothing to do with writing, but they write in their spare time or on weekends, which not only provides them with meaning but which also supplements their income.
No matter what your definition of being a successful writer, we want to be able to MAKE A LIVING as a writer, doing what we love to do.
But we don’t want to make a living, we want a good life, that is, we want more than to not have to worry about how we’re going to pay our bills or feed ourselves. We want to be able to enjoy travel, friends, new experiences.
Apart from basic needs, we can define our own success.
Do you want an academic position that values you for what you write? The Writer and the Brain wants to help. Do you only want to make a modest living as a writer, maybe visiting schools and offering writing workshops, selling enough books at an event to get you through the month? Do you want to be rich famous? Great. I want to help you get there. Whatever your vision of success, the Writer and the Brain will provide free information about Creative Writing communities, market and technology trends, the craft of writing, and the physiology of the writer, with protocols on how to take care of your brain and body to maximize access to the imagination and allow you to linger longer and more consistently in the “zone.” I will offer creative writing exercises and consejos, books writers should read, and videos.
I will also provide free information that can help move the writer move toward AI literacy. We cannot ignore that Large Language Models are disrupting the publishing industry, and we need to be aware of how we can ensure the survival of our literary cultures and communities.
AI will not take the jobs from poets.
Poets with AI literacy will do that.
By poets I mean Creative Writers. What makes us different from other writers is that our love of language allows us the ability to follow words into a story or a poem, rather than using words to construct exactly what we want. We can be led by the spirit, and sometimes after a great session of writing and that intense focus that brings us out of time, we are surprised by what we have written, as if it came from another realm (and it did. But more on that later).
Telling our stories in fiction or in poems is a necessary art that probes the depths of the human soul, or mind. I believe Creative Writers can save the world, in short because we tell the best stories. We’re good at it. Everything we value about life, justice, freedom, equality, prosperity, are the narratives that make civilization possible. Without stories, which is to say, without poets, we are doomed.