Use Oxford Commas
For no particular reason yesterday, I thought about this poem and wondered why there wasn’t a version of it for fledgling writers. Resolved to confront this great injustice in the universe, I took it upon myself to create one. I present for your amusement a parody of Wear Sunscreen originally published by Mary Schmich in the Chicago Tribune in June 1997. -C Writers, Use Oxford commas. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, Oxford commas would be it. The long term benefits of Oxford commas have been proven by grammarists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more...
Read MoreA Poem For Your Thoughts
I don’t write poems often. I would have said a few years ago that I’m not a poet, but when I was taking classes at Albertus Magnus for my MFA I decided to take the poetry seminar which allowed me to meet a wonderful poet by the name of Charles Rafferty who taught me more about what a poem could be than I ever thought I would know. Anyway, after taking his class, I do like to sometimes think of myself as a poet and there are certain topics that tickle that part of my brain just right. You’ve seen me talk on here about a short story I sold recently called “The Night You...
Read MoreMoore Writes #7
Sometimes the writing life and real life interleave so fluidly that I get the overwhelming sense that I’m doing the right thing. It’s a little scary when that happens, mostly because I’m so used to feeling like a hack all the time. Over the summer I had one of those moments when a series of events occurred and I could see the connection between them. They became an entirely different story in my head, and the poem I’m posting is the result of that experience. I toyed with the idea of submitting it for publication because it’s the best piece of poetry I’ve...
Read MoreMoore Writing #1
This is the first of what will hopefully be lots of writing updates. I haven’t written anything new this week, so instead of leaving you with nothing to read I’ve dug through my archives for two poems I wrote last year, a prose poem called Homesick and a blank verse poem called Bloodthirst. I’m not a poet, not really, but I took a class last year for my MFA program. Though I was very bad at first, I learned a lot about writing while taking the course and ended up producing a few that weren’t half bad. Hopefully you enjoy this little taste of something...
Read More