“Share your innermost life,” marketing gurus advise writers, “with your readers, your newsletter folks, with everyone. Make it all public Make it pop-ular.”

That’s a certain way to burn out most of your audience, who just want the knowledge you have or just want to be entertained.

“Open the window. Let them see into part of your life.” That’s reasonable and rational marketing advice.

A window doesn’t give access to every room of your home, and it certainly doesn’t give access to what you’ve stored in closets or tucked deep in drawers or hidden in old boxes in the attic.

We writers have a constant push-pull dynamic of revealing ourselves. Heartfelt emotion is one of the four requirements of song, applicable to all writing. It speaks to us, touches us soul-deep, and leaves us weeping because we have a similar wound.

In this segment we have two poems by a man who wrote for public consumption but also purged his private anguish in a poem meant only to be published posthumously.

TIMINGS

00:00 Welcome

00:40 Introduction / Public vs. Private

2:20 Deceit with Reader / Heartfelt Emotion

4:23 Longfellow / Long Rant

7:05 HWL Public vs. Private Poems

8:53 Lessons 1, 2, and 3

9:50 “The Harvest Moon”

11:00 Lessons 4 and 5

12:30 “Mezzo Cammin”

14:45 Lesson 6

15:50 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time = 17:58

Analysis is All Original Content / No AI Used

#henrywadsworthlongfellow #marketingadviceforwriters #harvestmoonpoem #mezzocamminsonnet #sonnet

LINKS

Bio on Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Wadsworth_Longfellow

“Harvest Moon” https://poets.org/poem/harvest-moon

“Mezzo Cammin” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50629/mezzo-cammin

Link to Website https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/11/fall-into-poetry-writing-public-vs.html

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Fall into Poetry. Here’s a link to the first episode: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXi3M_aM-d7K1x02UAlihWKKom_5keJrg

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

• You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
• Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

Monsters of all sorts inhabit literature, for they crowd into people’s consciousness whenever we face trials and tribulations.

The unnatural monsters, goy and terrifying, gorging themselves without mercy or conscience, these are our nightmares, rarely encountered.

The deceptive monsters, the ones that camouflage who and what they are, still gorging themselves, relishing each victim, these inhabit our everyday lives. We should be wary of them, but we still find ourselves caught in their devastating traps, even after we finally recognize them. Only when we are burned enough or wounded enough do we manage to escape, scarred for all future encounters with people who aren’t monsters.

These deceptive monsters are alluring, beautiful enticements that we can’t quite let go. And that unwillingness to escape is truly the monstrous behavior.

Join The Write Focus as we offer 6 Lessons for all Writers as we examine the famous deceptive monster of the wild fairy in two poems by John Keats and e.e.cummings.

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome
• 00:40 Introduction / Deceptive Monsters
• 02:40 Keats’ “La Belle Dame sans Merci”
• 4:00 Lessons 1 2, and 3 for All Writers
• 11:26 Lessons 4 and 5
• 14:00 e.e.cummings’ Wild Fairy
• 17:00 Lesson 6
• 18:45 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time = 20:51

#wildfairy #labelledamesansmerci #johnkeats #eecummings #allingreenwentmyloveriding #dreams #writingtips #artasinspiration #4requirementsofsong #writingtheseasons

Analysis is All Original Content / No AI Used

LINKS

Keats’ bio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats

“La Belle Dame” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44475/la-belle-dame-sans-merci-a-ballad

The Artwork https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Belle_Dame_sans_Merci

e.e.cummings bio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._E._Cummings

[all in green went my love riding] https://allpoetry.com/all-in-green

Link to Website https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/10/fall-into-poetry-deceptive-monsters.html

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Fall into Poetry. Here’s a link to the first episode: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXi3M_aM-d7K1x02UAlihWKKom_5keJrg

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

• You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
• Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

Love. Betrayal. Death. Those subjects we discussed in our story-song and in other recent poems, including Christina Rossetti’s particular version of false love and twisted betrayal—Lust that isn’t love, summer friends abandoning her in her self-exile, her false love leaving her to face her trouble alone.

When we’ve endured betrayal, our memories of that traitors are as a monster.

Monsters need not have venom-dripping fangs and wicked-sharp talons. The worst monsters are in our own selves, the ones who want to stay with that “dragon who keeps so fair a cave” (Shakespeare).

As we near All Hallow’s Eve, we look for stories and poems and blogs about monsters. The horror genre gives us unreal monsters while the thriller genre gives over-the-top monsters, like Hannibal. We have fantasy monsters and domestic villains as monsters. We writers bend tropes.

The best monsters, though, never seem like monsters until we fall into their clutches.

TIMINGS

• 00:00 Welcome
• 00:40 Introduction / Monsters
• 03:55 Heinrich Heine’s “The Lorelai” / the femme fatale
• 08:10 Lessons for all Writers #1 and #2
• 11:48 Lesson #3 Find your Monster
• 15:00 Last Words / Closing

Total Run Time = 17:04

#heinrichheine #lorelai #femmefatale #blackwidow #theme #thesis #womenasmonster #goddessofrevenge #nemesis #siren #gorgon #graiae #odysseus #mythology #revenge

LINKS

Heine’s bio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Heine

“Lorelai” http://www.poetryatlas.com/poetry/poem/2255/the-lorelei.html#:~:text=The%20Lore-lei%20has%20done!%20The%20American%20Poet%20Thomas%20Bailey

Analysis is All Original Content / No AI Used

Link to Website https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2024/10/fall-into-poetry-unexpected-monsters.html

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Fall into Poetry. Here’s a link to the first episode: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXi3M_aM-d7K1x02UAlihWKKom_5keJrg

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

• You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
• Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)