Photo by Quinn Dombrowski via Flickr When Candace Kearns Read shared a humiliating experience from her childhood in her memoir she didn't expect this scene to be met with laughter from her readers. As the saying goes, “If it’s painful make it a drama. If it’s too painful, make it a comedy.” Often the best way to write about difficult things is to make light of them. Find the emotional truths that contain an element of absurdity. There is usually some angle from which these things that have made us cry can also make us laugh, and sometimes making our readers laugh can actually touch them more deeply. Read all of Candace's post here: Make it a Comedy Candace Kearns Read  is the author of the memoir  The Rope Swing   (Eagle Wings Press, Sep 2016). She is a screenwriter who has also been a Hollywood script reader for actors and directors, including the likes of Anthony Hopkins and Michelle Pfeiffer. Her screenplays have been optioned by producers an...

Photo by Quinn Dombrowski via Flickr When I was growing up, my grandfather used to crack a lot of corny jokes. We’d always give him a hard time about it, but he would say, “Better to make ‘em laugh than to make ‘em cry, right?” “Right,” I would say. And the older I get, the more I realize just how right he was. The popularity of recent comic series on TV like Orange is the New Black, Divorce, and Breaking Bad points to the possibility that as a society, we are taking things less seriously these days. We seem to have evolved to a point where we are now able to laugh at tragedy in the face, without belittling it of course, but simply to show that even things as sad and terrible as prison, divorce, or drug dealing can all be seen through a comic lens. Finding that comic lens often takes a great deal of perspective and distance. We need to have the ability to “laugh it off.” There’s a saying among filmmakers when they’re deciding on the tone of a story: “If it’s painful make ...

"Do what you love," they say, "and the rest will follow." It is simple, almost obvious advice, but so easy to forget. I love to teach, I love to hike, do yoga, cuddle my dogs, hang out with my kids, and listen to great music. All those things and many more fulfill me and give my life meaning, but there is another, less worldly endeavor that strengthens, fills and enriches me, and that is the relationship I have with my writing. This passionate relationship may not look like much from the outside, but as we who work in the trade know, it's as vital to survival as air, food and water. I don't know how other writers feel; all I know is that writing completes me. Maybe it’s because I grew up an only child, spent so much time alone, daydreaming the hours away. Or maybe it’s because I have found in writing a way to connect with other souls, to squash the loneliness and sort through the bouts of existential angst. Like most loves, the source of my devotion to m...

Photo by Ali West , via Flickr I’ve never been a tidy person. My car, my bathroom counter, and my office all attest to how difficult it is for me to organize things and make choices between what to keep and what to throw away. I often don’t have the time or patience to deal with all those pesky tasks. Unfortunately, in my writing, it’s much the same. I’m fine with dumping down a long, rambling random draft, somehow finding a structure to hang it on, but I always seem to leave a lot of proverbial socks sticking out of my drawers. In writing, as in life, I can make a mess, no problem. What I struggle with is cleaning it up. I’ve been working on a new project, one I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years. I started in earnest in October, and since it’s based on a true story, I have an overload of possible scenes and ideas. There’s probably no way it’s all going to fit into a cohesive, completed whole, but, since I believe in the method of making a mess and cleaning it up, I do...

Photo by Paul Downey , via Flickr This is the month of thank yous, the season of gratitude. Even though a writer’s life is not an easy one, we still have plenty to be grateful for. At the top of my list are books, writing communities, and publishers. A visiting magazine editor once told a room full of writers at a panel on publishing that in order to succeed a writer needs do three things besides write. We all sat up straighter and strained our ears to hear. The magic ingredients, she told us, were 1) to read many, many great books, especially in the genre we were writing, 2) to join and participate in writing communities such as the conference we were all attending, and 3) to send out our work to contests, editors, and agents, in the hopes they would help us get published. It sounded like a lot of work, but it was nice to have a formula for “success,” whatever that was, so I took it to heart. I got busy and added to my writing practice as much reading, workshopping, and submit...

We are pleased to welcome Candace Kearns Read to the Blood-Red Pencil team. Image by dryhead , via Flickr Like everyone, I have plenty of fears. At the top of the list are snakes, evil spirits, falling off cliffs, and… being honest. So, when I set out to write a memoir several years ago, I found it difficult to create a final product that was any good. Sure, I could draft chapters, but instead of conveying the intensity I wanted, many passages were stiff, clinical, awkward. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t quite relax on the page, and it showed. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was hiding my truth. I was afraid. Speaking – and writing - our truth is scary. We fear ridicule, judgment, the pure vulnerability of exposure. My memoir tells the story of my attempts to save my aging Hippie mother from drug addiction, and the journey I took towards saving myself instead. It felt risky to write this book, and risky to publish it. I was afraid that those who knew my mot...