Creative Ink gets ink!

I’m breaking my "no weekend posting" rule to share this news with you, readers.

Creative Ink has been featured in The Blog Spot column in Writer’s Digest Personal Writing magazine (November issue is on newsstands now).

I can’t link to the exact article because it’s not available online, but I’m thrilled at the exposure. Doug White, a Cincinnati-based freelancer, contacted me last spring after I submitted a write-up to Writer’s Digest on why I blog. The result is a great little piece that really captures my reasons.

Here’s what Doug writes about CI:

Wendy Hoke launched Creative Ink after leaving her job as managing editor of a small publishing company. Initially, Hoke’s goal was to simply keep her writing muscles tuned for her new career as a full-time freelance writer. But blogging soon became her passion.

“It became a way for me to explore myself as a person and as a writer—kind of like my personal therapy sessions,” she says. “It didn’t start out that way, but that’s what it’s turned into.

“The process of blog writing gets me out of myself,” says Hoke. “I work alone in my house all day and tend to think too much. Sometimes you need to offload some of that information.”

Here’s part of a post titled, “How Wendy gets her groove back,” about breaking through a creative block:

It’s not easy when you work alone. You spend so much time inside your head that you forget to look up and around at the possibilities everywhere. I keep using the excuse of scaling back for the summer for my seeming lack of productivity, but in reality it’s been because so little has inspired me of late. I’ve become complacent, which is a scary place for a writer.

But even in that complacency, I’ve taken recently to scribbling ideas and fragments on scraps of paper that now litter my desk. (Don’t throw away that envelope!) And in my heavy reading, I’m finding the inspiration to keep going by putting one foot in front of the other even when I feel like crawling back into bed.

Hoke says Creative Ink allows her to be open and fearless in expressing her feelings about writing and life in general. She adds that blogging has given her the courage and confidence to move from reporting on other people’s lives into writing personal essays—and pitching them to national publications.

The other two bloggers sharing that space are Joshilyn Jackson a novelist who blogs at Faster Than Kudzu and Maggie Downs, a columnist for The Cincinnati Enquirer who blogs at Maggie Jumps!

So thank you Doug and Writer’s Digest for such a nice write up.

Other kind news
The PSR teacher I substituted for a couple of weeks ago just came to my door with a stack of letters of apology from his class. It was an unnecessary though much appreciated gesture. He said it was a good lesson in living the values we’re trying to teach the kids. I agree and though I know they did so under duress, I am glad for their efforts and certainly forgiving of their behavior.

Joe Wessels on Judith Miller
My SPJ pal Joe Wessels from the Cincy Pro Chapter has written on Miller's visit to the SPJ convention, sharing his thoughts and photos. Report This! brings an interesting mix of personal, professional and photographic experiences of yet another freelance journalist. If you scroll way down you'll find a photo of a very serious looking reporter interviewing a very serious looking Miller. So far this from Tim Porter is one of the best I've seen yet on the whole Miller fiasco.