Patrick Ross’s blog is a delight. Stories of his personal journey to put creativity and art at the forefront of life inspire me to keep up my own efforts; his frequent round-ups to blog posts, links, and Tweets provide more resources than I can absorb. He’s connected me with a number of other inspiring writers and bloggers.

And he provides all this great content while pursuing his MFA and teaching and writing up a storm elsewhere! I’m not sure how he does it, but I’m glad he does.

Here’s a sample of last week’s round-up of creativity links from The Artist’s Road:

Creativity Tweets of the Week – 02/17/12

By Patrick Ross

I’ve got blogging on the brain, most likely because I’m conducting two different blogging workshops in the next few weeks leading up to the class I’m conducting in April and May. So this week’s list of links on creativity and writing I tweeted this week includes a blogging category, because I was tweeting those as well. So be it.

CREATIVITY

• “How to Be a Complete and Utter Creative Failure,”Dan Goodwin, A Big Creative Yes: It’s the same advice entrepreneurs give: Redefine what failure is, take ownership of falling short of your goals, and learn from it.
• “12 Simple Ways to Unleash More Creative Thinking,” Jeffrey Cufaude, Idea Architects: A common element of many of this is that we should break routine.
• “Brainstorming Addiction: How to Stop Dreaming and Start Doing,”Carla Young, MOMEO Magazine: #1: Shorten your timelines.
• “A Juggler’s Guide to Creating Time for Creativity,” Sue Mitchell, Your Muse is Calling: Are you a creative who does not wrestle with other obligations of life? Congratulations! Feel free to use that time to read every one of my previous blog posts. Enjoy!

Read more here…

Patrick Ross is a writer who has returned to an art-committed life. He brings readers insights he’s gathered on creativity and writing—including lessons from the creatives he video-interviewed on a six-week, cross-country trip across the United States. He is also an instructor with The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

Jill Kemerer is one the reasons I love the Internet: a friend discovered through a kind word on Twitter, which led me to her blog and a world of inspiration and thought-provoking discussion. Jill’s blog gives writers a place to debate current publishing issues, get to know other writers, and cheer each other on toward the finish line. In short, she’s created a welcoming community in which to share coffee and chocolate and writerly wisdom.

Read on to explore one of her posts from this week!

What the Publishing Debate Means to Me

Traditional publishing. Self-publishing. E-publishing, Print publishing. A lot of sides have been taken, and I cringe at the continuing warfare. Don’t get me wrong, I understand it, but I don’t like it.

Photo by mezone

I’ve been writing full time for years. Four years, to be exact. I’ve had the dream of someday becoming a published author for many years before that. Basically, publishing has been on my mind a long, long time. I remember my first brush with the business side of books. Way back in 1996, a thick paperback, How to Write a Romance and Get It Published by Kathryn Falk caught my eye at the local bookstore. Article after article about the writing craft, how to submit, and the writer’s life jammed the pages. I devoured it, and still have the poor, ripped, broken thing in my office.

Since then, computers and the Internet have changed aspiring writers’ lives. We no longer have to find a copy of Writer’s Market and search for agents or publishers who accept unsolicited manuscripts. We can e-mail a query, sample pages or a requested manuscript.

The competition seems to increase by the minute. More authors are trying to get published than ever before. It can feel impossible to land an agent or find a home with a traditional or e-publisher. So when self-publishing became a viable option, I understood why so many flocked to it and why they continue to publish their books themselves.

Read more here…