Women on Writing - WOW and WOW!
Women On Writing is an online magazine and community for women writers. Among major topics are novel writing, indie publishing, author platform, blogging, screenwriting, and more. Lots of contests and general jocularity sans frittering on the part of Earth's most powerful humans.
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by Linda Petrucelli Now, I am not usually the kind of person who likes to have someone tell me what to do. But in the case of generating words on a page, I often need a nudge to defeat that amorphous feeling of having nothing to say. A terrific writing prompt, I believe, acts like a pressure cooker. It should create some heat. Make you sweat—just enough and not too much. Literary limits (word, subject, or craft restrictions) can supercharge a piece of writing. By holding you back a little, an impactful prompt revs your engine that much more. My innate resistance to not doing what people tell me to do, though, is simply no match for those kind of diabolical, subversive ev…
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Recently another writing friend put a wannabe novelist (WN) in touch with me. It's not that I'm an expert in writing, by any means. This individual was looking for writing feedback, and I'm part of a couple of critique groups. We met at a local coffeehouse. WN wanted to meet me before sharing her writing. I get it. The writers in my feedback groups are supportive and encouraging. However, I've visited a couple of groups which had a few problematic members. Writing something and sharing it--especially something like a novel--is scary. You don't want to just hand over your baby to a complete stranger. Also, what if the person you're handing over your manuscript to is a …
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I’ve been reading quite a few headlines lately about celebrity parents and their lack of hygiene when it comes to their kids (and themselves). And of course, it’s none of my business if these folks want to walk around till they (and their young’uns) smell to high heaven. But every time I see these articles, I think of the same expression. Technically, I see this image in my head, of a baby being thrown out with the bathwater. Because if you go around for who knows how long, skipping baths, you’re going to have some pretty dirty bathwater. At least, that’s where the expression came from, back in the day, when people bathed on the not-so-regular. Honestly, I cringe thinki…
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Today I'm excited to interview Karen Ingram, one of the runner-ups for the Spring 2021 Flash Fiction writing contest. Be sure to read her story IED first, and then come on back to read our interview. First, more about Karen: Karen Sarita Ingram is half Kentuckian, half German, and proudly 100% Army Brat. Her first published story, “The Suicide Artist,” was featured in Touchstone Literary Magazine’s Spring 2012 issue and won the Best Undergraduate Writing Award at Kansas State University’s English Department the same year. When she’s not demanding to speak to your manager, Karen enjoys science fiction and video games. Against her better judgment, she currently resides in T…
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Welcome to Michelle Walshe who is one of our creative nonfiction essay winners for her essay, "The Shape of Loneliness," which you can check out here. Michelle lives in Dublin, Ireland. She began writing in 2017. Her work has been published in newspapers, magazines and two anthologies: Teachers Who Write and A Page from My Life, which was number one on Irish bestseller lists in 2020. Her work is online at Writing.ie, Skelligmichael.com, Athensinsider.com, IrishExaminer.com, CabinetofHeed.com, and IrishTimes.com. Her short stories, memoir, and flash fiction have been shortlisted and won prizes in literary competitions. She has won residencies to the Tyrone Guthrie Centre …
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TBR: Book love is highly personal. Rejection letters are not personal. I know you’ve heard that before. We tell each other that because rejection letters sometimes feel personal. After all, we’ve poured time and soul into the manuscript. Telling us you don’t want it, or worse yet that you hated it, feels deeply personal. I’m not going to stick up for editors or agents who say that they hated something. Or that you should stop writing or whatever. I think we just have to assume they didn’t have a West Texas grandma with a broom. They’d have learned not to be hateful. Recently, I learned just how rejection letters are personal. The book club I’m in just read a myste…
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My daughter has discovered Percy Jackson. This is after she discovered Harry Potter in early 2020, and then Hunger Games once we made our way through all seven books of Harry, and we were still in the middle of a pandemic. And for each one, she was in love with the books--couldn't get enough of them or the characters or the authors. She's in fifth grade this year, and when she discovers something, it consumes her. She's now planning her Percy Jackson Halloween costume and using her allowance to buy a PJ Camp Halfblood shirt. She made a PJ necklace, and she's constantly asking her grandparents and me trivia questions about the plot of Percy Jackson book one, even though w…
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Myna Chang writes flash and micro. Her work has been selected for Best Small Fictions, Fractured Lit, X-R-A-Y Lit Mag, and The Citron Review, among others. She has been nominated for Best Microfiction, longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50, and named a finalist for the New Millennium Writing Award. She is the winner of the 2020 Lascaux Prize in Creative Nonfiction. Myna lives in Potomac, Maryland with her family. Read more at MynaChang.com or @MynaChang. interview by Marcia Peterson WOW: Congratulations on winning first place in our Spring 2021 Flash Fiction competition! Can you tell us what encouraged the idea behind your story, “An Alternate Theory Regarding Natural Disa…
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So - here goes - let's talk about friendships, shall we? This isn't me telling you what to do or not to do - it's just a conversation and hopefully it will offer each of us a little something. Grab your favorite beverage (I'll fill my coffee mug) and we can chat a bit. If you're wondering, today's photo headline is me and my best friend on our wedding day - I still say marrying your best friend is a most fabulous idea! Take a moment to remember a friend who meant a lot to you - someone who is no longer part of your circle. They walked away, you walked away, etc... Take a moment to remember a book character you felt close to; someone you were sad to part with at the end o…
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Originally from Colorado, Krista Beucler received a Bachelor of Arts in creative writing at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia. She was the Editor-in-Chief for Issue 7.2 of the Rappahannock Review, the literary journal published by the University of Mary Washington. Krista is a winner of the Julia Peterkin award for flash fiction, and her creative work has been published in From Whispers To Roars, and South 85 Journal, and Under the Sun. She can be found online on her website and on Instagram. interview by Marcia Peterson WOW: Congratulations on your top ten win in our Q3 2021 Creative Nonfiction essay competition! What prompted you to enter the contest? Kr…
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I like to keep a list of national “days” handy because it can be helpful when planning content for magazines, podcast episodes, and blog posts. For September, I noticed we have “National Courtesy Month” to celebrate. Here’s what the website has to say about the holiday: There are so many ways to show kindness to people through courtesy. Hold the door open for the people behind you! Mow your elderly neighbor’s lawn! Compliment that shy person you see every day on the subway! Above all, SMILE at everyone you meet! Because this is a blog for writers, I thought I’d talk to about the importance of being courteous to one another. If you’re anything like me, you have highs a…
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Nothing like a worldwide pandemic to make even reading feel impossible. I don't know about you, but somehow over the last couple of years, I lost my love of reading. Like a former relationship, I knew the love had been there once upon a time, but somehow I wasn't feeling that same passion anymore. Luckily, I wasn't alone. I came across countless articles written by my fellow bookworms, bemoaning their loss of reading. (Here's one.) Instead of fighting it, I accepted it. It wasn't like I didn't try to find the right book for me, but I didn't beat myself over it. Jump ahead to 2021. Oh look, the pandemic is still here. Then came a heatwave. Several days of humid 90s, and i…
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I've gotten hard nos--lots of them. Over two hundred (no exagggeration or stretching of the truth) of 'em. When I was trying to get an agent or publisher interested in my book, I submitted it over 140 times. Some replied with "no thanks." Mostly, I got no response at all. No response--in the publication world--means no. Sometimes the agent or press has a long response time, but after a couple of years, I got the message from the majority of the people I queried. They were not interested clueless about how totally brilliant and soon-to-be award-winning my manuscript was. (I mean this jokingly--at least semi-jokingly.) Once, I received a rejection email less than twent…
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Last Saturday, my cell phone rang at 8:10 AM. When I picked it up it read “Nancy Next Door.” Uh-oh. Nancy Next Door only calls when there’s something wrong. A coyote jumping into my yard. A fallen tree on our shared fence. A broken gate…that sort of thing. Naturally, I thought a tree had fallen since A. there are lots of trees in the woods and in my yard that are leaning in a bad way and B. after over a year, I’d finally fixed the fence from the last fallen tree. “Are you home?” asked my neighbor. I was not. I was five hours away, at the beach. “There’s an alarm going off in your house,” she said. “I don’t see smoke but it’s been going off for about 15 minutes.” No …
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Congratulations to Jeanie Ransom and How to Write a Perfect Sentence and all the winners of our 2021 Quarter 3 Creative Non-Fiction Essay Contest! Jeanie's Bio: Jeanie Ransom sold her first story to Seventeen magazine when she was seventeen. She’s written for numerous national and regional magazines and newspapers since, was an associate editor at a bed-and-breakfast magazine, worked as an advertising copywriter, and is the author of nine traditionally-published children’s books. In addition, Jeanie has been an elementary school counselor, a licensed professional counselor, and a Starbucks barista and Coffee Master. She’s participated in workshops at the Iowa Summer…
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As I look up various agents online, I get this strange feeling that I’m playing duck-duck-goose. Here’s an agent that might be suitable – duck. Here’s another one that could work - duck. This one looks like a great match – goose! In kindergarten the goose always gave chase. With agents it is much less certain, but you can improve your odds by putting your best foot forward with your query. Here are three things to remember when crafting your query letter. Out of All the Others, I Chose You Writers approach agents every single day. Some will have done no research beyond finding an e-mail address. These are the people who query an agent who only represents children’s …
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So - here goes - let's talk about friendships, shall we? This isn't me telling you what to do or not to do - it's just a conversation and hopefully it will offer each of us a little something. Grab your favorite beverage (I'll fill my coffee mug) and we can chat a bit. Stop back in a few weeks for part three publishing on the 6th of September!. If you're wondering, today's photo headline is me and my best friend celebrating our engagement over a decade ago - he still makes me smile like this! Let's start with a quote by English writer Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) Isn't that an interesting concept (and clearly not a new one)? I think about this as I start a new book. I'…
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School is back in person for my daughter who is in 5th grade, and we live about a mile from the school. However, you have to cross a very busy street, and it does take about 25 minutes for a kid to walk a mile (this is a distracted kid who will want to stop and smell the roses). Right now, there are not enough bus drivers for kids who live even much farther than we do, and so this makes us car riders instead of bus riders. Many, many more families are car riders this year because of the bus driver shortage. As you can imagine, on the first day of school, this was a logistical nightmare, and I waited in line for about 30 minutes to drop my daughter off. Then, I prepared my…
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Time for some real talk. I’m almost 45 years old and have been working as a freelance writer and editor for a long time. Because the flow of my various projects, gigs and responsibilities has always fallen into that “feast or famine” category, it has taken me almost all those 20 years to come to a realization—I really suck at organization and project management. I’m not complaining, but I’m at a point in my career where I have plenty of writing and editing work, but my organizational skills are abysmal, and people are starting to get irritated that e-mails to me are going unread and I’m tired of apologizing for being overwhelmed. This is not a good trait for a freelance …
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Over the last few months, I lost my writing motivation. I blame the summer along with some difficult job changes. The truth is I just couldn't get back into writing, and when these things happen, sometimes it's hard for me to get back on track. To get into a better place, I have a usual starting point - reading back over previous work. I have a stack of notebooks I'll grab and read through a bunch of old stories that I've handwritten. They aren't perfect by any means - far from it actually - but it gets me back in touch with my writing self. Sometimes getting back into my writing routine usually means I go in two different directions - I write new stories or I go back t…
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Annie Eacy studied writing in Burlington, Vermont. She has since been selling books (new, used, and otherwise) for five years, while working on her own. She traded one city on a lake for another, and now lives in Ithaca, New York with her partner in a tiny apartment that sits among the treetops. She writes poetry, fiction, and essays. Read Annie's essay here and then return for an interview with the author. ----------Interview by Renee Roberson WOW: Welcome, Annie, and congratulations! When did you first know you wanted to be a writer? Annie: I don't know! I was the kid that was always writing -- even before I knew how. I still have notebooks filled from front cover …
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Dream big. Dream a big dream and it might will come true. This idea of seemingly impossible dreams coming true has been swirling in my head for the past week or so. Three things formed a huge confluence in my brain and--more importantly--in my heart. One: I spoke to a friend who told me about the major league game that was played on the Field of Dreams field. I know. Technically, they had to create a new field that met the MLB's specifications, but it was on the same plot of land and since my friend taped it, I got to see the beginning. Seeing the players emerge from the cornfields, I got chills. If you build it, he will come. That was the mantra of the movie. If th…
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I’m writing this post as a reminder to myself as much as to you. Because yesterday I got a rejection email. The day before, I got three. One day last month I got six in one day. This year? I stopped counting after I reached 100. And each was as hard as the last. Isaac Asimov called rejection letters “lacerations of the soul.” Me? I don’t feel lacerated as much as hit in the gut. Rejection makes me feel terrible, & terrible about myself. Jealousy, loneliness, self-doubt: to my lizard brain, a simple rejection is a threat to my human need to belong. But rejection is also a constant, immovable companion: Alexander Chee calls it “the other medium of writing.” I have p…
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Whenever I ask the Oldest Junior Hall how work is going, he always says, “I’m a Busy Bee!” So I’m deep into my pre-writing (all that stuff I shared last time!) and buzzing around myself. But I want to circle back, as the news people love to say, to a part of my pre-writing. Namely, the reading part. Which isn’t writing at all but just as important in the pre-writing process. If you’ve ever used mentor texts, it’s mostly that concept. It’s hugely beneficial for me to read up in what I’m planning to write. Take, for example, a new market that I’ve come across and have an idea I figure will fit. First, I’ll read a bit of the market to get a feel for the style they like. B…
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I feel a bit shocked that it's August already - nearing the end of third quarter for our business and time to go school shopping for most of our littles. We are just wrapping up third crop hay on our farm and getting ready for corn harvest. This is one of my favorite months of the year in my little corner of the cornfield. The corn is taller than I am, and I can't see the road from my patio. We have a long driveway, but this time of year, I have a cornfield as a privacy fence. It's all very fancy if you ask me - my allergies however are a different story. We all have well established farmer tans and freckles and we've cut most of the sleeves off our t-shirts. As much as w…
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WTF is Wrong With Stephen King?
An Algonkian Success Story
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Angelo Esposito - LIVING IN SAINT'S HOOD - Crime Drama
Comparables: World Gone By meets Who They Was in this 90,000 plot-driven and character-rich debut novel set in modern day New York. Hook: A gun-runner for an urban gang sets out to uncover the mystery of his best friend’s death and triggers a chain of events that jeopardizes everyone in his orbit, including him. Short Pitch: Marlon Brown is a gun-runner for the Bloods, whose best friend has been gunned down outside of the gang's established territory. Though the whisper stream comes alive with speculation about who did the deed and why, conjecture isn't enough for Marlon. He ha -
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How To Stop Time: Don't Lose the Story in the Concept
If your book is all concept, it's all boring! First of all, I will admit to having enjoyed this book when said and done. Even though I'm about to use it as an example of what not to do, it was still a heartwarming read about love and loss and how trust can conquer fear if we let it. But... This novel is a classic case of the concept getting way, way ahead of the plot. So first, the concept: How to Stop Time revolves around a man named Tom Hazard who ages slower than normal people. He's not immortal exactly, but his body takes so long to grow old that he might as well be. B -
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New York Pitch Conference - September 2021
The act of the story statement Shadow Baelfiyer is a thief living on Chicago’s South Side. She is plagued by dreams of a world that has magic and dragons and a family she knows to be dead. Her aunt tells her these are just dreams. However, on a daily thieving hunt Shadow runs into two strangers who make her rethink all she has known. They are from a world called Elspeth where magic roams, people transform into lions; a world where she was born, and was taken away from, where she too has magic. These strangers take Shadow on a journey to find her past, but a great threat is uncovered -
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Books by Sylvia Day, Sophie Jordan, & More
The Queen’s Bargain The Queen’s Bargain by Anne Bishop is $1.99! This book was mentioned in a previous Hide Your Wallet and is part of the Black Jewels series. I didn’t keep up with the series as a whole, so I’m unsure how this fits in. I think it focuses on secondary characters now, but correct me I’m wrong? POWER HAS A PRICE. SO DOES LOVE. Return to the dark, sensual, and powerful world of the Black Jewels in this long-awaited new story in the New York Times bestselling fantasy saga Af -
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Active Protagonists are a Tool of the Patriarchy
I feel like I’m committing a grievous writerly sin by even typing these words, but I must speak my truth: I would like to see more passive protagonists in fiction. While the title of this post is tongue-in-cheek, I do think that passive protagonists are unfairly maligned in part because of the unspoken association between passivity and femininity. I’ll get into why I think so a little later, but let’s discuss what “passive protagonist” means first. The importance of intent Passive protagonists are the antithesis of what we’re told makes a good story. A good story, says common wisdom, is dr -
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Book Beat: Crafting, Middle Grade Graphic Novels, & More
http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/WP/wp-content/themes/smartbitches/images/posts/hide-your-wallet.jpg Welcome to Book Beat! Book Beat aims to highlight other books that we may hear about through friends, social media, or other sources. We could see a gorgeous ad! Or find a new-to-us author on a list of underrated romances! Think of Book Beat as Teen Beat or Tiger Beat, but for books. And no staples to open to get the fold-out poster. Artie and the Wolf Moon Author: Olivia Stephens Release -
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New York Pitch Conference - September 2021
Story Statement Jeremy Peoples must do whatever it takes to find forgiveness and make peace with the past. The Antagonist Plots the Point Stacy Ramone is a former marine, married, with one son, a flawed family man with a heightened sense of loyalty and a rapidly declining mental state. His ultimate plan was to use the money he and his wife were making by selling narcotics and stolen pharmaceuticals to buy a local bar until he is betrayed by Jeremy. Several years later, Stacy remains unseen, a dormant facet of Jeremy’s complicated and violent past, until a series of even -
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The Review’s Review: These Were the Angels
Illustration: Liby Hays. Courtesy of Hays. Liby Hays’s Geniacs!, a graphic novel out this summer from the art book publisher Landfill Editions, takes place at a hackathon—truly inspired material for slapstick comedy, body horror, and philosophical reflection alike. This tech competition’s goal? Invent a new life-form. “People always think my ideas are dumb … but they’re purposefully so! Their failure is coded within them! It’s like when scientists artificially reanimate the cells of a dead pig’s brain. The brain becomes trapped in an infinite loop reliving the terror of its final moments. But -
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New York Pitch Conference - September 2021
1. Story statement. Reconcile with past and find self. 2. Antagonist. Tess begins the story at a low point; anxious, consumed by memories of the past. She presents as nervous, little confidence in herself. She places too much emphasis on what people think. Dominated by internal thoughts that belittle and degrade herself. Natural people pleaser who doesn’t speak up for wants and needs, would rather keep the peace. As the story commences, we see Tess having to start making decisions albeit it small; from paying by cash or card, to directions. Midway, we start to recognize her poor decisio -
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New York Pitch and Algonkian Pre-event Assignments - 2021
Greetings -- Attached is a first draft of Assignments 1-7 for the upcoming workshop in St. Augustine. All comments most welcome. Looking forward to meeting fellow writers and learning a lot soon. Cheers, Elizabeth EA_Nichols_PreWorkshopAssignment.docx -
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Eight Books Based on Real Female Spies
“Few suspected women of spying, and certainly no one expected a middle-aged knitter to be surreptitiously gathering intelligence.” -Elizabeth Bentley, A Most Clever Girl While researching topics for my next novel, I stumbled across Elizabeth Bentley’s name and was gobsmacked that I’d never heard of this American spy who once ran the largest Soviet spy ring in America. Because Bentley was a female NKVD-spy-turned-FBI-informer—a combination America wasn’t quite sure what to do with—she was overshadowed both in life and after her death by Joseph McCarthy and Whittaker Chambers. In fact, Whitt -
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How a Woman Becomes a Piece of Furniture
Gustave Caillebotte, Woman at a Dressing Table, 1873. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons My grandmother collected perfume bottles, a seeming whimsy for a woman of such plainness and ferocity. I have three of them, given to me when she was still alive. They lived in a drawer and then later, in a decorative moment, on the bookshelf, where I have since placed them higher and higher out of reach, as my daughter has attempted to climb up to play with them, a slow-moving game between us, until now they are so high up as to be out of view. I tend not to be sentimental about objects, but I at least -
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New York Pitch Conference - September 2021
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SPFBO 7 – The Sixth Quarter Final
On Wednesday, we announced our sixth trio of eliminations and revealed that this week’s two quarter-finalists from the “different” batch are SHADOWS OF IVORY by T.L. Greylock/Bryce O’Connor and WINDS OF STRIFE by U.G .Gutman. These two battle it out in our final quarterfinal of SPFBO 7 In treading a different path in fantasy fiction, our two quarter-finalists stretched our expectations of fantasy protagonists. One gave us a cruel man who finds and murders witches but considers that a mercy, even as his actions eat away at him. The other gave us a young woman gifted by position and wealth -
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Why do women love true crime podcasts so much?
The question we have been asked more than any other in our career as pro podders is ‘why are women so obsessed with true crime?’. And the numbers do stack up, we at RedHanded have been in the criminal fixation game for nearly five years, and we still boast an audience heavily swayed in the female direction. Eighty-two percent swayed, to be exact. So, the question is worth asking, but the truth is, true crime and the commercial consumption of it is nothing new. As far back as 1888, Victorian media moguls cottoned on sharpish to how much faster they could sell their papers if they recounted the -
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THE LAST DAYS OF HONG KONG by G. D. Penman (BOOK REVIEW)
I’VE JUST WORKED OUT THE TITLE. That’s so damn clever… The title obviously, not me. Damn I hope you gave yourself a proper pat on the back Gray. Anyway We’re off to a good start, aren’t we. You’ll have to excuse me, please, as I’m suffering from serious book hangover. The kind where… you’ve finished the book, so you stare off into space thinking about it, then your hands reach for it in an attempt to return to reading it. But there’s nothing left to read… The Last Days of Hong Kong is the third and final instalment of G. D. Penman’s Witch of Empire series (The Year of the Knife and The Wou
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