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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It's funny that Sue recently blogged about picking and choosing your pathway with writing. I ran into that very realization lately. It all started with a flash fiction contest I entered a couple of years ago. Part of the appeal of the contest was that you write the 500-word story in 48 hours, and submit what you have by the deadline. This resulted in little revising and rewriting on my part due to the time constraints. And I loved the little story I wrote and thought it was so charming. Over time, I've attempted to rewrite that story. Through that process, I've come across various flash fiction contests and wondered to myself if my story was worthy. I've even submitted it…
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By Kelly L. Stone Time to write is sparse, so you need to sit down and get going quickly. Even if you only have 15 or 20 minutes to get words on the page, springing into a creative state of mind is as simple as one-two-three when you establish a pre-writing routine. A routine, or doing the same tasks in the same order before you sit down and write, establishes a habit and engages the subconscious mind; you can train your brain to shift into an alpha mode just by creating a routine. It helps you make the transition from day-to-day life (work, kids, chores) to your creative project quickly and easily. The use of a pre-writing routine is a common tool among successful au…
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by Ann Kathryn Kelly One of the reasons I took up writing poetry in the pandemic is because I’m not a baker. The sour dough starter trend that swept a world on lockdown two years ago— a world desperate for distraction from a 24x7 virus news cycle driven by ever-changing theories, rising death tolls, and naked fear—was a trend I knew was not for me. Up to that point in my life, I’d demonstrated expertise only in frozen pizza preparation. Well, my scrambled eggs aren’t bad, either. The secret to a zesty scramble? Pepper jack cheese slices, that I tear into pieces and drop into the egg mixture as it cooks. Yum. But, baking bread? No thank you. So, while several frien…
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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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In my personal and even professional life, I tend to be a little conflict-averse. You won't exactly find me running into the open arms of conflict with my heart wide open. I don't seek it, look for it, and find ways to generate it. However, when it comes to my own writing, I look for it constantly. As I have shared recently, I recently found a new way to revise my stories and I found a hitch in the giddy-up of the story I'm working on as a result. You see, there's not enough conflict. The problem I haven't figured out what my character really wants quite yet. I've explored areas that could reveal what her wants might possibly be, but none so far have felt right. This has…
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http://ih.constantcontact.com/fs165/1101417136261/img/2027.jpgBy Kelly L. Stone Time to write is sparse, so you need to sit down and get going quickly. Even if you only have 15 or 20 minutes to get words on the page, springing into a creative state of mind is as simple as one-two-three when you establish a pre-writing routine. A routine, or doing the same tasks in the same order before you sit down and write, establishes a habit and engages the subconscious mind; you can train your brain to shift into an alpha mode just by creating a routine. It helps you make the transition from day-to-day life (work, kids, chores) to your creative project quickly and easily. The us…
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By Barbara Noe Kennedy I’m a travel journalist, so it seems incongruous that poetry might have anything to do with my writing. On the contrary, poetry has everything to do with my writing—after culling the best ideas, of course. And this goes for any type of writing, whether you’re penning a novel, a food-related story, even a business article. Think of the English language as a musical instrument. You are using that instrument to create great music. While the meaning of every word you use is imperative, you can be like a poet and complement that meaning by choosing words that provide accompanying sounds, whether to signal peace, discord, fear, love, disgust, or whatev…
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Without realizing it, I fell into a writing habit the past couple of months. It all started when I changed my weekend morning routine. Rather than turning on the coffee and skimming the news on my phone, I take out a notebook and write for a while. You see, this is remarkable to me because I've never been the type to embrace the idea of a writing habit. I've never thought it was for me. It reeked of the type of responsibility reserved for laundry, taxes, and Monday mornings. However, once I began to embrace this habit, I've started to write more. Not only that, my stories are better too. So, I wanted to share a bit of advice on how to find your writing habit. 1) A writin…
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I read recently that after several rounds of submitting and being rejected that if you can't bring yourself to re-read a short story of yours after all that then it's likely time to put it out to pasture. (I'm sure the same thing applies to novels). The idea is that if you can't even look at your story again, it might be a sign to let it go. After many many rounds of submissions, I decided to go back and re-read a couple of short stories of mine for a fresh look. I had gotten to the point where I couldn't convince myself that I just wasn't finding the right literary magazines. And I did, and I took a few approaches in my revision process that I wanted to share, in case y…
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Betsy Armstrong is a writer and Intuitive Eating coach who enjoys writing creative non-fiction essays, flash, and memoir which explore family, feelings, food, and our physical forms. Writer’s Digest and WOW! Women On Writing have recognized her essays, “The Alchemy of Apple Pie,” “Letter to My Body,” and “A Mother’s Whalesong,” in various contests; she has also been published in The Pinch Journal. She is currently at work on a memoir about losing her mother and adopting two children from Russia. Betsy lives in Chicago with her husband and two children, four pets, and a recipe collection that spans four generations. You can learn more at her website: www.betsyarmstrong.com…
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As a writer, it’s crucial to stay green… to keep growing… to keep your craft fresh. If you keep doing the same thing, you’re going to keep getting the same results. Of course, if you’re Stepehn King or Jodi Picolt or Chuck Palahniuk, that’s not a problem. They sit down at their desk, and brilliance flows from their fingertips. For the rest of us, however, we have to change things up now and then. I thought about this recently. In the summers, I teach a graduate class. It’s full of teachers who want to write. Too often, they find themselves bogged down by lesson planning and grading, along with teaching. Educators expect their students to write creative pieces. Te…
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I love coming across beautiful words from other languages, especially ones that have no English equivalent. Some are deeply meaningful, some are interesting for writers, and some describe the funny parts of life. Here are ten from my ongoing list: Petrichor: the wonderful smell in the air after it’s been rainingKomorebi: sunlight filtering through treesWaldeinsamkeit: The feeling of solitude and connectedness to nature when being alone in the woods.Tsundoku: the act of buying a book and leaving it unread, often piled with other unread booksKaizen: a method for transforming habits incrementally, one step at a time, in order to continuously improveMeraki: to do something wi…
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“Randy Hobler has written the best memoir of a Peace Corps experience that I have ever read. His amazingly detailed book instantly grips the reader by putting Libya in its properly rich and unique historical perspective. Everyone should read this book, to enjoy its humor as well as its insights."—Niels Marquardt Former Ambassador to Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Madagascar and the Union of the Comoros Peace Corps Volunteer—Zaire and Rwanda 101 Arabian Tales: How We All Persevered in Peace Corps Libya is substantially set apart from the over-1,000 published Peace Corps memoirs because they are individual memoirs and this is a unique collective memoir, garnered …
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By Melanie Faith Prefer pickles to relish? Love to nosh kugel? Find Frito pie a comfort food but loathe mac and cheese? Appreciate the aromas of veggie chili or a tart rhubarb pie wafting your kitchen with tantalizing odors? You're speaking our language! Let's take a look at three traits common to food writing across genres, from fiction to poetry to essays and more. 1. Include sensory imagery. Great food descriptions are specific. They don't just include smells, but also tease us with tastes and textures. Include an adjective or two--so it's not just a sandwich, but an ooey-gooey pb&j on homemade, whole wheat toast. Can't you just see the sandwich cut into di…
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A broken routine can yield...Every morning at 6 am you sit down and write. The kids aren’t up yet. Your spouse is in the shower. You have thirty minutes to put down words. You’ve been doing it for months. But today the words won’t flow. You have the same problem the next day and the next. Or you’re working on your latest assignment. You list what needs to go into the article. You rough the body, then the conclusion, and last you write the intro. This is how you’ve done it for years. But this time the piece is not taking shape. Your thoughts are scattered. ... something new and amazing.Fortunately there are three things you can do to solve just about any writin…
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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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This market loves me, it loves me not. Not too long after I started yoga, I met another newbie. We laughed when we realized we are both writers. But Kay was shocked when she learned I did work-for-hire. My educational writing is work-for-hire, meaning I get paid a set fee and the publisher owns the copyright. “You should self-publish like I do,” Kay said. Her work focuses on personality assessment and group dynamics. She speaks at businesses, churches and women’s groups. Her workshops sell out fast. When I told her that I write for the school library market, Kay laughed. “Just ignore me. Your market would never find you if you self-publish.” Finding the right ma…
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Know what you want Most writers reach a point when our work is as good as it is going to get. The only way it will get better is to turn it over to our critique partners or to hire an editor. That sounds pretty straightforward, but recently I’ve seen numerous twitter threads from freelance editors. These threads stood out because these are people I’ve worked with. One editor made a simple suggestion about changing the relationship between two characters in my story. I had to sit back and consider the changes that would echo throughout the whole story. They were amazing. Yet she and other editors sometimes get nasty-grams from clients. Nasty-gram is my own term for a…
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I was skimming one of the writing books from my shelf, Pen on Fire by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, and came across some timed writing ideas. It always feels good to have a few more writing prompts to choose from when you need one! Here are three interesting ideas from the book that you may want to try. 1. Poetry line “Take a poem from a book of poetry [or anywhere], and pick one line. Write that line down. Now, build a scene around it. Freewrite for fifteen minutes, using that line as a prompt.” (You could also use the line as a prompt for a journal entry, an essay or your own poem.) 2. Crisis “Do you have a list in your notebook headed ‘Crisis’? If not, make that…
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It doesn’t matter who the writers are that I’m talking to. It might be my critique group. It might be my accountability group. It might even be my students. If someone is having troubles getting their writing done, they will blame it on time. And that makes a certain amount of sense. There are only 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week. We can only get so much done. But long before most of us run out of time, we run out of energy. Think about the language that you use when you hit that low. You say you are run down, you don’t have any . . . energy. To find the energy you need to write, try these 4 things. Monotask Is that a word? I’m not sure but I like it. F…
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Earlier this week, as I read Melissa Stewart's post on the ending of her book Mega-Predators of the Past, I realized I haven't recently written about the many clever ways you can wrap up your nonfiction manuscript. Here are four of my favorites. Summary Plus The manuscript I am currently revising for Red Line ends with a summary, but I have to go beyond what my reader has encountered in the preceding pages. One way to do this is to make a prediction as I did in Evolution of Mammals: “Fossils are one of the oldest means of studying evolution. Using DNA analysis, computer models, stable isotope analysis, and more, scientists are creating a more accurate picture of how mam…
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Over the years, I’ve interviewed writing contest winners, including creative nonfiction essay writers. When asked to share a favorite writing tip or piece of advice, they came through with some inspirational ideas. Here’s what some of the WOW contest winners had had to say: “Another friend of mine, who is training as a coach (and who is also brilliant), nudged me out of my writing slump last winter by helping me remember my own rhythms (i.e., working first thing in the morning, even just doing a quick prompt) and pushing me to set up the routines that supported those rhythms. She gave the example of a ballet dancer she had heard on a podcast who said, essentially, I di…
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We are excited to be back with Hugh Fritz and the blog tour of Book #2 in the Mystic Rampage Series, Public Display of Aggression. Earlier in the tour, Crystal sat down with Hugh for an interview and today she offers her own 5 Star Book Review for this fantastic read! First, here is a little bit about Public Display of Aggression: Soleil and Flarence are immortal Genies who can bend the fundamental forces of the universe through willpower alone. For centuries, they have considered themselves the most formidable beings in the world, but some newcomers just might give them a run for their money. Magic has always been limited to living things. Throughout his life, Solei…
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A passion for writing doesn’t always go hand in hand with a desire to monetize your work. However, if you’d like to share your writing gift with the world and still make money, it’s imperative to learn about the best ways to promote your book. It’s important to identify your goals beforehand because successful book promotion requires deliberate planning and execution. Promoting your book may seem like a daunting task at first but it doesn’t have to be. It involves communicating with your target audience in ways that make them want to buy your book. In this article, we’re going to cover 7 book promotion ideas that will help you reach your target audience and sell more boo…
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Over the years, I’ve interviewed writing contest winners, including flash fiction writers. When asked what they enjoy about writing flash fiction, their love of the genre is clear—even if they also do other kinds of writing. What’s so great about writing flash? And how could it benefit your writing life? Here’s what some of the WOW contest winners had had to say: “Writing flash fiction is fun and energetic. Having a word count limit forces me to be parsimonious with my language, stripping it down to the essentials, and I enjoy the challenge of selecting the punchiest verbs and most evocative adjectives. Plus, the project is finite—it may take some time to edit, but once…
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