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 no secret I’m a fan of the book You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero. I’ve written about it on The Muffin and my own blog before, but today I want to talk about a particular idea that the author presents which I think pertains to most writers--even non-writers--but especially me. Here's the quote from the book (on the daily calendar page from a couple years ago. I like this quote so much I saved this and posted it on my bulletin board.): Break on through to the other side! Won't you come with me? When I read this section the first time in the book, it was an "a-ha" moment for me. I feel uncomfortable all the time--I don't know if it's more or less than any other human …
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Sometimes bigger is better. A bigger paycheck. A larger brownie (which results in a bigger butt, which is not a good thing). A bigger spot to parallel park into. And sometimes smaller is better. A smaller waist (for me, that train left the station decades ago). A gift in a tiny box from your SO at Christmas. A smaller credit card bill. Sometimes, as writers, we dream of running with the big dogs. Signing with a big publisher. Getting a big advance. Getting big, splashy promotion events set up. I thought about this after I read Cathy C. Hall’s post. It came at the perfect time, because recently my manuscript was accepted by a small publisher. Margo Dill began her press n…
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When I was a child, I loved watching my maternal and paternal grandmother cook whenever I visited for the weekend or for a family gathering. I'd stand beside them full of questions and learn that the blackened skillet they used to fry a batch of chicken or catfish in, or to make skillet cornbread, was what seasoned the food and gave it flavor. I'd watch as they added fresh herbs or spices to their recipes, and get lessons on snapping the ends off of string beans, and how to clean collard greens. I treasured being in their company as delicious aromas wafted through their kitchens. I especially loved when they lifted a pot lid off of a pot of stew or soup simmering on the s…
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As a writer, I’ve always had the tendency to hide behind my words. While I don’t mind being on camera every now and then, every time I’ve been asked to appear on a TV news segment (only a handful of times in my editing career) I get really anxious and nervous beforehand but usually do pretty well. Starting up a podcast wasn’t that much of a stretch for me, once I got set up with microphone, got my scripts in shape and figured out the proper balance of themes to cover, background music and sound effects. But again, I was hiding faceless behind a microphone and had/have control of the editing process. It my was my teenage daughter (and tech support) who suggested I create…
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a:Interview with Jean Li Spencer, First Place Winner of Fall 2020 Flash Fiction Contest
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Jean Li Spencer was raised in New York City and is receiving her BA in English and Education Studies at Wellesley College. She is currently interning at a literary agency and plans to move back to her hometown after finishing school this spring, where she will continue working in the publishing industry. She enjoys writing flash fiction and short stories, and was recently published on Bowery Gothic (Edition III: Summer 2020). A once aspiring middle school teacher, Jean Li is happiest when she is reading books with children. --interview by Marcia Peterson WOW: Congratulations on winning first place in our Fall 2020 Flash Fiction competition! What prompted you to enter th…
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Photo by Christopher TovoToday I am excited to have another instructor from Odyssey Writing Workshop: author Meagan Spooner. Meagan Spooner will be a guest lecturer at this summer’s Odyssey Writing Workshop, where she will discuss techniques for building characters and character arcs, participate in workshopping sessions, and meet in private conferences with students. She grew up reading and writing every spare moment of the day, while dreaming about life as an archaeologist, a marine biologist, an astronaut. She graduated from Odyssey in 2009 and currently lives and writes in Asheville, North Carolina, but takes every opportunity she can find to travel the world--th…
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by Deirdra Eden The modern world works on billable hours, clocks watched, and the mantra, “Produce, produce, produce.” Even among other creatives there is a massive emphasis on getting more done, not to mention the competition. The pressure can kill creativity, damper the joy in your work, and knock you off balance. You might find yourself somewhere between totally overwhelmed at the prospect of managing your time or you’ve tried and failed so often you are ready to give up. It’s because you are a creator! You see the world in terms of expression and potential. You dream the impossible. You have exactly what it takes to make life functional, balanced, and beautiful a…
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Some weeks, it just seems like people are telling you to stop. Don’t bother working on that particular manuscript. No, really. No one ever sells in that genre until they have a track record someplace else. Don’t finish that query letter. Agents and editors are super slow to respond right now. It’s the pandemic. No one is sure what is going to sell or what to bring to print. That agent may not even be accepting queries by the time you finish. Just. Stop. My advice to you? Don’t stop working on your manuscript. Don’t stop working on your query. Stop discouraging yourself. It is time to cross the finish line. Earlier this week, I was trying to get back into a fi…
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Today I am excited to talk with Caroline Michalicki, one of the runner-ups to the Fall 2020 Flash Fiction contest. Make sure you read her story Three Wishes then come on back and read our interview. Caroline's bio: Caroline gained confidence in her writing when her screenplay “The Journey” won honorable mention in the 2005 Maine International Screenwriters’ Competition. In 2008 her screenplay “Little Flames” was placed on the Hot List of Ten Best Scripts mentioned in Moviemakers Magazine. 2009-2018 seven of her ultra short (150 words or less) fictions were published in The Binnacle affiliated with The University of Maine in Machias. Five of those stories won honorable me…
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We are excited to be back with Hugh Fritz and announce the blog tour of Book #2 in the Mystic Rampage Series, Public Display of Aggression. Join us as we interview the author, highlight upcoming spots on the blog tour, and give away a copy of his book. 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, Soleil has never come…
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Back in December, I wrote the following in an Instagram post: Here’s something you need to know about creative people. We have notebooks all over the place filled with our ideas and scraps of projects. We drink a lot of caffeine. We have periodic bouts of insomnia because we can’t turn our brains off. We get discouraged when we can’t see immediate results from the creative process. We drive our loved ones crazy. But is who we are, and we can’t change that. Nor would we ever want to. There are times when my brain is flooded with ideas and I can’t keep track of them. And then there days when I feel I don’t have a creative bone in my body left. The problem is that I strugg…
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“When I changed the way I looked at things, the things around me started to change.” --Darrion Cockrell, 2021Missouri Teacher of the Year Recently I watched a video about Darrion Cockrell’s accomplishments. He was born to a drug addict. He was a Crip before he was 10. He was a foster kid. A kid like that usually goes down the tubes. Prison or the cemetery. Mr. Cockrell defied the odds. He’s now a St. Louis educator, and was named Teacher of the Year for my state this year. Am I proud of this young man? Mos def. Am I inspired by what he’s achieved? Yes. But it was what he said--the quote at the beginning--t…
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Natalie Beisner is a writer and oral storyteller. She is a previous WOW! Creative Nonfiction Essay Contest first-place winner and honorable mention respectively. Her work has appeared in antonym, VISIO, The Dead Magpie, ArtAscent, and Gulf Stream Literary Magazine and has been recognized by Kaleidoscope: A Reflection on Women’s Journeys. She is a StorySLAM winner at The Moth. Natalie holds a BFA in Acting from California State University Fullerton. You can find her on Instagram @nataliejeanbeisner and at her blog: http://thisisnotalie.com/. Make sure you read Natalie's story, "Out," and then come on back and read our interview. -- Interview by Nicole Pyles WOW: First of a…
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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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Today WOW! Women on Writing contributor Jeanine DeHoney rewards us with her review of Your Next Level Life by Karen Arrington. Part of an ongoing blog tour, this book is sure to inspire every woman, no matter what pathway she is on in her life. Visit more stops on this tour and follow along for other reviews by visiting our launch day post. About the Book, Your Next Level Life If you’re a Black woman in business and feeling stuck or trapped by other people’s expectations of what you can achieve, it’s time to stop playing small and start redefining what success means for you. It’s time to get that upgrade. Channel your black girl magic. Karen Arrington―author of Your Nex…
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As the summer started to roll in, my momentum to write began to fade. It's not uncommon for me to lose interest in writing new stories in the warmer months. Yet, it can feel a little defeating too, because I had such strong motivation and pull to write these past several months. Unfortunately, I've accepted that until the rainy season returns, I'm likely not going to be at the top of my writing game. If you tend to write by the seasons, I have a few tips for you to make the most of your changing writing motivation: Focus on a new stage in the writing process. Even though I've been inspired these last few months to write new stories, I haven't done any revising. So, even t…
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A little over three years ago, I started getting my butt kicked. Sometimes it happened weekly. Sometimes once a month. Sometimes there were months in between my butt kickings, but I could always count on it happening on a regular basis. Like most people, life is kicking my butt these days, especially this last year. Juggling work and family and the stress of wearing-masks-social-distancing-missing-out-on-things-and-isolation is a horrendous weight to bear. However, the butt-kicking I'm talking about is something I ask for. Yeah, you heard that right. I get my wide, flat, cellulite-riddled rumpus bruised regularly... and I appreciate it. Almost four years ago, J. L. Glenn …
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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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For the past year and then some, I’ve been writing an essay while not writing. Right now, while I write this, I relax into my knitting. Because I’m writing. This is what I do up here in the mountains while I wait for the words to fully come to me. Words forever brewing in my mind as I do anything and everything but write and as I mentally jot down the ones I want to explore the next time I carve out some space to put pen to page. I’m writing in my head, basically. Always. My thoughts as a continuous essay-in-progress. Thoughts as an un-ending symphony of potential essays. Because writing is all about rhythm. Whether you’re writing nonfiction, fiction, poetry, whatever—eve…
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Jennifer’s Bio: Jennifer L. Theoret has a wide range of interests—archaeology, paleontology, history, and more, and is involved in her local community. She is an occasional contributor to local newspapers and magazines, and would like to offer an apology to her professors at Johnson State College for taking so long to get back to writing seriously. (It’s been a long “five years”!) Jennifer lives in Vermont with her three dozen orchids and her rather menacing-looking cactus, Mr. Grimm. If you haven't done so already, check out Jennifer's award-winning story "The Care of Orchids" and then return here for a chat with the author. WOW: Congratulations on placing in the Q3 2…
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Nancy Fowler is a longtime journalist who’s worked in radio, digital, print and TV news. She’s earned numerous accolades including Emmy and Edward R. Murrow awards. It brings her joy to amplify the voices of those who typically go unheard in mainstream news coverage. You can see some of her journalism clips at NancyMFowler.com. She’s now beginning to write in a more personal voice. Her creative nonfiction aspirations include a hybrid memoir/literary journalism project about baby-boomer parents mourning a lack of grandchildren due to a national trend: millennials having fewer or no kids. Her Facebook group, Grieving No Grandchildren, is an accepting space for women to co…
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CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction: A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships will soon be a writer's handbook that all of us will want on our shelves. Lucky for me, I received a review copy from Karen S. Wiesner, the talented author of a few writing craft books. So let's talk about why you may want this book on your shelf! If you like writing craft books that make you feel like the author is in the room with you and teaching you how to make your stories and characters better, then this book is perfect. While reading it, I felt as if Karen was in my living room, giving me advice with her helpful and easy to…
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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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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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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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