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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Sometimes, we can all feel a little stuck. Being stuck can look like writer's block. It can look like a lot of unfinished projects. It can also look like never putting our butts in the chair. What do we do when we’re stuck? I’m not going to define exactly what I mean by stuck. We all have different versions of what this means. But if you're reading this right now and nodding along with me, then think of the way that you are currently stuck. And let’s try to do something about that. Lately I’ve been feeling very stuck in a few areas of my life. I decided life is too short to live this way. It’s too short to not make progress on a book. It’s too short to do a job that I d…
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Recently I went to a working retreat. The working part: we were planning professional development sessions for DESE (Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education). The retreat part: it was in a funky, charming hotel situated in a small town… close to walking trails and down the street from wonderful bars and restaurants. It’s a place this group has been to before, and luckily, I got the same kind of room I stayed in before--a room with a glass bathroom. Yes, you read that right. In the corner of my room was a bathroom with glass walls. No shower curtain. The toilet, the shower, the sink--surrounded by two walls of glass. Since I was the only one sleeping in the room, I wa…
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We are back again, announcing the launch of a blog tour event with author Karen Arrington, featuring her book Your Next Level Life: 7 Rules of Power, Confidence, and Opportunity for Black Women in America. You'll have the chance to find more about this book—which won an NAACP Image Award in 2020—and more about the author, Karen Arrington, herself. Join us as we celebrate this book and this inspiring author. First, here's more about the book: 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…
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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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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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My July 4th did not have an auspicious beginning. I started watching the Braves game; what’s the 4th without baseball, right? Except suddenly, the Braves were down 7 to 3. Ugh. I turned off the TV and decided to take a walk on my favorite trail. I hadn’t even gone a half-mile before I saw a sign reading, “Trail Closed Ahead.” What? Back home, I checked the game score on my phone. WHAT? The Braves came back and won 8 to 7? UGH. The only thing worse than your home team losing is when your home team makes a miraculous comeback and you MISS it. So fine, I’d call an out-of-town friend and maybe walk on my back deck; he’s always around. EXCEPT HE DIDN’T PICK UP. If you’re walk…
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So, being a writer, I do this thing where whenever I think of an interesting sentence or a line just enters into my head because I’m a writer and odd lines are always coming into my head because, being a writer, I look at the world oddly, I write down these little lines and bits and quirky sentences and whatnots that come to me and later on I’ll use them as prompts. Life gets busy and does its busy life thing, but I make sure that every day I sit down and write something new for at least 10 minutes. If I don’t know what to write about, which usually is the case because I never know what to write about until I start writing, I pull out my list of odd lines, close my eyes, …
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Today I am excited to talk with Madeleine Pelletier, one of the runner-ups to the Winter 2021 Flash Fiction contest. Make sure you read her story Deviled Eggs then come on back and read our interview. Madeline's bio: Madeleine Pelletier is a writer of short, sometimes very short, fiction. After graduating from the University of Saskatchewan with a degree in archaeology, she spent twenty years traveling the world, contemplating history, and collecting stories. She now lives in a farmhouse near Montreal, with six goats, three cats, and one grumpy old man. She enjoys gardening, watching birds, and making things up. Her work has been published in several anthologies, includin…
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I spent probably two years listening to various podcasts and dreaming of what my own podcast would look like. When the pandemic forced us all to slow down and stay at home, I put a developed a plan to create a true crime podcast, using my creative and marketing skills plus all the great information I had picked up from consuming the medium. That podcast now receives at least 500 downloads per episode within a week of going live and the numbers only continue to grow. In today’s world, creatives don’t need permission to put our work out into the world—we only need the savvy to market it and spread the word. Because of this, I think I’ve finally come to the realization that…
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Congratulations to Evelyn (Evie) Preston and Death by Compost Bin and all the winners of our 2021 Quarter 2 Creative Non-Fiction Essay Contest! Evie's Bio: I always wrote...in high school, college, the PTA. Spanning several careers, my writing life professionally launched in 1973 when Redbook magazine featured my Young Mother’s Story, “Mom Are We Jewish or Christmas?” in their holiday issue. Published! Invited to speak! I wrote on. The ‘80s brought some local fame writing a humor column in the Palo Alto (CA) Weekly and wound through the foibles and follies of marriage, kids, teaching and dabbling in the food business. Echoing Nora Ephron’s mom that “Everything is …
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Lilith A. Heart is a horror prose author who favors the gothic horror and psychological horror sub-genres. She graduated from Aquinas College in 2016 with a B.A. in English and a double minor in Creative Writing and Japanese. Lilith was featured in two publications by Caffeinated Press, a former local publisher: Brewed Awakenings 1 (2015, The Garden and the Grave) and Brewed Awakenings 2 (2016, Suppression). At the end of 2020, she made the bittersweet decision to leave her job with a local cat furniture manufacturer to pursue her passion more enthusiastically and to build her writing collection. She currently lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan with her husband of 11 year…
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by Theresa Boedeker "How much do you love to write?" our writing teacher asked, starting the four-hour night class. All those years ago, I thought it was a funny question. Afterall, we had signed up for a two-year commitment and were paying to get a graduate degree to learn the craft of story. To shape words and mental images crafted from 26 letters that would resonate and worm their way into the hearts of our readers. "Writing is hard. It involves working alone. Rejection. And if you want to make money, you should write ads, or choose a different field." She looked at each of us. All 17 scattered though out the room. None of us commenting. "Would you write if…
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"Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense." - Mark Twain Every now and then when I reflect on my life, I shake my head and think that it has often been stranger than fiction. I like to joke with my close friends that it indeed has been like a Lifetime movie. Most people who don't know my many stories and the deep lows in my life, those who see the smile I try to keep mapped on my face, think I live or have lived a charmed life. Although I have had so much joy, abundant blessings, and too many good times to count, there have also been tumultuous times too, times when I fell to…
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Marketing a picture book is not an easy task. There are some obstacles, like with a lot of children's books, because members of your target audience are not the ones buying the book. So you're appealing to grandparents, parents, teachers, and librarians, for example, instead of to your actual readers, like a romance author might do. Plus, picture books are more expensive to create, so even though most will be under 1000 words, your price might be higher than many novels. But! the good news is that people love picture books. They love to give books as a gift, and they love to share them with the kiddos in their lives. So what are some marketing strategies you can use to s…
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Holly Rae Garcia is an author and photographer. Growing up, she remembers reading her mother’s extensive Stephen King and True Crime collection. A love for dark fiction with sad endings has stayed with her ever since. Her own books include Come Join the Murder, and The Easton Falls Massacre: Bigfoot’s Revenge. Her shorter fiction has been published online and in print for various magazines and anthologies. Holly lives on the Texas Coast with her family and five large dogs. More information can be found on her website and Twitter. ----------interview with Sue Bradford Edwards ---------- WOW: Tell us about the inspiration for “Even the Jellyfish.” Holly: I wrote the story …
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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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Pattie Palmer-Baker is a Portland OR artist and poet. Over the years of exhibiting her artwork—a combination of paste paper collages with her poetry in calligraphic form—she discovered that people, despite what they may believe, do like poetry; in fact, many liked the poems better than the visual art. She now concentrates on writing, both poetry and personal essays. Nominated for the Pushcart Poetry Prize, and published in many journals including, Poeming Pigeons Anthology; Voicecatcher; The Best of Voicecatcher; Ghazal Page; Voices, The Art and Science of Psychotherapy; Calyx; and Phantom Drift. First prize 2016 Timberline Review. First prize 2018 for the Del Sol Press m…
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First things first - I am super excited to be able to give you a look into Greenwood Gone: Henry's Story. This book is by one of our own bloggers, Sioux Roslawski. Her publisher is Editor-911 Books with our very own Margo L. Dill. And, this is an amazing book. It tells a story that should be in our schools but isn't. For those of you who don't know about the book, here is part of the review I posted on GoodReads and Amazon: “Some people might hesitate to hand a book on the Tulsa Race Massacre to a young reader. But Sioux Roslawski’s book is perfect for middle grade readers because it is told through the fictional character of 12 year-old Henry Simmons. “Henry wants no…
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She's Not Herself: A psychotherapist's journey into and beyond her mother's mental illness by Linda Appleman Shapiro is now available in audio form! This memoir/audiobook shows how one family member’s chronic illness—depression or otherwise—affects the entire family. Shapiro, a first generation American, shares in detail the reverberations of war, separation, immigration, and family secrets which are as relevant (if not more so) today as when Shapiro was growing up in the 1940s-50s. Hearing her narrate her own life’s journey brings the listener into her home and heart, showing how trauma is experienced and then how it can be processed, moving through and beyond it withou…
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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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So you’ve got a book! You can’t believe your eyes but there it is in your sweaty hands! And whether you’ve gone the indie route, a trade publisher, or somewhere in between, you’re already dreaming about book reviews. More to the point, you’re wondering how to get ‘em. So I thought I’d share an insider look at the non-professional book reviewer: your friends, family, and more importantly, your writer friends. Maybe if you know why I do book reviews, you can use that info to get your book reviews! Because You Asked By far, I write book reviews because the author has asked me. But to be clear, I’m referring to a personal ask, though not necessarily from close, personal f…
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Annabelle’s Bio: Annabelle Guihan Larsen is a recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, and a Whiting Foundation Writers Aid Award. Her short stories include, “San Man” nominated for a Pushcart Prize, 2nd place winner in New Rivers Press, American Fiction Vol 15, The Best Unpublished Stories by New and Emerging Writers. And “Urban Guerrillas” finalist for the Third Coast Magazine Jaimy Gordon Prize in Fiction Judged by: Antonya Nelson. She has an MFA in writing from Columbia University School of the Arts and is currently at work on a novel. Visit her website at https://guihanlarsenwriter.weebly.com If you haven't done so already, check out Annabelle's award-win…
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Today, I am excited to announce the launch of a special reader review event with author Karen Arrington. Today, our readers are sharing their insights into her book Your Next Level Life: 7 Rules of Power, Confidence, and Opportunity for Black Women in America. You'll have the chance to find more about this book―which won an NAACP Image Award in 2020―and more about the author, Karen Arrington, herself. Join us as we celebrate this book and this inspiring author. First, here's more about the book: 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 …
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Barbara’s Bio: Predominately a visual artist, Barbara Olsen has been creating art for several years, exhibiting her work in numerous shows and publications. Unapologetically a lifelong list maker, journal nerd, and travel diarist, she also has an innate interest in the written word. In the last couple of years, she’s dipped her toes into the world of writing poetry and prose through enrollment in local classes. Within these circles of talented, passionate writers, she’s found a supportive community. Her vision is to ascribe, through imagery and words, personal, but at the same time universal, stories borne from observation and transformation. When not writing or painting…
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No, this is not about Sioux's past life as a cheerleader. I can semi-coordinate my legs (sometimes) and can control my arm movements (most of the time) but I can't do both at the same time. No, this about our family and friends who are cheerleaders--the folks who are cheering us on as writers. I read Jeanine DeHoney's moving post, and thought about the sweet way her family encouraged her witing... and I thought I would throw my two cents one and half cents into the conversation. My cheerleaders are a mixed bag. My cheerleaders are 99% over the top... and then, there's my husband. My hubby means well, bless his heart. He doesn't love to read, so that is responsible …
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