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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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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A conversation with a historian in my area netted an article about an unsolved murder. As a magazine editor, I’m responsible for planning the content each month that fits in well with our departments and themes. While I accept pitches from writers and columnists, the job of scouting out timely story ideas mostly falls on me. So where do I find these ideas that we turn into content for our magazine? I use press releases if they feature a local person, place, or angle, but I also find a lot of ideas on social media. I’ve pulled numerous ideas for our food and dining section from a Facebook group called Lake Norman Eats, and this past month, we profiled the Facebook grou…
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By Loretta Martin “Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise.” ~ Julia Cameron I think of cozy mysteries, a subgenre of crime writing, as felonies for fun. A mini cozy, then, is like flash fiction—short yet completely satisfying. Years ago, I edited drafts for a romance author whose work appeared in Woman’s World (WW), a weekly national magazine (readership: 5.5 million). I bought issues to see the final version of her stories. Later, I bought them for the solve-it-yourself cozy mini mysteries. As a diversion from my own writing, I began submitting stories to WW. In February 2019, they accepted “Deadly Misstep,” followed a month later by “Mother’s Da…
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Picture Betsy Armstrong’s career path as a winding road that began in corporate sales, led to sports marketing and non-profit executive work with a detour into motherhood, and culminated in claiming both “writer” and “intuitive eating counselor” as her current job descriptions. She holds a BS in Food Science from the University of Minnesota and an MS in Counseling from National Louis University. Betsy usually writes at the intersection of food, exercise, and psychology, but also pens stories about her kids, husband, and pets. Her writing has been recognized in personal essay contests from Writer’s Digest and WOW-Women On Writing. Betsy finished her first memoir, "The Moth…
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Are you looking for an inexpensive way to promote your book? Or maybe you want to have a boost in your social media following? Today, I'm excited to announce that WOW is hosting another big group giveaway event with the theme of "The Gift of Reading." In case you forgot, when the pandemic started last year, we hosted a "Stay Home and Read" giveaway event. We had over 100,000 entries in that event! We featured some amazing authors and shared their books with the masses. How a group giveaway works is that we'll be hosting the giveaway on The Muffin and we'll be featuring your book alongside some other amazing books by authors taking part in the giveaway. Not only do you ge…
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I've spent so much of the last year (more if I'm being honest) feeling overwhelmed. I don't know if it's the stress of the pandemic, the volatility of farming, trying to juggle teenagers and toddlers, or being an only child with an aging mother. I really can't just pick one thing, but I keep straying away from things that bring me joy - and now my health is paying the price for it. I want to get back to writing. I want to read more books. I want to do more blog tours. I want to ride my horses more often. The list goes on - I just want to get back to my happy self. When I think of all the things I haven't done and all the things I should be doing or want to do, I feel abs…
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Tara’s Bio: Tara Campbell is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, and fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse. She received her MFA from American University. Previous publication credits include SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, Wigleaf, Jellyfish Review, Booth, Strange Horizons, and CRAFT Literary. She’s the author of a novel, TreeVolution, and four collections: Circe’s Bicycle, Midnight at the Organporium, Political AF: A Rage Collection, and Cabinet of Wrath: A Doll Collection. Connect with her at www.taracampbell.com or on Twitter: @TaraCampbellCom or IG: @thetreevolution. If you haven't done so already, check out Tara's award-winning story "Another Damn Cottage" (origina…
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We are excited to announce the launch of author Elizabeth Kirschner's story collection Because the Sky is a Thousand Soft Hurts. Join us we celebrate the launch of this profound hybrid collection of short stories, prose, and memoirs, interview the author, and give away a copy of this book to one lucky reader. It is the perfect read for those who wish to engage with what’s most profoundly human in each of us, as it reveals the whole spectrum from the tawdry to the sublime. But first, let us tell you a bit more about this book: Because the Sky is a Thousand Soft Hurts is a raw, intense collection of intricately layered short stories that touch on the recurring themes of …
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orangeacid (photo on Flickr.com)What happens when you read the synopsis of a novel, and it's eerily similar to what you've beeen working on for years? This recently happened between two of my students in the WOW! class I'm teaching about writing for middle grade and young adult readers. I gave them an assignment to write a tagline describing their novels and a paragraph introducing their protagonists. After they shared with one another, one student wrote me in a panic. "XXXXXX's novel (that is already published) is almost exactly like mine. My fiance says that this happens all the time. There are no unique stories. But I'm wondering if all this work I've been doing for ye…
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Make the idea your own. November is Picture Book Month. No, not Picture Book Idea Month. That’s now known as Storystorm and takes place in January. Picture Book Month is all about celebrating the picture book. You can do this in any number of ways. It isn’t Storystorm, but you can still make a point of generating at least one new picture book idea every day. You can read a picture book every day. Your local library is sure to be full of picture books. You can doodle, illustrating your way through a manuscript idea every day. Buy picture books to give as Christmas gifts. Make earring charms featuring the covers of your favorite picture books. What… Ever. Do wh…
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We welcome Carol Ovenburg today who wrote the creative nonfiction piece, "Mother Bones," and won second place in the Q4 2021 contest! Congratulations to Carol! She connected her essay to her visual art, and the piece is both rich in description and storytelling. You can check it out here and then come back and find out what she had to say about that powerful ending! Here's a little more about Carol: She has been a visual artist for over 40 years, a writer for over 20 years. She is also a Narrative Life Coach helping people find and change their self-limiting stories through writing. She loves writing creative nonfiction and is currently finishing her first memoir titled,…
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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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Roxane Sloan, a life-long Hoosier, resides in Southern Indiana near the Ohio River and teaches English language learners in kindergarten through sixth grade in the public school system. She was fortunate enough to be awarded two Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Fellowships which allowed her to study TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) in England, to experience life in Kyoto, Japan, and to teach English in a remote village in Mongolia. Roxane is currently putting the finishing touches on one middle-grade novel while revising the second draft of another. She is fascinated by language and the power of words to alter a thought, shift a mood, or change a…
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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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About two weeks ago, I got two rejections in a single day. One was from a dream agent and it was a FORM rejection. But I was simply too busy to let it bother me. Whatever. Deadline dead ahead. Then a friend spoke about a similar pair of rejection that really shook her. She’s an amazing CNF writer and has had work in places I would never dream of approaching. But the rejections flattened her. Both of our responses made me wonder. Why do writers react to rejection the way we do? I turned to psychology for answers about how we react and what can be done about it. Why It Hurts For answers as to why rejection hurts, we need to look to the past. Early humans, without…
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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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Interview with Melissa Knox, Runner Up in the Q2 2021 Creative Nonfiction Essay Contest
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Melissa Knox’s book, Divorcing Mom: A Memoir of Psychoanalysis, was published by Cynren Press in 2019. Her recent writing has appeared in Image Journal, Another Chicago Magazine, and Lamplit Underground. She writes a blog, The Critical Mom. Read more of her writing here: melissaknox.com. ----------Interview by Renee Roberson WOW: Melissa, congratulations once again and thank you for joining us here today! It can be difficult when writing about grief. What was the process like for you in developing in writing “Widow’s Walk?” Were there times you had to walk away from it and sort through things in your mind before returning to the page? What advice would you g…
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by Nancy Hayes Kilgore When I signed with Sunbury Press for my latest novel, BITTER MAGIC, I was given the option of using the publisher’s cover designer or choosing my own. Either way I could work with the artist to help shape the design. This is one of the perks of working with an independent publisher, and I was pleased, since I, like most of us authors, have a real emotional investment in how my cover looks. BITTER MAGIC is inspired by the story of Isobel Gowdie, whose witchcraft confession in 17th century Scotland, is one of the most famous of recorded confessions. The novel brings you into a world immersed in both religion and magic, a world where conflicting bel…
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Over the past few months I’ve been thinking about my leadership style, and after reading an article my husband plucked from his files and gave to me, I’ve figured out I aspire to be a servant-leader. Servant leadership was coined by an author and business consultant named Robert K. Greenleaf in 1970. He first began formulating the idea after reading a novel about a mystical journey by a group of people on a spiritual quest. A servant-leader is one whose primary motivation is “a deep desire to help others.” Here are 10 characteristics of a servant-leader: Listening intently to others. Having empathy. Helping oneself and others to heal. Awareness in understanding issues i…
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Hello WOW Readers! I have been one of the first-tier contest judges for WOW’s quarterly flash fiction contest for over a decade, and it has been a huge pleasure to read your stories. I am writing this blog series on Flash Fiction Contest Tips to help you strengthen your flash writing and maybe even place in one of our contests! Tips are based on our scoring criteria and craft trends I’ve seen throughout the decade. TECHNICAL is one of the scoring categories for the flash fiction contest, and one criterion within that category is overuse of passive voice (as opposed to active voice). Passive vs. Active Voice Active Passive They receive…
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We are excited to announce the launch of another Save the Cat!® blog tour. If you are finally ready to outline your novel or screenplay, you'll want to follow along on this tour. We'll be talking about their Cracking the Beat Sheet Online Course and their Story Cards. First, what is Save the Cat!®? Save the Cat! provides writers the resources they need to develop their screenplays and novels based on a series of best-selling books, primarily written by Blake Snyder (1957- 2009). Blake’s method is based on 10 distinctive genres and his 15 story beats (the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet). Our books, workshops, story structure software, apps, and story coaching teach you everythi…
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by Angela Cheveau As a child I loved stories. The artillery fire of my parents insults towards each other raging above my head across the no man’s land of the carpet, I would retreat to my trench for shelter. Climbing inside the pages of a book for cover I smeared my face with a war paint of words. Stories were my shield. I hid behind them. Hid inside them. Words wrapped magic around my young shoulders and threaded starlight through my hair. I wore daisy chains of words around my neck. Stories lit my pathway through the dark and foreboding forests of childhood. In stories I could be anyone. Or anything. I could go anywhere. In stories I was strong. Fearless. I fought dr…
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On a day trip to Greenville, S.C. Financial expert Dave Ramsey has a philosophy that people have different personality types when it comes to managing money. “Nerds” are the ones who like creating a financial budget, sticking to it, and keeping a close eye on the finances because it gives them a sense of security. “Free spirits” don’t like to be constrained by the budget and have more of a “I want to live life to the fullest—we’ll figure out how to make more money!” attitude. In our house, my husband is definitely the nerd most of the time with our finances and I’m more the free spirit. He’s always had a practical approach to money, although he does have a free spirit si…
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By Margaret Buapim Karen Brown Tyson had been here before, wondering how to recover professionally and personally after a lay off. Multiple layoffs in fact. With it came the need to reframe what was once seen as a career failure and relegated to a place of silence. It was what drew me to Karen’s work in the first place and the works of the growing number of writers who are addressing the shame that can block one from authentically moving forward after a job loss, goal fail, or repeated rejection. Here at WOW, we’ve come to recognize it as a serendipitous chance to “fall forward” and writers like Karen Brown Tyson are taking the lead in showing us how. In Time to …
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Photo by wewe yang from Pexels With November almost over and no gifts purchased yet this year because, well, work and NaNoWriMo, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed. But when I was brainstorming what I should write about for this post, I decided to go with good old-fashioned gratitude since we are celebrating a day of thanks. Here are a just a few things I’m grateful for: Time to write. Yes, life is busy, but I’m learning to embrace being the mother of teens. You’d be surprised at how much time you get back in your life when they can drive themselves to and from school, to and from sports practices and games, and back and forth from work and friends’ houses. While I do try…
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