Rejection, Dejection, Perfection

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    Guest blogger Terry Elders writes about rejection, dejection, and perfection.

    Luck was on my side. My first submission to an anthology, just eight years ago, got accepted by Chicken Soup for the Soul for “Celebrating Brothers and Sisters.” Since then my stories have appeared in well over a hundred books. But I estimate that I’ve averaged five rejections for every acceptance. That’s a success rate of only 20 percent. Perseverance is key.

    I write for an audience. I’ve known talented writing students say that if they’re ever rejected, they become too discouraged to continue to submit. When I told this to a realtor friend, he laughed.

    “That’s ridiculous. I get turned down every day. If I stopped showing houses, I’d never make a sale. You smile and move on to the next potential customer.”

    I agree. I’ve adopted my late husband’s favorite motto, “Never, ever give up.”

    I keep an orphanage in my stories file. Here’s where all my rejects dwell. Periodically I spot an opportunity that’s perfect for a story that’s languished in the orphanage for years. I apply a little literary rouge and send it out again.

    At first I wrote stories that I thought would make people smile or nod or become inspired. As I grew older, my inner voices urged, “Go deeper.”

    I started with “Dreaming as the Summers Die,” about the last time I saw my birth mom. “Not suited for our audience,” said a couple of traditional anthology publishers. When I read these messages, I could feel the distaste, the pulling back, and I envisioned how I’d spoiled some editor’s morning. Even a friend who read my story suggested I should concentrate on more cheerful topics, and that perhaps I’d better get over something that happened all those decades ago.

    But I persevered and resubmitted. I wanted to see this story in print. It finally found a home in Dream of Things’ debut anthology collection, Saying Goodbye. An online magazine, The Fertile Source, also printed it, and Five Minutes More picked it up. And additionally the story appeared again in Joy, Interrupted, from Fat Daddy’s Farm. How encouraging to find that not every publisher shies away from more meditative pieces.

    I continued with “A Ruffled Mind,” about what it was like to be six years old and scared witless by crossing the street or going to the playground. This story appeared in Anxiety Disorders: True Stories of Survival by Hidden Thoughts Press.

    Once I began edging toward the dark side, I gained courage. Did I want anybody to know why I held on to a hopeless love for years and years? Did I want anybody to know how diminished I felt when my tiny little adoptive mom called me an elephant? What about those feelings of resentment during my late husband’s last weeks? Shouldn’t I be ashamed? Filled with guilt? Maybe not, I decided. Maybe others have shared those experiences. So I wrote those stories, too. And they were published.

    “Needs” appeared in Jonna Ivin’s Loving for Crumbs, “Elephants Never Forget” in Virgie Tovar’s Seal Press publication, Hot and Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion, and “Wheels and Deals” in Hidden Thoughts Press, It’s Weighing on Your Mind.

    I don’t dwell on the dark side a hundred percent of the time, though. I still write inspirational stories and submit to Chicken Soup. I’ve had 25 stories accepted by that publisher. I’ve also had eight stories cut by Chicken Soup at the final moment. That doesn’t stop me from submitting to nearly each new possible title posted on its website.

    Further, since the nonfiction anthology market has diminished in recent years, I am considering fiction. I know where to start for ideas. I’m betting there are a few orphans that can be spiffed up through imagination.

    Maybe with perseverance, luck will nestle up to me once again. There’s still room in my bookcase for a few more anthologies with a story carrying my byline.

    TERRI ELDERS, LCSW, began writing for publication in her early teens. Her nonfiction stories have appeared in over a hundred anthologies, including multiple editions of the Chicken Soup for the Soul and Not Your Mother’s Book series. She co-edited Not Your Mother’s Book…On Travel.

    After a nearly three-decade odyssey, she recently returned to her native California. She’s happy to be back near her son, old friends, and her beloved Pacific Ocean. She blogs at A Touch of Tarragon.

  • Genevieve V. GeorgetGenevieve V. Georget graciously gave me permission to re-post her October 5, 2015 Facebook post. The response to her post was surreal: Over 250,000 likes and 143,000 shares.

    Genevieve’s post  is an excellent example of extraordinary writing that touches the heart.

    Guest Blogger Genevieve V. Georget:

    It was a Wednesday afternoon when I walked into Starbucks that day nearly six years ago. I stood at the bar, waiting for my drink, when the barista politely asked me what I was up to that day. As it turns out, I was en route to the airport at that moment…about to catch a flight to Italy with my husband. After a brief minute of chatting, the barista handed me my coffee and wished me a nice trip. “But then again”, she said “why wouldn’t you…your life is golden!”

    I’ll admit…the gold star was nice. But at the same time, the words knocked the wind out of me. She wasn’t being rude. She wasn’t being sarcastic. In fact, she was being totally genuine. And that’s the part that really took my breath away.

    Because here’s the thing…

    This lovely girl saw me for all of five minutes a day. Usually all dressed up on the way to my full-time job at one of the country’s most prestigious art galleries. Or with my camera in hand to photograph two people in love. Or, yes, on my way to Italy for ten days to celebrate my anniversary. This is what she saw. Therefore, this is what she knew.

    And truth be told, there is darkness in this kind of knowledge. Especially now, when so many of our connections happen only five minutes at a time…fully filtered and perfectly hash tagged. In our defense though, it’s not entirely our fault. That battle we’re fighting…those rough days we’re having…they don’t tend to translate very well when you have twenty people in line behind you for coffee or a hundred and forty characters to spell out your day.

    Honestly, what was I going to tell my barista?

    “Yes, we’re flying to Europe. I just miscarried our baby…we had a terrifying health scare…I’m suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder…and we’re feeling pretty far from God right now. So, yeah, going to Italy seemed as good a place as any to just run away from our life and justifiably eat gelato twelve times a day.”

    No. I wasn’t going to tell her this. Because shocking total strangers into oblivion is a bit harsh and cruel. Especially when she’s the girl in charge of making your coffee every day.

    But I did spend the entirety of that flight wondering; about our sense of authenticity…our collective vulnerability…our polished identity. And it made me feel like a total fraud. Because I’m not any of those things that this girl sees on the other side of her coffee bar.

    If I showed up one morning, wearing my most ragged and scarred self…it would be a very different girl staring back at her [and she would likely feel inclined to serve me alcohol instead of coffee!]…

    Because I was bullied a lot as a teenager.

    I’m afraid of thunderstorms.

    I spend an absurd amount of time worrying about what other people think of me.

    My biggest challenge in life is letting go of people. Even if they hurt me.

    I hide behind my humor for fear that people won’t accept me without it.

    I feel like I have failed as a daughter.

    I try to avoid big groups so that I won’t feel like the invisible one among it.

    I’m insanely self-conscious of my smile.

    I feel like I’m an easy person to walk away from in life…and it haunts me on a daily basis.

    I almost always operate under the assumption that I care more about everyone else than they do about me.

    I unfollow people on Instagram if their life seems too perfect because it makes me feel inadequate.

    I feel like a terrible mother pretty much all the time.

    I hate emptying the dishwasher.

    Every day, I’m afraid that my husband is going to wake up and finally realize how much crazy he married.

    I thank God for every day that he doesn’t!

    I don’t like to try new foods…so I travel with my own jar of peanut butter.

    I want to write a book so badly that it hurts. But I’m afraid of people telling me that my life was never worth telling.

    I struggle, every single day, with feeling like I’m enough. Skinny enough. Funny enough. Good enough.

    And I cry. A lot.

    I highly doubt I would get a gold star for any of this. But, now, six years later, I do know one thing for sure; that even with all of my frailty…all of my fears…and all my faults…none of those things make my life any less golden.

    Scars tell stories. Scars mean survival. Scars mean you showed up for the fight instead of running from it.

    And we’ve all got them…even the sweet girl serving my coffee. She’s fighting her own battle…defending her own front line…struggling in her own way.

    And maybe it’s not about collecting gold stars for the perceived reality we give the world on Facebook…but it’s about the purple hearts we get for living bravely among the real one.

    Because life requires guts…it requires bravery…and it requires vulnerability.

    So, buy your coffee…wear your scars proudly…and carry on, dear soldier…

    You’re not in this battle alone.

    GENEVIEVE V. GEORGET

    My name is Genevieve…but you can call me Gen…

    I am a wife. I am a mother. I am a daughter and I am a grand-daughter. I am a sister. I am a niece and I am an aunt. I am a friend. I am a child of God. I am addicted to Facebook. I am the year of the horse and Gaelic for white wave. I am a summer baby and the sign of Cancer. I am a reader and I am a storyteller. I am putting my life on paper. I am the victim of people’s hair fetishes. I am a lover of Gap commercials and strawberry season. I am a Starbucks junkie. I am a hockey fan. I am a lover and not a fighter. I am lost without peanut butter. I am the alter ego of a wolf and a politician in a past life. I am urban and I am in love. I am happiest at home and most comfortable in my flip-flops. I am a fabulous photograph on my driver’s license. I am an only child and the baby of the family. I am a work in progress and always in recovery from something. I am trying to let go and still reaching for your hand. I believe that naps and dancing in the kitchen can cure just about anything. I am often wondering what happens next. I am proof that time heals all wounds. I am a hopeless romantic and madly in love. I am a believer that everyone has a story and I am still unwritten. I am a frequent visitor of any bookstore and I am a woman of mystery. I am craving chocolate. I am searching for answers and I am enchanted by my friends. I am tripping on toy cars and I am constantly cleaning up cheerios. I am afraid of thunderstorms and losing the people that I love. I am raising my hands to the heavens and I am thanking my lucky stars. I am almost always found on one side of a camera and I often feel that music is the only thing left that makes sense in the world. I am living and I am learning. I am convinced, as the saying goes, not all who wander, are lost.

    Basically, I’m just a girl. Writing herself into wholeness.

    photo credit: | Richelle Hunter Photography

  • Sheri GravesGuest Blogger Sheri Graves writes about the obsession with writing.

    The moment of clarity occurred when I was in a doctor’s office seeking help for carpal tunnel syndrome. The condition wasn’t getting better and my ability to use my hands was diminishing with each passing day on the job as a newspaper reporter.

    The physician examined my hands and arms for perhaps the 30th time, looked at me and asked, “Have you considered doing something else for a living?”

    “No,” I said. “Have you?”

    He went on to explain that his profession was a “calling” and he had to spend many years in higher education and training to get where he was. His assumption he was important and I was not hit me as narcissistic. I wanted to punch him in the throat but couldn’t make a fist.

    “Being a writer isn’t just what I do,” I scolded. “It’s what I am. I could no more stop writing than I could pull a jackrabbit out of my ear. If you feel the same way about being a doctor, you do understand my predicament. I can’t simply switch careers.”

    In 1990, he did surgery on both of my hands. It took about three years of therapy and drugs and special exercises and no small amount of determination, but I finally regained the use of my hands to be able to continue with the love of my life: Writing.

    Although I retired from The Press Democrat in 2004 after more than 40 years on the job, I still write every day. I couldn’t stop if someone held a gun to my head.

    I’ve been writing ever since I can remember. I started with poetry because that’s what my mother was writing. In school, whenever a teacher assigned students to write a 500-word essay, I groaned along with the other kids. But, they thought a 500-word essay too much to expect, whereas I couldn’t think of anything I could write in only 500 words.

    Every writer has his or her own way of doing things. Some have a distinctive method. Others are casual about it. For me, writing happens all the time, every day, every minute.

    I have tried dictating to an assistant, to a tape recorder and even to a computer program designed to type the spoken word. For me, that process is too slow, infuriating and unsatisfactory. My writing process is much more organic. I feel the words within me.

    When I sit before a keyboard, words form in my brain, flow through my body and down my arms, finally shooting out the ends of my fingertips like lightning. The words come faster than I can type, and the words keep coming and coming. I can’t stop them. They come to me while I sleep. They come to me while I’m driving a car. They come to me all day and night, and if I don’t make time to let them escape, I get cranky.

    I write articles. I write memoir. I write books. I write. I write.

    I write novels. I create people in my mind and they all run amok in my head. I can’t control them, but I’ve learned to rein them in, to give them some direction, to flesh them out into living characters facing their own dire situations fraught with peril.

    It’s hard to be present in my life. My attention is elsewhere, off in a fantasy world of my own making. To get these fictitious folks to stop talking to me, I read books and get myself involved with a whole new set of characters. Then, when I sleep, the new people from the book I’m reading mingle with the old ones already running roughshod in my mind. The resulting dreams can be disturbing, at best.

    I’d like to believe other writers don’t go through this bizarre process, but I think some of them do. I’d love to have a mind for business, promotion and making money. Instead, my mental circus pushes all sense of practicality out of the way.

    “Aren’t you afraid of going crazy?” a friend once asked.

    “No,” I said. “I’m afraid of going sane.”

    Deep Doo-DooSheri Graves, author of Deep Doo-Doo, won The 2015 National Indie Excellence Award for Crime Fiction. Sheri has been writing for publications more than five decades. Her 40+ years with The (Santa Rosa, California) Press Democrat included 29+ as a reporter and 14 as a copy editor. As a reporter, Sheri won numerous awards for journalism and writing excellence, including first place prizes from the Press Club of San Francisco, the California and National Newspaper Publishers Associations, and California Medical Association. Sheri is also an editor and memoir writing instructor.

     

     

     

  • The Halloween season has passed and the holiday season approaches, the time of good cheer and good will. This might be the scariest season for some. Ted A Moreno’s guest blog post might help shoo away our fears.

    Guest Blogger Ted A. Moreno writes about “31 Scary Questions to Ask Yourself.”

    It’s all about scary this week as we approach Halloween and Day of the Dead. 

    It’s a time when it’s fun to be scared, as long as we know that it’s just a movie, or someone dressed up as the walking dead.

    Truth is, there are plenty of really scary things out there.  But by far, the scariest things are those that we hide from ourselves, the things that we are afraid to deal with.

    Unresolved issues that haunt us, pain we can’t seem to release, resentment that traps us in unhappiness. These are the monsters under the bed, the goblins that we spend so much energy keeping locked in the closet, for fear of what they might do if looked at them.

    Of course,  once we turn on the bedroom light, look under the bed and throw the closet door open, we find that there is nothing to fear.

    Shining the light of our awareness on those things that we don’t want to deal with allows us to see them clearly. Then we can take the opportunity to clean them up or straighten things out.

    Asking yourself a few scary questions can help you transform an unseen ghoul into Casper the Friendly Ghost. (Who really just wants to lend a helping hand.)

    Ask yourself these 31 scary questions and see if any of them make you a little freaky. If so, perhaps you are starting to exorcise some demons! Keep asking yourself those questions and see what comes up.

    31 Scary Questions to ask yourself. (Note from Marlene: You can also use these questions to discover more about your fictional character.)

    1. Am I happy?
    2. If I’m not, am I waiting for something to happen to be happy?
    3. Is it possible for me to decide to be happy now?
    4. Do I know what I want?
    5. Have I given up on getting the things I  want that are truly important to me?
    6. What fear keeps me from living the life I want?
    7. Have I become cynical, negative, or resigned?
    8. Do I like myself?
    9. Am I able to quickly name 10 great things about me?
    10. Am I taking care of myself?
    11. If no, do I feel I’m worth taking care of myself?
    12. Am I getting the love and attention I want and need?
    13. Do I have fun regularly?
    14. Do I have fulfilling social interactions?
    15. Am I expressing myself honestly and authentically?
    16. Is there someone I need to forgive?
    17. Is there resentment burning inside of me  that I need to resolve or express in a healthy, productive manner?
    18. Is there a negative belief that I need to  release or let go of?
    19. Is there a change I need and should make NOW?
    20. Why am I here?
    21. Is there a valid reason for the things that I am doing that are stressful and overwhelming?
    22. Am I giving me the me time  I need?
    23. Do I have regular moments of peace, calm and tranquility?
    24. Do I have frequent feelings of gratitude?
    25. Do I complain a lot?
    26. Do I hang around negative people that bring me down?
    27. Is my work meaningful and fulfilling?
    28. Do I compare myself to others and find it creates despair?
    29. Am I caught up in a lifestyle that I  feel is not meaningful to me?
    30. Am I happy with the answers I have to these questions?
    31. If not, what can I do today to change?

    Perhaps a few of these scary questions brought up some stuff. You might not be able to answer some of these scary questions in the way you feel you should or would like to.

    If so, copy those scary questions and paste them into a word or notepad etc. document. Delete all the questions that don’t have an emotional charge for you. Keep deleting until you have about 5 or 10 of the biggest, baddest scary questions that are giving you the heebie jeebies.

    Now keep these questions where you will see them. Maybe write them down on a 3×5 card and carry them around with you. Keep asking yourself these scary questions with awareness so that you can move beyond fear, negative self- judgment and shame and into the possibility of changing the answers.

    For instance, to the question: “Do I like myself?” you might answer “No! I don’t! And it really sucks! I hate that I don’t like myself! 

    See if you can move into non-judgment: “OK, I don’t like myself. I’m probably not the only one. I’m not a terrible person because I don’t like myself. But I want to like myself. So what can I do to begin to like myself?” 

    See how many of those scary questions you can bury by committing to some action. Bless and release old ways of being that no longer serve you and that are ready to be laid to rest. Then continue on your journey, a little more confident, on your way to an attitude of gratitude.

    Need some help on your journey? You can contact Ted A. Moreno by clicking here.

    Originally published by Ted A. Moreno, October 2014

    Ted A. MorenoTed A. Moreno is a hypnotherapist, success performance coach, published author, educator and sought-after speaker who helps his clients become free from fear and anxiety, procrastination and bad habits such as smoking.

  • Guest Blogger Ron Salisbury talks about MFA – Master of Fine Arts writing programs.

    “Everywhere I go, I’m asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”–Flannery O’Connor

    Flannery may be a little tough but not far wrong. What will you do with your MFA in poetry or fiction or non-fiction or children’s literature? Is it different from what you thought you would do before you started that MFA program?

    The proliferation of Master of Fine Arts Writing Programs in the United States (some 200 as of this writing) requires new crops of students every year; cannon fodder, inductees to charge over the lip of the trench into the guns of Admission Departments and Student Loans without much chance of becoming that famous author, a goal which is implied but never stated by these programs. (Is that what you thought you’d learn at that program?)

    When I started my MFA – Poetry program in 2013, I had few of those allusions given my age (70) and narrative style of poetry. I was not going to be offered that tenure track teaching position in some MFA program. At best, I would get some adjunct position. (the typical pay for a semester class as an adjunct is $2000 to $3000 with no guarantee of any future work) And would hope to worm my way into the hearts and pockets of the program directors and students. Last year the United States graduated approximately 2,000 poetry MFAs, 2,000 fiction and between 500 to 1,000 non-fiction and other. And there were less than forty tenure tract creative writing positions available in those universities and colleges. But, I did naively expect that in my program I would be among poets striving to become better poets. What I have mostly found is a cadre of wonderful people learning “how” to write poetry. My observations have been generally supported by other writers in other programs throughout the United States.

    To  satisfy the body count necessary for these 200+ programs, the threshold has been considerably lowered. If your goal is to teach in an MFA program, anecdotally, minimal requirements today are the MFA degree and two published books at least. If one or both books were contest winners, so much the better. Given the proliferation of book publishing options today such as high quality appearing print-on-demand and self-published, the vetting process for MFA instructors—ones skilled and with enough notoriety to attract students—has become more difficult for universities. It used to be just a book from a good publisher and you could be considered, then it became the book and the MFA. Now the field is murky. Which has led to an entirely new phenomenon, the PhD in Creative Writing which has begun to propagate much as the MFA programs did fifteen-twenty years ago (today, about 32 programs). It would not be a surprise to discover in less than ten years that the minimum requirement to be considered as an instructor in an MFA program is the book or two and the Creative Writing PhD. So, if you have a goal to obtain an MFA in Creative Writing and do more with it than hang it on your wall, continue to work at Starbucks or teach two classes of freshman composition at some Junior College, hurry.

    Your Turn: Should you or shouldn’t you join an MFA program? Have you done it? What do you think? Weigh in. Post your writing on The Write Spot Blog.

    Miss Desert Inn. Salisbury.180Ron Salisbury lives in  San Diego, CA where he continues to publish, write and study in San Diego State University’s Master of Fine Arts program, Creative Writing. Publications and awards include: Eclipse, The Cape Reader, Serving House Journal, Alaska Quarterly Review, Spitball, Soundings East, The Briar Cliff Review, Hiram Poetry Review, A Year in Ink, etc; Semi Finalist for the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize – 2012, Finalist for the ABZ First Book Contest – 2014, First Runner-up for the Brittingham and Pollak Prize in Poetry – 2014, Winner of Main Street Rag’s 2015 Poetry Prize

    Miss Desert Inn published November 2015.

     

  • In this guest blog post, Powell discusses the perfect evil character.

    Readers love an evil character, literature is strewn with them. I would say an interesting evil character is often multi-faceted, never straight forward, they themselves are often in a way, victims.

    Who can forget the Stephen King character Jack Torrance, who has slipped into insanity, a danger to his wife and child as well as other people who cross his path. He is interesting in that he himself has been victim, having watched his father, who he adored, abuse his mother. There is this baggage, along with the fact that the hotel where he and his family reside over a bleak winter is slowly taking control of him.

    Evil characters are full of character flaws, Jack Torrance, for example, has a major problem with alcohol. There are a whole range of character flaws a writer can imagine.

    Many evil characters are cruel and carry out unspeakable acts, which leave readers disbelieving they can be so gruesome. The manner in which an evil character enacts their murders, also leaves a strong impression on the reader.

    Some evil characters are deranged. Take the character Patrick Batemen. This man, on the one hand, a clean living yuppie, but on the other hand, a murderer, or contrary to this, perhaps the murders are just an insane delusion. This schizophrenic character is used as a ploy to make the reader question what is reality and what is going on in the darkness of Batemen’s mind. Batemen has no strong personality to speak of, it is his imagination that has a richness, be it one of toxic evil.

    Evil characters often have strong fixations and are on their own bizarre missions. Grenouille from the book Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, has an incredible gift of smell. This gift leads him to do unspeakable crimes, in the pursuit of a creation of a master angelic perfume. He sets about robbing beautiful virgins of their smell. Grenouille also could be described as hedonistic.

    Similarly, Hannibal Lecter from Red Dragon, by Thomas Harris tests the limits of how far a man can go with no moral compass. He is a sophisticated character, not only in his tastes, (he loves opera) but also with sophisticated culinary skills (he sautés human brains). Hannibal is a highly intelligent man, who can outsmart those in pursuit of him. He is precise with how he goes about his killings. He is certainly audacious, as are many evil characters.

    Not all evil characters are performing evil physical acts to their victims, there are also those who are more psychological. The evil nurse in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest works in Oregon State Hospital, a mental institution, where she exerts total power over the patients, limiting their freedom and taking away their freedom and privileges at will. Played brilliantly by Louise Fletcher, in the film version, at times you would like to throttle her, which is what the main character, Randle McMurphy, tries to do. One of the main victims of her evil regime is the character of stuttering suicidal Billy Bibbit, who is so terrified by her, that any hope he might get outside the institution is quashed.

    Writers have to immerse all these cocktails of character flaws into their characters, to come up with interesting and memorable deviants. A mindless slasher killing for no obvious reason is not going to engage readers, whereas a murderer with a lot of previous baggage and an air of sophistication will. Writers need to delve deep to create deviants.

    Francis H. PowellBorn in 1961, in Reading, England, Francis H. Powell attended Art Schools. In 1995, Powell moved to Austria, teaching English while pursuing his varied artistic interests of music and writing. He currently lives in Paris, writing both prose and poetry. He is the author of Flight of Destiny.

     

  • Guest Blogger Pat Tyler: About writing, a writer, and freewriting workshops

    For me, writing is like a shot in the arm. When I write alone, my mind becomes infused with new ideas. When I write with others, I’m included in a circle of writers who inspire me, enlighten me, challenge me, beckon me to take up the gauntlet, put on the gloves, step away from the ropes, dance my strategic dance of words, and punch my critic until he stays down at the count of ten, knocked out by my knuckle-punch of powerful, gutsy words.

    In recent years I became interested in publishing, but I soon learned that it’s not publishing that makes a writer – it’s writing that makes a writer.

    It may sound over-simplified, but I know this for sure: it’s the physical act of placing pen to paper and refusing to remove it until blood seeps from my pores and I’ve said something – hopefully something important. That’s what makes a writer.

    I’ve learned that if some particular subject is important to me, it can be, and probably will be, important to somebody else – perhaps lots of somebodies.

    But physically writing is only part of the writerly equation. Other factors include reading my words aloud, and listening to the words my fellow writers have written. We write to be heard.

    When I first attended Marlene Cullen’s Jumpstart writing workshop in Petaluma, CA, I had hoped to carve some publishing notches into my writer’s gun barrel. I wanted to review and edit pieces that had sprouted cobwebs at the back of my musty, dusty filing cabinet. But that didn’t happen. What did happen was far different from what I’d expected.

    Jumpstart wasn’t a spit-and-polish workshop. There were other times and places to spit- and-polish my words. This was a bim-bam-thank-you-mam workshop; the kind I love most.

    In Jumpstart, our simple outpourings of heartfelt thoughts, glimpsed moments from the past, glimmers of future dreams, sprinkles of laughter and tears, and tidbits of joy and sorrow were freely shared, but with one caveat; they were not to be shared outside the classroom. [Note from Marlene: It’s fine for writers to share their own work; but not discuss the writing of the other participants outside of the workshop group.]

    After participating in Jumpstart, I created a similar freewriting class called Quick Start, in Rohnert Park, CA, closer to my home in Cotati. Different venue. Different participants. But the same enthusiasm and appreciation for sharing each other’s words in a safe environment.

    I have enjoyed the experience of seeing my polished prose appear in several publications during my lengthy writing life. However, the writing I still enjoy most is the rough, raw, beginning of a new writing-in-progress. Like a newborn infant, each new writing must be cleaned up, severed from its umbilical cord, and nurtured toward maturity where it can finally stand on its own, ready to compete in the writing world.

    But until my work is ready, I’ll just take another deep breath and keep writing my words. When I’m finished I’d like to read them to you. Then I’d like to hear what you’ve written. I’m hoping our words will increase and multiply, much like the family of writers who wrote them.

    Pat TylerAt 81, Pat Tyler continues to be warm, vertical, reading, writing, publishing short works, self-publishing long works, painting, crafting, and most of all – retired! (on the only quiet corner in Cotati, CA)

    Pat received her Master of Arts degree from Sonoma State University.  Pat’s writing has been published in Good Housekeeping Magazine, Fate Magazine, and numerous anthologies. She is an award winner of four Writers Digest Competitions. Pat Tyler is the author of The Impossible Promise and her memoir, 2014 Moments Remembered. Pat’s next novel, Forgive Us Our Trespasses, will be available in 2016.

  • “Writing is an act of courage.” — Ta-Nehisi Coates

    “I always consider the entire [writing] process about failure, and I think that’s the reason why more people don’t write.” — Ta-Nehisi Coates

    Ta-Nehisi Coates’s latest book, Between the World and Me, is a “searing meditation on what it means to be black in America today.”  The New York Times Review

    Upon receiving the 2015 MacArthur ‘Genius’ Award Winners, Coates said, “When I first got the call from the MacArthur foundation I was ecstatic. . . if anybody even reads what I’m doing, that’s a great day.”

    Between the World and Me is a finalist for the Kirkus Prize for nonfiction.

    Between the World and Me is in the form of a letter to Ta-Nehisi’s 14-year-old son. He speaks of the dangers of living in a country where unarmed black men and boys are dying at the hands of police officers.

    His evocative 2008 memoir, The Beautiful Struggle, is a “. . . compelling a portrait of a father-son relationship . . . and a showcase for his emotional reach as a writer and his both lyric and gritty prose.” – The New York Times Review

    Ta-Nehisi CoatesTa-Nehisi’s chatty and thoughtful video drew me in. He said the key to writing is perseverance. He talks about learning to be a writer and that being stressed led to writing that had much more power. “Repeated practice to become the writer you want to be. Revise over and over until [your writing] goes from really bad to okay to acceptable.

    Ta-Nehisi Coates writes from the heart. My favorite kind of writing.

  • Guest Blogger Rayne Wolfe, Author of Toxic Mom Toolkit, talks about the pain and acceptance of comments and criticism when others critique your writing.

    “Listening to criticism with an open heart is hard, but it always pays off.”

    Rayne WolfeLearning to Love Our First Readers

    I was in a classroom at the Catamaran Literary Conference in Pebble Beach, my first writing conference ever, and a fellow writer was ripping my work apart. I could feel the shame rise up in my chest, coloring my neck and face with a dark blush.

    Sitting there among very accomplished writers, including literary prizewinners, even college professors who were all certainly better writers than me, my ears began to ring. Nerves.

    This fellow writer, who ran her own popular writing conference each summer, was picking apart a chapter from my new book.

    After publishing my memoir, Toxic Mom Toolkit in 2013, I was tackling a companion workbook on going “no contact” with very toxic people, including toxic mothers.

    My chapter draft began:

    You’ve told losers to hit the road.

     You’ve left jobs that were demanding demoralizing dead-ends.

     You’ve even moved from one end of the country to the other – one of the most stressful things you can do – other than giving a Ted Talk. So why is it to hard to break up with your toxic mother?

    As my blush rose past my chin and raced up towards my eyebrows, the writer was saying in front of everyone,

    “As I was reading this, my first thought was, well, don’t a lot of people who were raised in toxic families have a hard time asserting themselves? Some of these things you’re assuming everyone has done –- I haven’t done, when maybe I wanted to. Some people are timid and I think you should mix these up with much smaller life victories…”

    Trying to listen and smile at the same time, a wonderful thought hit me: Yeah, this might feel bad in the moment but it was no different than notes from a first reader.

    Plus – dang it! – She was absolutely right. My opener needed work.

    Over my ringing ears I visualized a slew of very personal essays I’ve written for newspapers and magazines. I recently contributed a story about my father to The Adoptee’s Handbook. My memoir about growing up with a toxic mother includes neglect and abuse. With over 5,000 printed articles under my byline, I’d earned my writer’s thick skin, hadn’t I?

    First readers, those smart people you pick to be your second set of eyes, are usually trusted fellow writers. They should understand you and your topics but also look at life a bit differently than you.

    Native Cover.4417111.inddWhen I was writing Toxic Mom Toolkit, I chose five first readers. My team included a couple of writers I’ve known for over 15 years, then I added some wild cards: my friend the dairy rancher who is an avid reader, my friend the landscaper who always wins at Trivia Pursuit, and my husband, Mr. Logical. After three years of writing and double-checking and editing, they each found typos and logic breaks and repetitions of parts of stories I had missed.

    It is in trusting first readers to help you, that you can feel confident with your final manuscript.

    I looked up and made eye contact with the woman giving me feedback. Realizing she was no different than a blessed first reader, I smiled and felt the rush of nerves subside.

    Listening to criticism with an open heart is hard, but it always pays off. At the end of the four-day conference I drove home with a big smile and a folder full of great feedback from very generous fellow writers.

    Rayne Wolfe will be the presenter at the October 15, 2015 Writers Forum, talking about The Art of the Interview.

  • Guest Blogger Becca Lawton writes about pre-writing.

    Excerpt from Becca Lawton’s 8/31/15 blog post, about her time in Canada on a Fullbright Scholarship to research her book:

    Writing a novel is such a huge undertaking that I’m amazed anyone writes more than one . . . I’m completing a submittable draft of my second novel . . . Now that I’m dragging my sorry carcass to the finish line, it’s fun to look back at this post written September 29, 2014, soon after the start of the project, when I was just starting to pour all my hope and energy and learning into it:

    I just completed sixty pages of prewriting for a second novel . . . They’re filled with answers to questions like, “Who are the main characters in your book?” and “What are their wants in every scene?” and “Is the setting recognizable yet unique?” I’ve modified the questions from a checklist developed by Janet Neipris, from her book To Be a Playwright, a resource I find essential. Typing up to ten pages each morning before breakfast, I completed the questionnaire in a week. At home it would have taken me a month. Although the impatient part of me wanted to zip through all the questions with an “I don’t know” or “Who cares?” I focused on each one with as much focus as I could muster. Grudgingly I’ve come to admit that if I pour myself into a pre-write of this kind, the book’s first draft flows much easier. Prewriting saves time, guesswork, and rewriting sweat. A week saves months or years of labor later. I know. I’ve written books both ways.

    Becca Lawton. . . buoyed by the knowledge that I can start the first draft of my second novel tomorrow morning. That knowledge feels like a precious gift after more than a year of dreaming, applying, and then preparing to come to Canada on a Fullbright Scholarship to research a book. Every day I’m grateful for the support.

    Photo by Melinda Kelley