Guest Bloggers – Page 24

The following is from Nina Amir’s Blog, Write Nonfiction Now. Nina posts writing prompts on Fridays. I really enjoyed Prompt #10 and thought you might like it, too.

Create Book Ideas to Support Your Goals: Nonfiction Writing Prompt #10 by Nina Amir.

If you want to write and publish books, the first step involves developing ideas. You may be a nonfiction writer with just one book idea or with many. However, if you have nonfiction writing goals, your book ideas should support your goals.

I have many book ideas. Despite the fact that some of them really excite me, I have put quite a few on hold. I have them queued up in a logical order, one following the other so they help move me toward my goals.

Sometimes those goals could be simple, such as get a traditional publishing deal. That may not sound “simple,” but, for example, I put aside some projects of mine that were outside my area of expertise to pursue that goal. I used my expertise to accomplish it. With traditionally published books under my belt that have performed well—a track record—I can move into other categories more easily, should I want to pursue traditional publishing for my other ideas. I can also pursue self-publishing now more successfully.

Your goals could be to:
- Attract more clients
- Make more money
- Develop authority
- Tell your story
- Serve others
- Teach
- Build a business around a book
- Get more freelance assignments
- Become a professional speaker
Whatever your goals, it’s time to develop book ideas that support them.

Write down your top two or three nonfiction writing goals. For each goal, also write down one or two reasons why you want to achieve that goal.

Next, brainstorm tentative titles or subjects for books that would support those goals. Come up with at least one, preferably two for each goal. Prioritize them based on which will help you achieve your goal fastest.

If you come up with other nonfiction book ideas you’d like to write during this process, write them down as well, but put them away for later.

How many ideas did you come up with? Tell Nina in a comment by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom for the comments section.

Note: Nina’s original post includes a chart and examples. . . to view the complete post, click here.

Nina’s newest book, The Author Training Manual is now available. Be one of the first to own a copy of The Author Training Manual : Develop Marketable Ideas, Craft Books That Sell, Become the Author Publishers Want, and Self-Publish Effectively.

Nina Amir, author of How to Blog a Book and The Author Training Manual, transforms writers into inspired, successful authors, authorpreneurs and blogpreneurs. Known as the Inspiration to Creation Coach, she moves her clients from ideas to finished books as well as to careers as authors by helping them combine their passion and purpose so they create products that positively and meaningfully impact the world. A sought-after author, book, blog-to-book, and results coach, some of Nina’s clients have sold 300,000+ copies of their books, landed deals with major publishing houses and created thriving businesses around their books. She writes four blogs, self-published 12 books and founded National Nonfiction Writing Month, aka the Write Nonfiction in November Challenge. Nina will be the November 20, 2014 Writers Forum Presenter.
Crafting scenes a reader can see—and sense by Constance Hale

Place looms large in all the work I do—whether in travel writing (when I’m trying to capture the essence of another country or culture), or in narrative journalism (when I often begin with a scene to draw my reader into the story), or even in Facebook status updates (when I try to sketch a place with a few poetic images).

When crafting scenes, many writers make the mistake of loading up adjectives. But, as always, nouns and verbs do the best detail work. Take for example this description by the Indian writer Arundhati Roy, in The God of Small Things:

“May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled in the sun. The nights are clear, but suffused with sloth and sullen expectation.”

Roy doesn’t shy from adjectives, but she starts out by grounding us in a specific time and place (May, Ayemenem). She fills the scene with concrete things (crows, mangoes, dustgreen trees, red bananas, jack- fruits, bluebottles), and she uses nouns to give us big ideas (sloth and expectation).

William Finnegan relies on verbs in his 1992 New Yorker opus on surfing, “The Sporting Scene: Playing Doc’s Games.” He fills his entire story with sentences that use active verbs to make inanimate things animate, like this one:

The waves seemed to be turning themselves inside out as they broke, and when they paused they spat out clouds of mist—air that had been trapped inside the truck-size tubes.

These passages are taken from the all-new edition of Sin and Syntax, which also contains exercises and writing prompts.

Laconic landscapes, and not so laconic ones

In Bad Land, a book about the settling—and abandonment—of the Great Plains, Jonathan Raban uses extended metaphor to sketch a scene in Eastern Montana as he drives along in his car:

A warm westerly blew over the prairie, making waves, and when I wound down the window I heard it growl in the dry grass like surf. For gulls, there were killdeer plovers, crying out their name as they wheeled and skidded on the wind. Keel-dee-a! Keel-dee-a!

Raban recasts the plains as a seascape, with the wheat making waves, the wind growling like surf, and the killdeer plovers crying out like seagulls.

To practice your own scene-writing muscles, try two of my favorite exercises. First, describe a vast and empty landscape—or a deserted street. Can you write about the scene so that it does not seem static or dead? Can you make it bristle with energy, even if human action is long gone?

Second, situate yourself in a place that offers a symphony of sound. (A busy street corner? A screeching subway? A quiet courtyard in which each footstep registers?) Tune in to those sounds only. (Ignore the panhandlers, the change of the traffic lights, the people looking at you askance.) Find words that are onomatopoeic in some way, that suggest the sounds themselves. Write sentences whose rhythms evoke the sounds you are hearing

The Raban passage and these writing prompts appear in Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch, which is now out in paperback. If you’ve given these prompts a try and like what you wrote, please post your quick scene sketch in the comments section below. [After you register, posting can be done with a quick log-in.]

Places that inspire

For an opportunity to find inspiration in a scenic setting, and to be guided through exercises that will develop more of these muscles, join me at the Mokule’ia Writers Retreat from May 4-9, 2014. With the Waianae Mountains of O’ahu at your back and the blue ocean before you, learn from the masters, write in the shade of ironwoods, wander along the beach, salute the sun in morning yoga, and come to understand the essence of Hawaii through evening programs led by island composers, dancers, and musicians. The program includes daily workshops, private writing time, and one-on-one meetings with faculty. The theme, nā wahi ho‘oulu, acknowledges that a sacred spot like this will inspire us to explore other places— whether in the heart, in memory, or in the moment.

If you live in the Bay Area, I’d like to invite you to the Petaluma Writers Forum on March 20, 2014. I will be appearing with my friend and travel-writing colleague Michael Shapiro, who has written a book titled A Sense of Place: Great Travel Writers Talk About Their Craft, Lives, and Inspiration. Needless to say, we’ll be digging into the craft of scene writing in our remarks.

Finally, if you’d like more of this kind of thing, come visit my Web site, or sign up for my mailing list. (I also post on Facebook via the Constance Hale Scribe page.) I post regularly on how to straighten out your syntax, how to make your sentences sing, and how to survive and thrive in this sometimes difficult but always enriching writing life.

CONSTANCE HALE is a fiend about the craft of writing and covers it at sinandsyntax.com. She also writes about style and language in her books: Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch (the most recent), Sin and Syntax, and Wired Style. She has been an editor at the Oakland Tribune, San Francisco Examiner, Wired, and Health; her journalism has appeared everywhere from The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times to The Atlantic and Honolulu. She directed the narrative journalism program at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard and edits books, turning narratives about serious subjects into serious page-turners. She also runs writing retreats in Vermont and Hawaii.
Guest Blogger and expert travel writer Michael Shapiro reveals his success with freelance writing.

Every June, Michael Shapiro marks the anniversary of leaving his full-time job at CNET in SF. It’s been 15 years with lots of highs and lows, and he’s never regretted the decision to walk away from the rigidity of full-time work and hang his virtual shingle. Here are some tips that have helped him succeed in the world of freelance writing, especially travel writing.

Making a Living as a Freelance Writer

It’s not just an adventure, it’s a job: Travel writing can be romantic, but recognize it’s a job — don’t start out writing grand epiphanies about your summer vacation. Focus on service (consumer or advice) pieces, such as a story on five little-known museums in New York. You don’t have to be a superb writer to be a competent reporter. By providing service pieces, you can develop relationships with editors that lead to more interesting assignments, including destination stories. A good way to break into magazines is by writing “front-of-the-book” features, which can be as short as a couple of paragraphs.

Stick to a routine: Get up in the morning; take a shower, get dressed (including shoes), have breakfast and go to work. Slippers and a bathrobe don’t cut it. You can tailor your schedule to fit your personality. Be sure to carve out work-free blocks of time. I find it essential to take at least one full day off each week. Part of the attraction of freelancing is flexibility, so I give myself some leeway, for example to spend a couple of weekdays on a river trip or to take an occasional afternoon off.

Accuracy first: Be a thorough and accurate reporter above all else — then strive to be an excellent writer. Clear and concise prose is important because editorial space is tight. You don’t have to write with the lyrical beauty of Pico Iyer to get published. You do, however, need to get the facts right. An editor will hesitate to give you another chance if you make significant errors. Most newspaper travel editors are too busy and don’t have the resources to fact-check, so double-check your facts before submitting. Use online resources to fact-check but be aware that not all info online has been vetted or updated. Confirm by phoning or seeking multiple sources for corroboration.

Find a niche: Develop an area of expertise and work it. Only after choosing Internet travel as a niche was I able to make it as a full-time freelancer. My goal was to get editors to think of me as the Net-travel guy, so when they needed a story on this topic they’d contact me. This opened the door to more literary destinations stories. Because the Washington Post had run my Net-travel pieces, the editor there knew my work and published my Cuba by bike story.

You don’t always have to travel: Not all travel writing involves travel. My SF Examiner story on frequent-flier programs won a Lowell Thomas award, and I didn’t leave the house.

Send tips to editors: Help editors by sending them information or advisories without expecting compensation — keep yourself at the front of their minds — they’re more likely to think of you when they need a story done. Think of it this way: You’re a brand and your own PR agency.

Read editors’ stories: Read everything you can that’s written by prospective editors. When John Flinn became travel editor of the Examiner-Chronicle travel section, I read his work to get a sense of his style and what he might like. I even asked him who his literary heroes are (Tim Cahill and Bill Bryson) and read most of their books. Don’t try to copy another writer’s style — that would be a weak imitation. Be yourself, but tailor your stories to fulfill that editor’s requirements.

Consider new publications: New magazines are generally more open to new writers because they don’t have a stable of regulars. Even if you don’t get in before the first issue, scan the magazine racks for new publications and query them.

Pitch to a specific department: Your odds of success increase if you target a magazine’s regular department. Pitching a story for a department shows you read the publication, especially if you understand the requirements of the department. As a first-time writer for a magazine, don’t expect to land an assignment for a 2500-word feature. Your odds are much better if you try to write a short “front-of-the-book” piece or 750-word story for a department. Finally, pitch to a specific editor, not the editor of the magazine but an associate or deputy editor who’s more likely to read your query.

Consider non-travel magazines: Travel stories appear in more than just travel magazines – you can often place articles in lifestyle and food magazines, to name just two examples. The wider you cast your net, the better your odds.

Know when to pitch: Though this is not etched in stone, I usually pitch to newspaper editors on Thursday afternoons or Friday morning — this is after they’ve put the Sunday section to bed.

Self-syndicate: Major metro newspapers typically pay $250 to $600 (sometimes you can earn more by selling photos) for travel features. It’s nice to get one newspaper to accept your story but before you pop the cork, send it to several newspapers as long as their circulation areas don’t overlap. If you submit a story to the Chronicle, don’t send it to the San Jose Mercury News unless the Chronicle rejects it. Several newspapers, such as the Washington Post, require first national rights. So try to sell to them first and then to newspapers in Dallas, St. Petersburg, etc.

Keep it tight: Editors have always appreciated brevity, but today space is tighter than ever. Try to keep stories under 1,500 words, 2,000 tops. A 750-word story has a much better chance of selling than a 2,500-word piece.

Promote yourself online: Create a website featuring your published work, expertise, photos (if you shoot) and contact info. It’s essential to be able to refer editors to your site and much easier than sending them a sheaf of clips (though some editors may request hard copy). If you don’t have published work, you can publish online to show editors how well you can write. And be active on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites to build a community of interested readers. * Please see note from Marlene at end about online publishing.

Join a writers group: At best, a writers group is a supportive community offering honest feedback. Members also share strategies for getting published. But don’t take all criticism as gospel – listen to it, incorporate what feels right, but remember it’s your story.

Consider joining a professional organization: During the first few years I tried making a living as a freelancer I shunned professional groups such as the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW). I figured that all they did was schmooze and booze – I wanted to be roughing it in Guatemala or Cambodia. In 1998 I was invited to lead an SATW workshop during the group’s annual convention in Jerusalem. I found that schmoozing could lead to story assignments.

Define your goals: Do you want to make a living as a freelance travel writer or simply publish a story now and then? Either way, even if you don’t have an assignment, pick a destination, write a story with a narrow focus, and send it out. Be realistic about the time commitment required – you can’t make a living by viewing travel writing as a casual endeavor. Then again, you may not want to make a living; some writers want to keep their day jobs and write an occasional story. That’s probably a wise decision in the current journalistic climate.

Rule of fives: Jack Canfield, author of Chicken Soup for the Soul, credits the Rule of Fives for his success. His theory is to do five things every day to sell or market your work. Start now and don’t expect instant results. Though it sounds hokey, this type of perseverance can help you succeed and make a living

A final thought: Malcolm Margolin, a naturalist best known for The Ohlone Way said his ideal in his 20s was to be a poet and playwright. Early on he realized his chances for earning a living as a poet were slim, so he turned to natural history books because he thought they would sell reasonably well. Native American history and nature guides were his passion – he wasn’t writing them just to earn a dollar. Margolin, now the publisher of Heyday Books, said that his few attempts to create books for sales potential were flops and that the books he’s passionate about have sold better. Follow your bliss and be willing to sweat — the rewards make it worthwhile.

Michael Shapiro’s article on Jan Morris’s Wales was a cover story for National Geographic Traveler. He also writes for American Way, Mariner, Islands, and The Sun – and contributes to the travel sections of the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle. Shapiro is author of A Sense of Place: Great Travel Writers Talk About Their Craft, Lives, and Inspiration and wrote the text for the pictorial book, Guatemala: A Journey Through the Land of the Maya.

A student at the first Book Passage Travel Writers Conference in 1992 and a 13-time faculty member, Michael has developed a productive freelance career by employing the techniques listed above. He has also worked with writers to develop, polish, and edit stories. He can help writers place articles in top publications.

Contact Michael Shapiro for more information.

*Note from Marlene: A way to publish online is to post your writing on this blog: Post your writing in response to the Prompts. Contact Marlene if you want to be a guest blogger or book reviewer.

mcullen – at – comcast.net
Guest Blogger Amanda McTigue — The Power of Place

Writing is setting. Indeed, to write is to place (that’s “place” as a verb).

We writers place readers in worlds. We set them into circumstances, stories, imagery, facts, memories, actions, fantasies, and so on.

Setting in this sense isn’t mere background. It’s the sum total of every last word we write. And yet, so often we think of place as scenery. What a mistake!

Place shapes voice. I’m not talking dialect here. I’m saying the ways we writers situate ourselves in imagined (or remembered) worlds give rise to the ways we convey those worlds to others.

Our first task, then, is to place ourselves so fully that our readers go with us.

“All well and good,” you say, “but how can we interrupt our action-packed, conflict=drama, page-turning flow to squeeze in some detail of setting? We’re writing to keep readers reading! There’s no room! There’s no time!”

I feel your pain. We writers are in such a rush. Determined to finish-and-publish, we worry about where to put the “where” in our text before we even know where “where” is.

But place gathers power when we slow down.

In my writing process, “where” has a time and pace (that’s not a typo). I do everything I can to remind myself that plot points can wait; endings will find themselves. Meanwhile, when I’m lost, I get more lost. I schedule time for sheer exploration. We’re talking undirected (but focused!) wandering accomplished through short sessions of stream-of-consciousness writing.

So often, our best work is discovered, not planned. When’s the last time you ambled through your worlds with no agenda? How about sitting still? How about nosing around for nothing in particular? Try leaving your map at home. Paddle. Search. Listen. Taste. Sniff. Find a new vantage point. Marvel. Take a nap. Unpack a picnic, etc.

Forget writing. Just notice and take notes. The bird watcher doesn’t agonize about her style when she’s out in the field. She scribbles as fast as she can. Who cares if there’s a better word for “red?” She keeps her eye not on the page, but on that tiny splash of color hidden in the branches. She tries to capture everything, knowing the bird will fly off any minute, taking the moment with it.

Lately, I find such field trips invaluable. I schedule them not only as I’m drafting but also right through my editing process.

Let’s say I’m polishing a chapter for the umpteenth time and it’s still god-awful. Sometimes I know what’s missing. Sometimes I have no idea why it stinks. Either way, I set the manuscript aside, put on my boots and step out into a wet garden or a fetid alley or a crater on the Planet Zarn with absolutely no sense of how that’s going to help. I just give myself a half-hour and go.

I take field equipment along to sharpen my observations: binoculars, a camera dolly, a satellite, a cloud boat, a microphone, a microscope, my tongue. I grab every writer’s prompt I’ve ever enjoyed and bring them too—questions or novel points-of-view—to keep myself playful and curious.

I place myself—and things happen. Setting always brings more than static landscape. Worlds always world, even the quietest of them.

When I return to editing, I bring the fruits of my wandering. Suddenly an overlooked shoelace suggests a murder weapon, a tree branch holds a charm, or the stitching on a pillow brings a character to life.

Does that mean that I use every word I write in such sessions? Not even close. But nothing is wasted. What I don’t use leads me to what I do use: richer passages—even new storylines—far fresher than anything my editor’s brain could cook up.

There’s nothing like a road-trip. Whether staring at a blank page, or yet another re-write, schedule time to explore. Place yourself first (pun very much intended). Shake off your worries about the where of where; you can figure that out when the where is there.

Go.

Slow down.

Forget writing.

Take notes.

Amanda McTigue’s debut novel, Going to Solace, was selected as one of four “Best Reads of 2012” by Gil Mansergh on KRCB’s “Word by Word.”
Elizabeth Beechwood shows how to create animal characters on her Blog, “When I write, strange things happen.”

Here’s an excerpt:

Anyone who knows me knows that I love animals. When I was a kid, I was always bringing home stray dogs and baby birds. After I got married, my husband had to deal with opossums in the backyard, baby goats running through the kitchen, and let’s not forget the epic night he came home to find a loon in the bathtub!

It seemed natural, then, that when I began to write, I included animal characters in my stories. I quickly realized, however, that writing from an animal’s perspective had its own particular challenges, whether my characters were cats or pigeons or griffins or giant moths. I discovered that, by focusing on four main elements, I could portray all sorts of animals – from the realistic wolf surviving in the cold north to the fantastic mouse going on a quest. If you imagine these four elements on a sliding scale with ‘realistic’ to the far left and ‘fantastical’ to the far right, where you, the writer, place these elements determines the type of animal character you will create.

These elements are:
- POV
- Senses, including intelligence and emotional range
- Behavior
- The Wilding
To find out more about creating animal characters, please go to Elizabeth’s blog.

Elizabeth Beechwood writes about herself:

I wrote and self-published my first novel “The Brown-Eyed Trio” when I was nine years old. Unfortunately, the only copy was lost so you’ll have to take my word when I say it had a killer plot and tons of adjectives. It also featured a nine-year old girl, a dog, and a horse. Now, years later, I continue to write novels and short stories, striving for killer plots and as few adjectives as possible. Animals figure prominently in most of my work.

I’ve lived all over the United States, including Alaska, but presently make my home in the Pacific Northwest. I’m pursuing my MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program. My work has been featured in Every Day Fiction and Beyond Boundaries.
Guest Blogger Marie Judson-Rosier writes about Fantasy Fiction as an Ancient Way of Mythmaking.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes invites our voices: “We have a reason for being. Blow away the over-culture that says we weren’t longed for,” (heard at a Mysterium workshop with Dr. Estes). Many of us do not think our words are awaited or even welcome. We have to deconstruct messages we absorbed subliminally through our early lives just to allow ourselves to be creative. There’s an invisible hand at our ankle, holding us back. One of the most common blocks to taking our writer selves seriously is our need to extricate ourselves from a sense of judgment, believing that our contribution is not worthwhile. The doubt of our personal voice runs deep. Many if not most of us are acculturated to believe that true authority lies with someone else. Yet we crave creative expression. We owe it to ourselves and our world to give voice to it.

I came through great swaths of higher academia before I found myself immersed in writing fantasy fiction. As I struggled to write a dissertation, based on research regarding communication in 21^st century high schools, I longed to draw my writing from the rich material I knew – as only one’s soul knows – ran thick as sap somewhere in me, out of reach. That’s when I started Jungian dream work and other forms of inner work. In this period, I began daily journaling and have never stopped the daily practice of freewriting, which carries a mother lode of benefits – self-reflection, aid to dream work, and a sense of mental cohesion, to name a few.

It is ironic that the very discipline of writing a dissertation – along with the angst it brought, which drove me to deep inner work – led me to writing the most frivolous of all literary forms; at least it is believed to be so by some. I, however, see some fantasy fiction as holding the key to our ancient ways of mythmaking. I also believe that it has the potential to release us from a tightly defined identity into something broader, with less circumscribed edges. Sometimes the very farfetched nature of fantasy ideas can break us loose from the fetters that bind our minds and can, thereby, be healing.

Companion to the great joy I have discovered in creating fiction is the magic of a good writing group. I can see no better way to hone one’s craft than by the feedback of a dedicated, steady group of fellow writers, helping us to see where we lag in interesting vocabulary, fall into repetition, fail to stir lively curiosity or dedication to the characters. Our group’s anticipation of our next installment feeds the fires of our innovation, allows us to dare to approach revision, and renders the writing a joyful event rather than a lonely endeavor. At least that is my experience. (If you have been considering taking part in a writing group, see below.)

Marie Judson-Rosier, MA, is a teacher, freelance writer and editor. Judson-Rosier has been copyeditor for the scholarly journal Mind, Culture and Activity, an international ground-breaking publication founded by the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition at UCSD. She currently serves as managing editor of ReVision, Journal of Consciousness and Transformation. In addition, she is volunteer coordinator of writing groups for Redwood Writers, a branch of the California Writers Clubs started by Jack London. Anyone living within range of Sonoma County who is seeking a writing group is welcome to e-mail her at mariejudson@gmail.com to be added to the list.
Transforming Depression Into My Writer’s Muse — by Teresa LeYung-Ryan

What do I have to be depressed about?

I am blessed with friends, writing colleagues, housemates, spouse, family members, coworkers, a half-time day job, health insurance, my intellectual properties . . . and what friends call a sense of humor. But I don’t feel like laughing in my condition, maybe later. I may have inherited the depression gene (or genes) from my loving mother.

While I sympathized with my mother’s illness (my novel Love Made of Heart was inspired by her), it would take experiencing the illness myself before I could gain empathy.

Poor health of the physical nature (especially with overt symptoms) alerts us to seek help; poor health of the mental nature (especially the first occurrence) usually has no clear signals.

Depression snuck up on me, in my forties. The symptoms didn’t look like my mom’s. I had not lost interest in food. I thought I just needed more sleep (and later, even more sleep) when menopause came to stay.

Memories of my personal life during those years are foggy; evidence of their existence and my growth are the people still in my life and the books I still use.

If not for three other miracles — the half-time day job (where people needed my showing up to produce my share of the work) and my clients (authors who needed my identifying the core themes and archetypes in their stories) and my falling in love with blogging (where I have full control as to what and how often I publish) — I might have slept into another world.

Reading and writing have saved my life, more than once.

Two other groups of writers needed my help (which meant I needed to show up). Authors who had invested years crafting their books were being turned down by agents and acquisition editors at publishing houses; these authors were judged not by the quality of their intellectual properties but by modest size or lack of platform; who wouldn’t get depressed! Authors who wanted to self-publish needed help in growing their fans. I root for underdogs; thus the birth of my workbook Build Your Writer’s Platform & Fanbase In 22 Days. (video)

Honestly, even without the rejections, there are other matters that trigger depression – sensational news headlines; lack of rain; climate control; genetically modified organism “GMO” foods; knowing that friends are battling physical and mental illnesses.

Illness is a harsh antagonist, but, who is the protagonist of my life anyway? I am. I learn from all the other archetypes in my life. I need to help myself!

Even though I slip into depression (or depression slips into me), the only way I know how to deal with that menace is to show up for me and my writing.

The theme of “mental illness” shows up in all my work. Two years ago, I began writing “Talking to My Dead Mom” monologues. Last year, I began writing my first memoir. And that is quite exciting for me.

My prayer for everyone is this: May your muse show up for you when you show up for yourself in whatever endeavor you pursue.

For a list of resources, please visit my blog page and scroll down for Helpful Websites & Resources & Guides for Mental Health / Mental Illness / Depression.

Thank you, dear Marlene Cullen, for asking me to be your guest-blogger this week.

Sincerely, Teresa LeYung-Ryan

Teresa LeYung-Ryan author photo by Sasa Southard

Teresa LeYung-Ryan is 22-Day Coach Teresa; author of Love Made of Heart: a Mother’s Mental Illness Forges Forgiveness in Daughter Ruby (novel used in college courses), Build Your Writer’s Platform & Fanbase In 22 Days: Attract Agents, Editors, Publishers, Readers, and Media Attention NOW (workbook for all genres), “Talking to My Dead Mom” monologues, and Coach Teresa’s Blog.
Guest Blogger Victoria Zackheim writes:

How many of us are beset by that nagging voice that tells us we’re not good enough, not thin enough, not smart, tall, educated, talented enough? I don’t know about you, but I face this every day. It used to run my life . . . now it’s a tiny slice of annoyance that I can easily push away. It took years—decades, to be honest—but those demons are silenced. When they try to reappear, they’re quickly vanquished. Not dead and gone, but shoved aside where they can do no harm.

It wasn’t always like that . . . and for many women, and those of us who spend our lives not only writing, but putting our words into the world for everyone to read . . . and judge . . . fear is often the rule, whereas a sense of security is the exception.

Girls are too often told to behave, not to rock the boat, but if we want to live full and creative lives, we must take risks. I have a friend with ten novels published, including at least one on the NY Times bestseller list, and she still worries herself sick with every publication. I have another friend who’s got nearly thirty million books in print, yet she battles the same self doubt suffered by first-time authors. Why do we do this to ourselves?

It’s about trust. Trusting ourselves. Trusting the universe to treat us kindly. Trusting our friends and family to be there for us, sharing the celebration when all goes well, sharing the pain when it doesn’t. And we have to trust time, that finite thing that can be friend or foe. A support system is golden. For me, it’s what keeps me breathing, writing, and taking risks. When I hit 60, I was NOT happy with my body of work, so I decided to act on every creative thought that crossed my brain. I promised myself to view a no-go idea not as a failure, but as an idea that had no legs. And I created a new definition of “failure”: the idea we’re too afraid to pursue,

The result? Since I made that promise to myself, I’ve sold six books, have two plays in development, signed an option with Identity Films for my first feature screenplay, wrote a documentary that ran nationwide on PBS, and am teaching writing workshops for UCLA online, and at writers’ conferences here, as well as in Canada, France and Mexico.

You are never too old to follow your dreams. You want to write a memoir, but you’re convinced that your mother’s ghost will haunt you? Make it a novel! Got an idea for a play, short story, anthology . . . just do it!

Whatever you read in the beauty magazines, whatever the television commercials promise, you ARE getting older . . . and it’s a good thing. Every day gives you one more shot of maturity, confidence, and fodder for your writing . . .or for living a fuller and more satisfying life. As for me . . . I can’t wait to see what my seventies bring!

Victoria Zackheim is the author of the novel, The Bone Weaver, and editor of six anthologies, the most recent being FAITH: Believers, Agnostics, and Atheists Confront the Big Questions (working title, Simon & Schuster/Beyond Words, March 2015 publication). Her screenplay, Maidstone, a feature film, is in development with Identity Films. Her plays The Other Woman and Entangled are in development, with the latter having its staged reading at San Francisco’s Z Space Theater in April. Victoria writes documentary films for On the Road Productions. Their latest, Where Birds Never Sang, appeared nationwide on PBS. She teaches Personal Essay in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and is a 2010 San Francisco Library Laureate.
Guest Blogger Maria Victoria: My novels are not for free.

Give away your stories for free, suggests the book marketing “expert.”

He insists that if I follow his advice, readers will immediately download my novels on their reading tablets and once they read my work, they will be so enamored with my pen that they will buy everything else I publish from here on out. His logic reminds me a little of the slogan for Lay’s Potato Chips, “you can’t eat just one.”

The problem is that I’m not a potato chip. And if I don’t eat now (even a bag of Lay’s) how will I survive to write more novels? Moreover, this guy forgets that I’m paying for his advice and if I give my work away, how am I going to pay him? Of course I understand the marketing strategy of “giving a taste,” like when we get a slice of watermelon at the market. And that is precisely why I write my blog “for free.” Readers can browse through the novels I publish on Amazon – if the reader likes my work they can buy it; otherwise they can keep searching for titles more to their liking. But giving away the whole watermelon?

There is another reason, perhaps much deeper, which compels me to charge for my work. I am of the opinion that people do not appreciate what they get for free. This is something I learned from my father. When I was young, one of my responsibilities was to help him every Saturday in his clinic. That was the day his assistant rested. My father was an obstetrician in the city of Veracruz, Mexico. With great sacrifice, he had bought a house,which he divided into two, reserving one side for his private clinic. Among the many lessons learned from him, was how to collect fees with humility and respect. He charged the same fee, whether the patient was rich or poor. However, when the situation was appropriate, he would ask for “whatever you can pay, señora.” Even the poorest patient paid “something” – eggs, mangos, chico zapotes, or homemade plum pie, his favorite. Sometimes his patients asked for credit and he always said yes, accepting their “word of honor” as sufficient guarantee for the debt. If any of those women didn’t pay, I wouldn’t know, because he never mentioned it. What happened inside his office never left his office; the sanctity of professional privilege being another of his great teachings. My father’s philosophy was simple: people come here for help, not handouts or charity; even the poorest will pay “something.”

Last week I went with my grandson to a bookstore in the beautiful little town of Poulsbo. There we were, admiring books for children, when the young man at the cash register casually remarked to a customer, ” I just found out that in the Nordic countries (he did not say which) the government is giving away all the authors’ works that have been registered with their copyright agency. Isn’t that wonderful?” Before the woman could comment, I had to intervene. “Excuse me, sir, but who is going to pay the authors?” The guy, very surprised, replied, “Well, that’s the only problem … I don’t know…”

Because I am not only an author, but also a reader, I think it would be wonderful if suddenly our US Copyright Office released all titles to anyone wanting to read them. Access to literature, for rich and poor alike, is something I support wholeheartedly, which is why I love our libraries. The difference with libraries, however, is that they do, ultimately, pay authors for their work; a very small royalty indeed, but at least “something.”
Perhaps the real reason I am not willing to give my work away is because I seek readers like you. I want readers who appreciate culture and art and are willing to pay for that painting, that song, or that book before buying a hamburger; readers who are very aware that when they buy one of my novels, they are not buying just anything, but a piece of my soul.

The truth is that although our capitalist system does not promote art as a need for society, artists will continue to pursue their true calling. They will continue to paint their canvases, make their music and write their poems, and will also continue to have a second job to survive. My only hope is that my colleagues stand firm and demand, like I do, to be paid “something” at least, out of respect.

Selling online does not allow me to decipher if the situation warrants that I accept “whatever you can pay, señores (and señoras).” But let it be known that in exchange for my novels I accept mangoes and chico zapotes. And that my favorite pie is lemon.

From Veracruz, Mexico, Maria de Lourdes Victoria is an award-winning author whose work has been published internationally in English and Spanish. Her first novel, Los Hijos Del Mar (Children of the Sea), was the finalist for the Mariposa Award (Best First Novel in Spanish) at the 2006 International Latino Book Awards in Washington, D.C. Her second novel, Más allá de la Justicia (Beyond Justice) took third place in Barcelona, Spain, at the prestigious Premio Planeta de Novela book awards (2010), as well as honorary mention as the Best Novel in Spanish and Best Popular Novel at the New York Latino Book Awards (2012). Maria’s short stories have appeared in prominent literary and legal journals and her books for children have received numerous awards. She resides in Seattle and Petaluma and is currently working on her third novel, Los Hijos de las Nubes (Children of the Clouds). Her website is www.mariadelourdesvictoria.com

Guest Blogger Nina Amir and writing goals

Nina’s newest book, The Author Training Manual is now available. Be one of the first to own a copy of The Author Training Manual : Develop Marketable Ideas, Craft Books That Sell, Become the Author Publishers Want, and Self-Publish Effectively.