Places to submit

West Marin Review accepting submissions

West Marin Review, a literary and arts journal published by Point Reyes Books and Neighbors & Friends, is now accepting submissions of literary works, poetry, and visual art for Volume 6, for publication in 2015. Submission Deadline: September 1, 2014 Click here for submission guidelines. Submit only unpublished work in all categories (excerpts from blogs are okay). Prose and poetry may be submitted online or through U.S. Mail. Visual art may only be submitted through U.S. Mail.  Submission fee: Please attach a check for $10.00 made out to West Marin Review with your submission. If you are submitting more than one piece or in more than one category, you need only pay once. If you are submitting online and through the mail (for example poetry and art), you need only pay with your online submission; please note this in your mailing. Mail to: West Marin Review Post Office Box 1302…

Guest Bloggers

Guest Blogger Ted A. Moreno’s Top Ten Tips for Super Productivity

Ted A. Moreno, Certified Hypnotherapist and Success Coach, shares his top ten tips for super productivity. 1. Start the day centered and grounded. Jim Rohn said “Either you run the day, or the day runs you.” How you start the day will affect how your day goes. If you wake up and you are already rushing around and running late, the day is running you. Give yourself some space to be prepared mentally and feel super in the morning, even if it means getting up earlier to exercise, read or meditate. 2. Write down your goals the night before. Make your to do list the night before. Plan to start the next day with the most important things that will make the biggest difference, or start with the hardest. This way, you move into the day with momentum and the feeling of productivity and being super! 3. Keep yourself fed and…

Prompts

Pocket Pronouncements . . . Prompt #89

Today’s prompts are inspired by Write Free, Attracting the Creative Life by Rebecca Lawton and Jordan E. Rosenfeld. Pocket Pronouncements: Today I trust: Today I give: Today I celebrate: Note from Marlene: You can write on one of these, two of these or all three. You can mix and match them. Becca and Jordan write: “We call these ‘Pocket Pronouncements’ because you should be able to write them on something small enough to carry around with you, yet their size and power is far greater than you imagine.” Marlene has two copies of Write Free, Attracting the Creative Life to give away to the first two people who comment on this blog post. You can purchase Write Free Attracting the Creative Life at Becca‘s or Jordan’s website.

Just Write

We all have an intuitive sense. . .

I think we all have an intuitive sense, but we get side-tracked by what others think or we get distracted by all the “noise” both inside our heads and outside. It’s hard to get quiet and listen to what we think. But when we do, we experience the joy of discovering what’s going on for ourselves. A passage in Reading Water, Lessons From The River, by Rebecca Lawton, describes a situation when Becca was a white water rafting guide and had one person, a friend, in her raft. They capsized, lost the boat and nearly drowned. Becca managed to save the life of her friend. After it was all over, Becca asked her friend: “Do you regret running it?” Becca’s friend answered, “It might have been the right choice for you,” she said, “But from now on, I’m making my own decisions.” Here’s an idea for getting in touch with…

Prompts

Aprons . . . Prompt #88

  My grandmother put her apron on every morning right after she put on her house dress. She wore an apron every day, even to parties. She made all her clothes, including her aprons. She always chose a small flower design and used colorful seam binding for trim around the edges. I also wear aprons, but only when cooking and eating. . . saves many an outfit from food stains. Today’s prompt is: Aprons Thank you, Kathy Myers, for the inspiration to hang my aprons in the kitchen. Thank you, Pam Swanson, for emailing so many years ago, “The History of Aprons.”                                           THE HISTORY OF APRONS The principal use of Grandma’s apron was to protect the dress underneath. Because she only had a few dresses, it was easier to wash aprons than dresses and they used less material, but along with that, it served as a potholder for removing…

Book Reviews

Ellevie by Marcelle Guy

Guest Book Reviewer John Bertucci eloquently shares his discoveries found in Ellevie, by Marcelle Guy. How many people do you pass by in a day? Hundreds more if you work in the city. We grab a glimpse, a quick read on the relative size and character of another person, sometimes detecting emotions: happy, angry, late, lost. It’s all part of the bustle of life. Yet, in every single one of these people, there’s an immense invisible dimension, an ocean of great depth and breadth that we don’t see. This book, written by Marcelle Guy & G.S. Payne, is about someone who was unable to see the whole ocean in herself, and the waves in this ocean she couldn’t see were tearing her life apart. Ellevie, A True Story of Repressed Memories and Multiple Personality Disorder is a memoir, that is to say, a remarkable life described by the alert, compassionate…

Places to submit

YWCA invites writers to address the issue of domestic violence

The YWCA invites Sonoma County writers to address the issue of domestic violence through poetry, flash fiction and memoir for October 2014’s Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Authors and poets are free to explore the topic from many perspectives, focusing on a more personal approach, a social level, the viewpoint from victims, children, loved ones, those who witness the violence, or those who work in the field, such as doctors, police, therapists. The YWCA defines domestic violence as threatening behavior that seeks to control and exercise power over another. This behavior can include one or all of the following: emotional abuse, psychological abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse, financial abuse, and/or threats of abuse or violence to a partner’s children or pets. Short fiction and personal narrative pieces should not exceed 1000 words. Up to three poems may be submitted, but the total number of pages of poetry shall not…

Guest Bloggers

The Miracle of Language: Reminders from 50,000 Feet by Daniel Ari

Guest Blogger Daniel Ari talks about The Miracle of Language: Reminders from 50,000 Feet Chin. An alien from another galaxy encountering those four written characters or the sound we as English speakers make reading them would have no idea what we were writing or talking about. The markings or sounds alone would give the alien no inkling that they even possess a corresponding meaning in the physical world. We write using a complex system of symbols that are almost entirely abstracted from the physical phenomena they indicate. The alien might stand a chance at understanding spoken onomatopoeias, perhaps fetching a connection between the shouted words bang, boom or screech with the aural phenomena they represent. And perhaps the written article a might indicate to the alien the spirit of its meaning as something singular. Yet wouldn’t you be impressed with an alien that could intuit even those connections from our…