“Force yourself to begin putting words on the page immediately, and don’t stop until the timer goes off, even if you have to write about the weather.” — Jan Ellison, inspired by Ellen Sussman I read this quote in the 12/4/15 Writer’s Digest guest blog post, “9 Practical Tricks for Writing Your First Novel,” written by Jan Ellison. Since Ellen Sussman was scheduled to be a Writers Forum presenter and since I also believe this philosophy . . . my ears perked up. . . . Daydreaming about how “ears perked up” would look and could it really happen? I think so, in a Fred Flintstone kind of way, when he’s . . . Oops, I’m taking the writing advice to put words on the page too literally. And the timer is ticking. Brian Klems, host of The Writer’s Dig Blog where this post appears, gives this introduction to the…
Tag: Writers Forum of Petaluma
Guest Blogger Rayne Wolfe: Trust your first readers.
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.” Learning 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…
Ruminate is ready for your submission
ru’mi-nate: to chew the cud; to muse; to meditate; to think again; to ponder Ruminate is an award-winning quarterly literary arts print magazine engaging the Christian faith. Ruminate publishes poetry, short stories, photography, visual art reproductions, short fiction, memoir, creative nonfiction, essays, reviews, and interviews. Ruminate sponsors four contests each year—poetry, short story, nonfiction and visual arts. Ruminate suggests slowing down and paying attention. “We love laughter. And we delight in telling the truth, asking questions, and doing ‘small things with great love,’ as Mother Theresa said.” You are invited to submit your work. Note from Marlene: Writers Forum of Petaluma presenter Rayne Wolfe, October 15, 2015: Newspaper reporter and columnist, Rayne Wolfe will share her methods for identifying sources, mining for quotable gold and turning interviews into stories. Whether you are focusing on non-fiction, fiction, historical fiction or memoir, Rayne will share her tools for enriching all writing by becoming…
Suffering from a creativity dry spell? Look to your nighttime dreams.
Guest Blogger Susan Audrey writes: I didn’t begin paying attention to my nighttime dreams until my dreamscapes started showing up in my waking life. The first instance was fairly benign: I dreamt of a man with dark hair, wearing a white, button-down shirt, standing to my right and talking on a pay phone (yes, this was awhile ago). And the next morning, after I dropped my kids off at daycare, I saw this exact scene: the same man, same hair, shirt, and pay phone. This really got my attention! I found out later that these are called precognitive or premonition dreams –– they show you the future. I wasn’t sure why this was happening at this time in my life. I was in my thirties and a single mom of two grade schoolers. It wasn’t until years later that I learned that our nighttime dreams are more abundant and more…
Keep Calm, Carry On And Let the Magic Begin
Guest Blogger Karen Hart reveals secrets about how to Keep Calm, Carry On and Let the Magic Begin: How To Breathe Life Into Your Work Through Revisions. During my thirties, I wrote my first novel, Butterflies in May. It tells the story of a 17-year-old high school senior, Ali Parker, who discovers she’s pregnant. I gave her characteristics, created a family, a best friend and boyfriend, and described where she lived. I effectively created a situation and characters, and the mechanics were in place. After nine months of work, I had a novel, but the story was flat. It was discouraging after all that effort, but in the words of Hemingway: “The first draft of anything is shit.” The goal in writing a novel (or any body of work) is to capture the magic, give it a heartbeat and touch your readers in a relevant way. Revising and editing are…
You are the person you are intended to be . . .
“Do not obsess about flaws and shortcomings. You are the person you are intended to be . . . You were put here for a reason. No one else has your unique talents. No one else sees the world through your eyes and experiences. Be yourself and share with others. No one can tell your story but you.” B. Lynn Goodwin, “Celebrate Your Uniqueness.” Originally posted in Inspire Me Today, January 2, 2014 Note from Marlene: Do not obsess about whether or not you are a writer. If you have something you want to write about . . . simply pull out a chair, sit down and . . . Just write! Lynn Goodwin is the owner of Writer Advice, www.writeradvice.com, which is currently holding its 10th Flash Prose Contest (deadline 4/21/15). She’s the author of You Want Me to Do WHAT? Journaling for Caregivers, and a YA called Talent,…
Why Keep Writing When No One Is Listening
Guest Blogger Brooke Warner writes: One of the most powerful things an author has ever said to me was a comment by Mark Nepo, reflecting on his personal journey over the past three years, which, due to the support of Oprah, has been pretty meteoric in nature. He told me, “I’m just so glad that I kept writing back when no one was listening.” This reverberated in me, perhaps most profoundly because of the number of clients I work with every year who reach a crisis point, led by the voices of their inner critics that say things like, “Why are you bothering?” “No one is going to want to read this.” “Who cares?!” In my work as a writing coach, I’m pretty hard-pressed to think of a single client who hasn’t struggled with messages like this at some point in their process—some more than others of course. Mark’s simple…
Before you publish, take one more vital step: Invite a very important person to the party.
Guest Blogger Linda Jay writes about copyediting. In 2012, Joel Friedlander asked Linda Jay to offer readers of his popular blog, The Book Designer, advice at that time, on “one of the most important decisions a self-publisher makes: hiring a copyeditor.” Here’s her reply, still pertinent today: Agreed. You’ve spent months (or possibly years) writing the manuscript that will one day be your book. You’ve distilled all those handwritten notes from pages or scraps of paper, those often-incoherent e-mails to yourself, and those ideas racing around in your brain, and typed every one of them into the computer, in some loosely organized format that vaguely resembles a book. Then one day… hooray… it occurs to you that… you’re done! Now you can’t wait to get your little gem “OUT THERE” for all the world to marvel at. You are indeed a writer (which nobody can deny, which nobody can deny)! Oh,…
Self-editing and Wordsmithing
Guest Blogger Linda Jay writes about self-editing and wordsmithing: I’ve noticed a topic popping up more and more in books, workshops and seminars, even those offered by Writer’s Digest. Targeted mostly toward indie authors (perhaps you’re in that category), these books, workshops and seminars encourage writers to self-edit their own work before they self-publish. Now, self-editing is fine. Going through your manuscript’s rough drafts several times over a period of weeks searching for errors and omissions, perhaps even reading the text aloud to catch awkward phrasing or redundancies or overcomplicated construction, is certainly not going to hurt—and possibly might even improve—your writing. But let’s face it, there’s only so much self-editing an author can do. Frankly, you as the author are too close to the subject matter to be objective, even if you take a break from the material and come back to it later. In my opinion—and I’m not…
The Silence of the L’s
Guest Blogger Jane Merryman writes about the silence of the L’s: In the Danish language nearly 32 percent of the letters are silent. In French the number approaches 28 percent—I would have thought much more than that. About 16 percent of the letters in English words are silent. Think about it: would, could, should. And half. That l shows up in the strangest places. And then there’s wall—why do we need two l‘s there? I attended junior high and high school at a Catholic school for girls in Menlo Park, California. The nuns were Americans, but the religious order was French and operated schools around the world. All students, from kindergarten through twelfth grade, attended a French class every single day. By the time I graduated from high school I had advanced even into the dense forest of subjunctives. (That was when I learned English also has subjunctives,…