Guest Blogger Lynn Henriksen invites you on a journey. Who is she, really—this woman you call Mother? What could be more important than looking at your mother as an individual unto herself? Come along with me on a journey into the heart of the Mother Memoir to write a true and telling tale by answering this question: “If you could tell just one small story that would capture your mother’s character and keep her spirit alive for years to come, what would it be?” Moving your ego aside and searching purposefully for your mother’s intrinsic character can take some time to put into practice, but it is so worth your energy to discover valuable insights. Do you know what makes (made) her tick? What buoyed or drowned her hopes and dreams? What inspired her joy, tugged at her heartstrings, or thrilled her to the depths of her soul? What enlivened…
Category: Guest Bloggers
Guest Blogger Hal Zina Bennett – Transforming Your Inner Critics
Guest Blogger Hal Zina Bennett writes about our inner critics. Most of us writers are plagued by inner critics, those still small voices that speak from within, asking unsettling questions such as: “What makes you think you’re a writer?” Or, “This is drivel.” Or, the classic, “Don’t leave your day job.” Everyone has these inner critics, though some of us find their voices louder or more cutting than others. In their most insidious form, we feel these inner critics as our own self-judgments, not truths that we must accept. The author Storm Jameson put it well: “There is as much vanity in self-scourgings as in self-justification.” We write a few lines or pages that upon our review are “just terrible.” Instead of just rewriting or editing them, we point to them as evidence that we really can’t write. It’s difficult to accept that these inner critics, who stop us in…
Guest Blogger Meredith Bond – create historical fantasy
Guest Blogger Meredith Bond writes about creating beautiful history. I love history and reading about how people lived. And I love writing historical romance. But one doesn’t have anything to do with the other and rarely do I use very much of what I read in my novels. Historical novels—all, although romance is certainly the most guilty—takes history and makes it beautiful. That’s wonderful, except for one minor fact. History is not beautiful. Life before electricity and toilets was really not pretty or comfortable. And yet when was the last time you read a historical novel which actually made you aware of that? Or mentioned it at all? There are, from time to time, mentions of some villains awful breath. But the scent of a hero or heroine is always something wonderful—flowers or leather. But is that accurate? Did people in the 18th century really smell that way. Highly unlikely….
Guest Blogger Nina Amir and writing goals
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…
Crafting scenes a reader can see—and sense by Constance Hale
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…
A roundup of freelance writing tips from Guest Blogger Michael Shapiro
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…
Guest Blogger Amanda McTigue — The Power of Place
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!…
Guest Blogger Elizabeth Beechwood – Write From An Animal’s Perspective
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…
Guest Blogger Marie Judson-Rosier writes about Fantasy Fiction as an Ancient Way of Mythmaking.
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…
Transforming Depression Into My Writer’s Muse — by Teresa LeYung-Ryan
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…