Who would you like to chat with? If you could converse with anyone in the world, dead or alive, who would you like to sit down and yak with? Or, maybe you would rather lean against a bar or a counter and chew the fat, or drive and talk, or ride and shoot the breeze. Who would you like to have a conversation with . . . a one-to-one, a heart-to-heart, a tête-à-tête, a rap session, a discussion.
Hmmmm ???
“Live in the present, since you cannot change the past or control the future.” — B. Lynn Goodwin
Marlene’s Musings: Good advice for anyone, especially writers. Just do your best to be the most authentic writer you can be. Your truth and your genuineness will come out in your writing. Your poignancy, your humor, your unique “you-ness” will bring a freshness and honesty to your writing.
Be your best self . . . who else can you be?
Except from “Celebrate Your Uniqueness,” by B. Lynn Goodwin
B. Lynn Goodwin is the owner of Writer Advice, www.writeradvice.com, which is currently holding its 10th Flash Prose Contest. She’s the author of You Want Me to Do WHAT? Journaling for Caregivers, and a YA called Talent, which Eternal Press will be publishing this year. Her short pieces have been published in local and regional publications.
Lynn will be on a panel of editors at Writers Forum in Petaluma, California on May 21, 2015.
Learn the craft of knowing how to open your heart and to turn on your creativity. There’s a light inside of you. — Judith Jamison
Marlene’s Musings: Once you open your heart to your creativity, you can explore many options for expressing your creativity: Painting, sculpture, song-writing, fabric art, stenciling, sketching and more and, of course, my favorite: Freewrites.
What are freewrites? Time spent freely writing whatever your heart desires and whatever your creativity suggests to you. Just write!
Let your light shine. Share your work, share your passion. Post your writing here, on The Write Spot Blog. Click here for writing prompts and more writing prompts here.
WriterAdvice seeks flash fiction, memoir, and creative non-fiction, 750 words or less. “Enlighten, dazzle, and delight us.” Finalists receive responses from all judges.
DEADLINE: April 21, 2015
PRIZES: First Place earns $200; Second Place earns $100; Third Place earns $50; Honorable Mentions will also be published.
FOR BEST RESULTS: Include your name, contact information, and title in the cover letter, but only include your title in the submission so it remains anonymous.
Indicate if the submission is fiction, non-fiction or memoir in the cover letter.
Double-space your submission, 14-point font that is easy to read. Times New Roman, Cambria, and Ariel all spring to mind.
Submissions are read as blind submissions so put both your name and your title in your cover letter but leave them off your manuscript.
SUBMISSIONS: All entries should be submitted through Submittable. Click here for the Submission Details.
You may enter UP TO THREE stories, but each is a separate submission with a separate fee of $15.
Names of all winners will be announced in the summer issue of WriterAdvice.
E-mail questions, but not submissions to editor B. Lynn Goodwin at Lgood67334@comcast.net
Excerpt from Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach, April 3:
What are you going to be when you grow up? Today, let’s think about paths not yet taken—the paths of our secret imaginary selves. Each of us leads many lives vicariously and often simultaneously. By acknowledging our secret lives and tapping into the wisdom of our imaginary alter egos, we can glean tips to help us develop our own personal sense of style.
If you had ten other lives to lead, what would you be doing?
You might want to be a radio disc jockey, a mountain climber, a Broadway lyricist, a filmmaker, a romance novelist, a brain surgeon, a syndicated newspaper columnist, a psychic, a horticulturist, a holistic veterinarian, or a potter. . . Now write down your secret selves. How do they live? How do they dress? What can you do to bring some of the magic of your imaginary lives into your everyday existence? Brainstorm with your authentic self.
Look within today and have fun. . . one of your secret selves might reveal a passionate wish.
Note from Marlene: One of your secret selves might reveal a fictional character, who just might lend mystery and magic to your writing.
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, yes, you’ve given a sneak peek at your masterpiece to a few people whose opinion you trust—relatives, longtime friends, business colleagues. And, sure, they may have spotted a few misspellings, or a weird sentence construction here or there, but what the hey—everybody makes mistakes.
They’re just tickled that you’ve had the audacity, capacity and tenacity to write a book; a few glitches only show that you’re human. After all, who’s perfect? It’s time to send your “baby” on its way to possible fame, and reap the glories of being a published author!
Are You Serious?
Oh, but wait… if you really want to be taken seriously as a writer, stop and listen to that little nagging voice in your head that keeps saying, “Shouldn’t you be running the manuscript past an experienced professional copyeditor before you send it out?”
Yes, you’ve read that in order to make your book as good as it can possibly be, you must take that vital step of investing in the services of an editorial pro. And just think—in the twinkling of a well-trained eye, a topnotch editor could burnish your precious prose so it sparkles in the sunlight.
But if you submit (interesting, the ramifications of that word “submission” when it refers to sending in a manuscript, isn’t it?) your pages to the hyper-scrutiny of a nitpicky copyeditor, won’t your authentic voice be changed or deleted or mangled beyond recognition?
The answer is… no, not if you properly vet the copyeditor to make sure you can work together well, and if the copyeditor stipulates that one of his or her goals is to make your manuscript publisher-ready… but not change your unique voice.
A good copyeditor will offer to edit a few pages of your work as a sample, to see if you two are, literally and figuratively, “on the same page.” You can usually judge from his or her edits whether you would be able to work together happily or not. For example, if you question some of the edits and the editor responds in a haughty or rigid “only my way is right” tone, run as fast as you can toward another editor.
If your manuscript is about the life and times of the artist Edward Gorey, and the editor you’re considering has never heard of Edward Gorey and, furthermore, has no interest in learning anything about Edward Gorey, bid farewell and turn quickly on your heels.
6 Ways Copyeditors Make Your Book Better
A good copyeditor brings so much to the party. He or she can:
With a good copyeditor on your team, misplaced modifiers, dangling participles, its/it’s, to/too and other hair-raising/hare-raising errors will melt away. Skilled editors say that mistakes “leap off the page” at them. And potential readers of your book will not be distracted by sloppy copy.
You can find professional book manuscript copyeditors through organizations such as BAIPA and the Bay Area Editors’ Forum (BAEF), through online editorial sites, through ads in magazines that are targeted toward writers, and through looking up “copyeditor” on search engines.
A good copyeditor can make your book’s message shipshape—and that’s not just editorial spin!
Originally published as “6 Ways Copyeditors Make Your Book Better,” a guest post on Joel Friedlander’s popular blog, The Book Designer, on May 25, 2012.
Linda Jay is a manuscript copyeditor with decades of experience, specializes in business, novels, memoirs, spirituality, women’s issues, academic topics and fantasy (vampires, zombies).
Linda Jay will be on a panel of editors at Writers Forum in Petaluma, California on May 21, 2015.
“Writing is therapeutic. It saves lives. Your truths are eager to come out. Let them spill onto the page, and see what doors writing opens for you. Your story is buried treasure.
One of the simplest, most private places to write is in a journal. It allows you to vent, delve into issues, and untangle messes. It lets you analyze or celebrate. It allows you to finish a thought without interruption. The journal validates your right to be who you are.” — B. Lynn Goodwin, “Celebrate Your Uniqueness” in Inspire Me Today.
B. Lynn Goodwin is the owner of Writer Advice, which is currently holding its 10th Flash Prose Contest. She’s the author of You Want Me to Do WHAT? Journaling for Caregivers, and a YA called Talent, which Eternal Press will be publishing this year. Her short pieces have been published in local and regional publications.
Lynn will be on a panel of editors at Writers Forum in Petaluma, California on May 21, 2015.
I recently read an outstanding novel, Splinters of Light, by Rachael Herron, “a poignant and beautiful novel about love, loss, and the unbreakable bonds of family—particularly those between mothers, daughters, and sisters.” — Amazon
In this full-of-heart novel, the mother has early onset Alzheimer’s disease. I wondered how Rachael could write so authentically and intimately about something she didn’t have personal experience with. This is the gift of a writer who knows how to research and turn that information into a compelling story.
I asked her how she wrote so authentically about early-onset Alzheimer’s disease (EOAD). Her answer:
“I love immersing myself in the worlds I write about, but I’ll admit this was a hard one. Because there’s no cure for early-onset Alzheimer’s, there are really no happy endings. So I had to read about and research families that were breaking apart, but still focus on the happy parts of the love that remained. Luckily, it was easy to find. Memories are precious, and almost every family has precious stories of love. I borrowed the feelings, not the particulars, and imagined myself in each scene. I’m so pleased if it worked.”
Herron’s dialogue is spot-on, from the mother and her age-range friends to the teenage daughter and her friends. Rachael responds, “I love writing dialogue — if it rings right to my ear when I read it out loud, then I’m satisfied.”
Excerpt from the Conversation Guide in Splinters of Light:
Q. How did you get the idea for Splinters of Light?
A. I was sitting on my couch, my feet up on the coffee table, the cat on my stomach, reading a People magazine that featured an article about a teenage boy who was taking care of his forty-six-year-old mother as her EOAD progressed.
Note from Marlene: Notice how specific Rachael is. . . sitting on couch, feet up on coffee table, cat on stomach, People magazine, ages of boy and mother. These specific details enable readers to “see” this scene.
More from Rachael: “That boy’s story—that glossy page-and-a-half write-up—was something I couldn’t let go. . . I began to play with ideas, slipping them around in my mind much the same way Nora does with the sea glass in her pocket.
As this book took shape in my mind, the characters became real and the plotline began to twist its way through my imagination like a river twists to the sea. At the same time, I was deeply aware that I had to get it right. I was entering a conversation that I needed to be part of . . . the truth is that we are the ones responsible for raising awareness for Alzheimer’s disease, and this book is my method of doing that, of opening the dialogue.”
Note from Marlene: I think Rachael Herron does a fantastic job of opening the dialogue on this difficult subject. I encourage you to read Splinters of Light . . . for this important topic and for the gorgeous writing.
Your Turn: Do you have something difficult you want to write about? Go for it! Sit down and start writing. You can always toss what you have written. No one ever has to see it, unless you invite them. Just write!
Two-Minute Memoir focuses specifically on a personal story of growth.
Typically told in first person, the selected essays should have a beginning, middle and end. Like most good essays, selected essays feature important internal change or revelation.
As mentioned in the March/April 2015 issue of Writer’s Digest magazine: “Write something unusual.”
Not the usual: mental illness, grief, divorce, falling in love, etc . . . unless there is something “distinctive or unusual about the story to make it work.”
How to submit:
Past your 1,500 word essay (or fewer words) in an email to: jennifer.blyer -at- psychologytoday.com
Include a brief introduction and a one-sentence summary.