Quote for 12-30-10

I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

-~ Joan Didion

Quote for 12-29-10

Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing... the rest will follow.

-- Jane Yolen

Well

It's been a moment, huh?

The bear business. Every waking moment.

I'll be updating shortly.

Quote for 12-09-10

Find the key emotion; this may be all you need know to find your short story.


--F. Scott Fitzgerald

Quote for 12-01-10

The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.


--Edwin Schlossberg

Got brave

Sent a work to Highlights.
Oh, please, oh please, oh please. . .

Yes, we like you. No, we don't.

A rejection. An acceptance.

Don't know the exact # and I'm too whatever to get an accurate count (I really need to get back to this evening's writing) but I think I'm under 20 subs which doesn't make me happy:(

Made the deadline yesterday for an anthology. That made me quite happy. Like I said in an earlier post, that story has been about 6 years in the making.

Forgot about collecting stories to enter into the contest I always enter. They accept reprints 'cause no publication is involved, and I have always won something when I enter. I guess this year I'll have to let someone else win;-)

Maybe I'll do that

The event in New Jersey said that poets can sell their CDs there.

I don't have a CD, I thought. But I could get one. I love to read, have been told that I read well and a CD would be fun. Self-publish a chapbook of poetry, make a disc of me reading them. Use the cover photograph for both. Sell them at the event which is in Feb.

That's time enough.

My daughter has recording equipment.
Hmmmmm, I just might.

well, that is a bit of a problem

Today is a deadline for another anthology and I had THE PERFECT STORY to send them. It fit the anthology theme and the publisher accepted reprints. I was going to have to write 800 words to flesh out the piece and make it reach their minimum word count, but that seemed a breeze.

I went to the publisher website to get the email address and start creating my submission email. There, I read the guidelines again and this time MUCH MORE CAREFULLY and now my story is a no.

It has a scene where a young girl has sex on her fourteenth birthday and underage sex is not acceptable. I can make reference to the incident, but I cannot use the flashback where it happens which is too bad because it means I have to probably write more than 800 words to get the story to 2000 and also because the scene was quite gorgeous and when a certain revelation is made, that scene resonates.

But it doesn't matter because I can't use THAT scene.

It is going to be a loooooooooooooooooooong night.

Quote for 11-27-10

Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.


-- Thomas Berger

NJ looks like it's on the map

Gotta call somebody on Monday, but it looks like I'll be reading poetry in Jersey.

Quote for 11-26-10

Know something, sugar? Stories only happen to people who can tell them.

-- Allan Gurganus

There's a quote I love that talks about learning to wish for things to come about exactly as they come about. Sometimes it's hard to stick with that idea-- it requires a degree of faith and acceptance. I'm getting better at it, not quite as near where I want to be with the idea, but sometimes progress is slow and maybe that's why I have a thing for turtles and snails-- anyway

I've been writing more regularly than I have in awhile because of NANOWRIMO and I was a tad disconcerted about not making the mark, but this morning, a short story I'd started at least six years ago finally concluded itself. I woke up with the last scene in my head. (Yes, I scrambled out of bed to get it down!)

Anyway every moment comes out of every moment lived before and if I hadn't done (or not done as the case may be) what I did (or didn't do, as the case may be) in regards to NANOWRIMO then this story would not be finished and I wouldn't be able to send it to a themed anthology whose submission window closes Tuesday!

Quote for 11-25-10

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.


--Ernest Hemingway

just about ready to cry 'uncle' on NANOWRIMO

Am way behind and would have to write like a crazy woman to catch up and that's probably not going to happen 'cause it is bear-buying season and I've got to get bears done and I've got short stories that I need to get finished and submitted. Both Ellen's and TJ's books come out in Feb and I've committed to sending the reviews to an online publication, which mean the reviews have got to be done by December. And it's actually FIVE books I'm working on reviewing. The two by Crystal Wilkinson and another by one of uber-cool editors over at Poor Mojo's, David Nelson, called SNIP, BURN, SOLDER, SHRED: SERIOUSLY GEEKY STUFF TO MAKE WITH YOUR KIDS and I want to make those things. And did I mention I have a piece that's related to Black History Month and it so needs to get in the mail before the year ends?????????????

And I haven't mentioned I still have a week and some days to teach, grade final essays and semester portfolios!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111 And the elementary school tutoring begins in Dec.

So what I'm saying is I'm done. Another November can end and I didn't write a book but that's okay. I got a starting point and paragraphs like this:

He’d make it to the bedroom though Macy sometimes wished he’d trip over something and fall down boom to the floor. She'd imagine finding him in the morning, head busted open, blood dried and caking, him desperately in need of care, and Honey, her stepping right over, fixing herself some breakfast. Singing as the bacon fried and the biscuits baked

Will most definitely follow this woman on a literary journey. Just not this month;-)

HUGE Kudos to Jessica who's already at the finish line with 5 days to go! YOO WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

Jersey

Pursuing a reading in New Jersey.

The residency gives writers an opportunity to read and so there's Vermont off the list but I've got a lot more states to conquer.

Yet another opportunity to read in NYC but I've read there~ I need to go where I've never been-- New Jersey's a start.

Quote for 11-24-10

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.


--Joseph Conrad

my stuff

On my way to pick up my grandson and to the post office to drop the contracts into the mail for those 4 story acceptances for the anthology. It's a quarterly publication, Daily Erotic Fiction, and I will have work in the second, third and fourth quarterlies.

Deadline approaching for two other anthologies, a contest I always enter, because I always win something, and other misc.

Be good and write.

Ellen's book

scored my third book to review. "The Other Life" by Ellen Meister arrived in the mail. There are only 6 days left of school-- wish they'd hurry so I can jump on all the other I want to do.

TJ's book

A giveaway at Goodreads.


Go here.

"You're gonna love it here"

that's what the guy at the Vermont Studio Center told me. I called to confirm acceptance of the residency. I don't know if he meant the center in particular or Vermont in general, but I agreed.

I'm excited! Pulled out my "Vermont" folder-- stuff I was working on when I was trying to get to Vermont before. Maybe this time, these plans can happen.

Quote for 11-23-10

To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.

--Mark Twain

Something else I need to focus on

is getting into print. The agent I met at Antioch said I needed to make that transition. And I know that.

I'm good enough for print-- I just have no patience. Really. But perhaps this is the way to learn it.

There's a workshop I would loooooooooooooooove to attend and of course have the cost picked up for me via a fellowship but one, if not two, of the awards are linked to publication and they want writers publishing in the upper tiers of print journals.


Incentive. Incentive. Incentive.

what do you *really* want

Was working on the application for one of the other residencies I spoke of and I realized that it is not what I want. It requires a 7-month commitment and I don't want that.

What I want is exactly what I have: a temporary place in Vermont that will allow me the time and space to find a permanent one. I will be one hour away from the city I was trying to get to before.

There is another residency that has space available before I'm expected to be in Vermont. I can do that- if I get accepted. But my goal is Vermont and once there, I'm not looking to leave.

So I'm getting very clear on the things I need to support my writing. All the other is just me being silly and greedy.

Focus, Gwendolyn, FOCUS.

Also, I'm getting a kitten and some turtles and I have a dog. I have someone willing to watch them for me temporarily (once I get said kitten and turtles) but what would be the point of getting them if I'm just going to leave them in someone else's care?

Nope. The goal is to settle down.

Focus, Gwendolyn. FOCUS!!!!!!!

it's too early to do the actual math

would have to go back to see where the submissions were since I last counted but I have gotten 2 rejects (reprints sent to the same mag) and 4 acceptances (reprints sent to an anthology).

I didn't think the rejects would be accepted. Not my strongest work but was still hoping, you know. . .

up, this morning, scrambling

and not eggs. Some lines from the book creeping into my waking brain. I have learned (oh, how I have learned) that I have to record them immediately 'cause I WILL NOT remember them later. Tangled up in and stumbling out of the covers to get to some paper and a pen, a pencil, a crayon, a knife to draw blood-- anything to get those lines down!

Quote for 11-19-10

I wanted to write about the moment when your addictions no longer hide the truth from you. When your whole life breaks down. That's the moment when you have to somehow choose what your life is going to be about.


--Chuck Palahniuk

even

woke up to an acceptance ( a reprint that fell off the web to be back up) and a rejection (photos of trees)

I've been busy with bears so the writing has been neglected. Next week-- no school so it's catch up time!

Quote for 11-17-10

Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things--childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves--that go on slipping , like sand, through our fingers.


— Salman Rushdie

Vermont! Vermont! Vermont!

In the mail was a letter from the Vermont Studio Center. It was a chubby envelope so I KNEW that it had to be good news and it was.

My application for a residency was accepted and, although I wasn't awarded a full fellowship, I was awarded an Artist Grant and other financial aid to help defray costs.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So now that I have a date for this residency, I can finish my other application for another place in New England and there's still a third; hopefully I'll be bumming through the east coast next year, writing.

Hint Fiction Reading/Signing

Friday, November 19 · 7:00pm - 8:00pm

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Location Big Blue Marble Bookstore
551 Carpenter Lane
Philadelphia, PA

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Created By Hint Fiction

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More Info On November 19th, Big Blue Marble Bookstore will host a reading and signing of Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer, edited by Robert Swartwood.

Guests include Randall Brown, Frank Byrns, John Cashman, Bruce Harris, Minter Krotzer, Don Lee, and Robert Swartwood.

Launch day

Today the anthology My First Time was released.

It's available on Kindle and will be available for iPad shortly.

I have a work there under the micro stories.

Quote for 11-10-10

One writes out of one thing only--one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from the experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.

--James Baldwin

and from the "this-blog-is-not-to-be-just-about-you, Gwendolyn" file

I met this wonderful, risk-taking writer named Jessica at Antioch and she has a story here.

One of my favorite people in a favorite mag-- does it get better than that?

nada

that's what I got accomplished last night. Done in/sidetracked by "Pawn Stars." It was relaxing anyway.

Got a rejection, sent the story out again. So it's still 23 submissions.

Oh, wait! An acceptance and immediate
publication takes it back to 22 stories out.

I'm feeling a bit like Sisyphus but I'm smiling while continuing to push that rock toward 50 submissions.

Quote for 11-09-10

Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

--Colette

:(

Don't think I'm going to NY this weekend. Darn. But if you're in NYC go to the Mom Egg Reading. Bowery Poetry Club. Go in my place.

not quite 25

was up to 24 submissions, mostly reprints, but some new Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz works in the mix. Still a rejection just hours after submission takes me back to 23.

Today I hope to get to 30, but I'll be happy with 25-- the 1/2 -way mark or 1/4-mark, depending on how many subs, and not one simultaneous, I might add, that I want to get out at one time; again mostly reprints that have fallen off the web and some new works, one I'm especially proud of:)

And yes, I'm still working on a book (though there were some days when, well. . . just well. . . ) but I think I'm going to hold off discussion of that till the end of the month. See where I get to. Also I read somewhere that if you talk about something too much, you lose its power, so end of the month it is. (Jessica, my friend, how's it going???)

Quote for 11-02-10

The mere habit of writing, of constantly keeping at it, of never giving up, ultimately teaches you how to write.

--Gabriel Fielding

another anthology appearance

"Best of" sort. Yay!

day two

Yes, I wrote.

No, I didn't meet the daily quota.

Still I wrote.

But man, am I going to have some catching up to do. Yikes!

Quote for 11-01-10

The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.


--Thomas Mann

T.J.'s book

digital access granted so I should have a review/interview soonish.

anthology

I have a work coming up in an anthology which I thought was going to be on Kindle and iPad but there's evidently going to be a book form which is cool.

I missed the deadline for an anthology. Had the story for the most part worked out in my head but no chance to sit down at the computer and get it down.

Oh well.

There are still another 13+ anthologies on my list.

a rejection, a publication and a rejection

A micro gets a no. "Los Prisioneros Pequenos" is up at Linnet's Wings. A photo gets a no but it's cool 'cause I sent 4 and the other 3 are still being considered.

day one

so I spent the weekend trying to finish my unpacking and sorting and getting stuff to the garbage, to Goodwill, etc. so I could be ready for today. Sidetracked by laundry and the discovery of story drafts and momentarily I was going to chuck in this novel writing thing and just work on short stories. I had to go to the post office and prepare for my class and cook for the kids.

But it's still November 1st and I've managed 354 words- a fifth-ish of the daily total, maybe? Don't care-- I did something and I'll make it up in days to come.

Quote for 10-24-10

You must want to enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the price of disappointment and discouragement while you are learning. Like any other artist, you are learning your craft- then you can add all the genius you like.

-- Phyllis Whitney

back up on that horse

sent the rejected work out again so submissions are back at 12

a good number. . . .disciples, steps in AA, months in a year. . .

"No Plot, No Problem"

Pulled out my copy of the book by Chris Baty, the founder of National Novel Writing Month. Planning to read for encouragement.

I don't have a plot (but he says that is not a problem)! I do have an idea for a work though. I found out something while researching something else. When I was in Las Cruces in February, my father asked me if I had ever finished this short story collection based on memories/stories my grandmother had told me.

I said I hadn't, that I was always starting new projects 'cause I'd find out something new that piqued my interest. I told him that I was writing about the Civil Rights Movement in Nashville but that I was also interested in something new I'd learned that had to do with US soldiers in Germany and since he was a US soldier (stationed for a time in Germany), I said I was going to ask him all kinds of questions.

Now, unfortunately, my father died so he can't be a source; I'll have to find someone else. We'll see if this piece of history becomes my novel.

All giddy and nervous but not like before when I gave up after a few days. I didn't officially register so the accountability level was low. This time I'm getting a counter for the blog so I can see how much progress I'm making.

A book in a month. I think I can do that. I really do.

Susan Diplacido

is one of the coolest people ever & a tremendous writer to boot. A new interview (by Don Capone in Eclectica) here

Quote for 10-23-10

I lived to write, and wrote to live.


--Samuel Rogers

Give me residence

Two more I plan to apply for. An additional-- that sounds absolutely wonderful-- is a maybe 'cause it's the whole summer long(were I to receive one) and I'm going on vacation with my kids and to that workshop in Paris next summer. No matter, if I were to get the three I want, I would definitely be in New England this time next year. One would put me right smack in Vermont, where I want to be, and travel costs would be on someone else's dime.

A residency in this beautiful place in Ireland but there's no fellowships or scholarships or funding because you are a struggling-writer/starving-artist.

My motto: give me residence and pay for me to be there;-)

a rejection

so I'm at 11 subs.

only 89 to go.

National Novel Writing Month

yup, I signed up.

publication

My story "The Jar" has been republished here

T.J. Forrester!

He is the writer who will be my first interview on this blog. He has two books coming out; I am a huge fan of his short stories and am looking forward to his collection, though his novel sounds very very interesting.

The novel's coming out first and I'll be reviewing it and interviewing him soon. Am contacting his publicist to work some things out.

For now, you can go to his website at www.tjforrester.com to check him out.

Quote for 10-20-10

I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.

-E.B. White

subs

I sent a work out and it was rejected (as I knew it would be). Hours after I sent it, I thought to withdraw it 'cause I felt it wasn't complete. But I got "fired" before I could "quit."

would have been 14 works out. but I'm at 12.

13 + 1= 14-1 = 13- 1 = 12

'cause another work has been accepted.

back to 13 submissions

the 2 rejections and the 3 acceptances = stories I need to finish

Quote for 10-18-10

A story isn't about a moment in time, a story is about the moment in time.

--W. D. Wetherell

it's a start

Working on stories for the anthologies I would like to be in. Racking my brain for an idea for one and finally, when I stop and just let things be, some first lines to follow.

now to grab paper and pen and go where this woman goes. . .

a (writing) space of my own

there is nothing sweeter

Quote for 10-17-10

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot...reading is the creative center of a writer's life...you cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

--Simon Armitage

I will spend a day doing that but not that. . . maybe

Found a box of stories I'd collected from various magazines-- Mademoiselle, Redbook, etc. -- when those magazines published fiction, some are 30 years old!! Some works from online magazines too. I thought I'd toss them but obviously I have them for a reason: Something in the story touched me.

And that's what you want as a writer, right? To evoke an emotional response from a reader. So I'm going to some time, a whole day probably, to reread those works and look at them with a critical eye, an open mind, and find out what I, as a writer, can learn from them.

I also have a pile of guidelines for magazines I wanted to submit to. That I'm really leaning toward the recycling bin 'cause I don't know if I want to do the searches to see if the publications are still around. Maybe. I don't know.

Probably not. Probably.

Quote for 10-16-10

If you wait for inspiration to write; you’re not a writer, you’re a waiter.

– Dan Poynter

my first interview on this blog,

I hope, is with a writer whose work I love whose first book is coming out next year. Waiting for him to get back to me regarding.

Have a book I plan to review by one of the wonderful editors at the wonderful Poor Mojo's
Almanac(k). He sent it to me the other day.

Working to expand this blog beyond me and my writing, though I am quite charming;-)

LOL

in the midst of moving

My father died earlier this year and I've been staying with my mother, but I've got my own place now and I'm moving stuff, mostly books.

Hope to see a difference in my writing output. Caretaking is exhaustive. But I'll have a more balanced schedule and more energy come next week.

Have lots (way too many) unfinished literary projects. Need to clear that up.

Excited 'cause it's all deja vu-ish. The times I was most productive-- writing daily and for hours on end was when I was an instructor before and I wasn't sweating finances and when there was the time for me to be able to stay at the computer lab ('cause at home I just piddle around and find ways to procrastinate) until the twelfth of never. I live close to the university and there's a 24-hour lab so I can go early or stay really late or whatever. When I was working at Vanderbilt, I'd do that 'cause I'm a late-night person and I got some things done.

But no writing tonight. No submissions 'cause I'm in the midst of moving.

Oct 15th is a bust . . . and not

didn't make it to the post office. didn't have a chance to write today. and I don't think I'm going to make that 11:59 deadline.

no matter.

Got an acceptance from an anthology for a micro and by default, (since they weren't mentioned in the acceptance letter or contract) I have two rejections for two other micros sent to the same anthology. It won't be print-- it's going to be released on Kindle and the iPad.

And the rejections don't bother me. Those two were rushed and not my best work. An opportunity to get them right and honest. Find the place they really belong.

And the publishing company is doing another themed anthology; I plan to get some more submissions ready.

Quote for 10-15-10

Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult.


--Stephen Leacock

I need two stories today

I thought today was the end of the reading period for a journal but it's actually November 15 so I've got a month more to work on the story I want to send to it.

Still, I need two new stories today.

One is almost done but it has to be at done/contest-worthy status just before 6pm 'cause that's when the post office closes. I need a October 15 postmark.

The other story has to be emailed so I have until 11:59 pm however I don't even have an idea for the book's theme, an inkling, a anything (yes, I know that's grammatically incorrect but I'm stressing here)!

It can be minimum 500 words.

Still I don't have one.

Quote for 10-14-10 (even if it's late)

You feel the call. That's the important thing. Now answer it as fully as you can. Take the risk to let all that is in you, out. Escape into the open.


-- Elizabeth Berg

I applied to be listed in the Poets & Writers' writer database

'cause they offer grants to organizations (for writer's fees) if you're reading for them or running a workshop, etc.

You have to have a certain number of publications to be listed. I know I've met the requirements as a fiction writer, not sure if I did as a poet, though I requested to be listed as both.

Waiting for their yay or nay.

Have something else in mind to help me move toward greater national visibility, but I'll hold back on that for now.

#18

a new piece, a micro.

16 and 17

"it is being considered for the book"

my submission for an anthology. Hope "considered" gets changed to "accepted."

Quote for 10-12-10

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.


--Gustave Flaubert

plans for this blog

Book reviews == fiction, esp. short story collections like the two I have by Crystal Wilkinson, and books about the craft of writing. And interviews with writers I know and don't but want to.

A list of journals and magazines I've been published in and/or just love.

A literary haven, of sorts.

photo submissions too

Have six photographs out to two magazines.


Yes, pictures of tress.

Quote for 10-11-10

The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.

--Jules Renard, "Diary," 1895

continuing on

At the computer to do some more writing. The 15th is a deadline for a contest and more importantly the cut-off date for the reading period of a magazine I want to submit to.

To work, Gwendolyn. To work.

and maybe another acceptance

A publication I sent a story to is currently closed to regular submissions, but they are having a contest. The editor tossed my work into the hat. Some non-winning stories will be published along with the winning one so we'll have to see what happens there.

another acceptance

and publication

"My Little Boy," a work that had fallen off the web is back up here

It first appeared in the wonderful Small Spiral Notebook.

Quote for 10-10-10

I have a sense of these buried lives striving to come out through me to express themselves.

--Marge Piercy

submissions #14 and 15

out late last night. One piece (a reprint that had fallen off the web) accepted this morning. So I'm at 14 again.


I was looking at another reprint and I don't know what I was thinking when I originally wrote it. A character is involved in a drunk driving accident and I don't mention anything about an arrest. Red flag. Need to look at the logistics of my stories more closely.

More writing today. Hoping for more acceptances even though it just means I'll have to keep writing to get to 50 +

But that's the idea. Keep churning the stories out. But good ones, honest ones.

Quote for 10-09-10

There are times when quantity is at least as important as quality in learning an art.


--Lawrence Watt-Evans

2 new stories

At the Farmer's Market this morning. Usually I work on bears while I'm there but today I decided to write. Two new characters with tales asking for a look. One will be easier because I've got the last lines. Works that come to me like that generally write themselves; I just take dictation and tweak some stuff. We'll see.

submissions #

11
12
13

eight, nine

and ten

Quote for 10-08-10

Fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie.


--Stephen King

the time to write

three days to do so so I'm gonna.

Quote for 10-07-10

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.


--Maya Angelou

Quote for 10-06-10

I'm going to marry my novels and have little short stories for children.


— Jack Kerouac

1,2,3,4,5,6,

7

that's how many works I have out now. Reprints and some new things. Slowly working my way to 50.
And there will be no simultaneous. 50 and then my ego will try for 100.

Quote for 10-05-10

Keep in mind that the person to write for is yourself. Tell the story that you most desperately want to read.


--Susan Isaacs

Anything to keep from writing

Sometimes when I'm writing on a regular basis and am really getting some things done (like finishing up these eight stories I'm working on-- or not) I find I start to proscrastinate, surf the web, visit websites-- ANYTHING as long as I don't write.

And yet when things are such that there isn't time/space to write, I'm upset.

Go figure.

I've wasted enough time this evening.
It's time to write.


And not on this blog.

Come, if you're able

The Mom Egg Fall Reading

Saturday, November 13th

1:30-4 p.m.


Bowery Poetry Club

308 Bowery

NYC

Admission $5

Featuring poets, fiction writers, and essayists of The Mom Egg, including:

Kristina Bicher

Estelle Bruno

Rosalie Calabrese

Fay Chiang

Wendy Levine DeVito

Jessica Feder-Birnbaum

Stephanie Feuer

Alana Ruben Free

Kelli Stevens Kane

Colleen Michaels

Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz

Theta Pavis

Puma Perl

Joy Rose

Lynne Shapiro

Golda Solomon

MJ Tenerelli

Susan Tepper

Marjorie Tesser

Lisa Williams

Quote for 10-04-10

The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for publication.

-- Raymond Chandler

in the afternoon mail

my contributor copy of "Hint Fiction."

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Paris in June

I'm attending a writing workshop in France next summer!!

anthologize me!

Have about 16 in mind that I want to submit to. Only a few I can use previously published so I'm going to have to get my creative mind churning.

Quote for 9-29-10

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.


--Toni Morrison

new paths

I've finished a rough draft of a flash mystery story that I hope to sell to a woman's magazine. I also have an idea for a very sweet romantic story, which is something else they publish.

I'd sent them a poem before, the rejection said it wasn't the type of poetry they accept, though the person rejecting me said that the poem was "lovely."

I started looking at the magazine with a more critical eye, to get a feel for the work-- it's not literary, of course-- and I've decided not to be such a snob and write general/popular fiction and to do it for the money which would hopefully fund a future that allows me the freedom to write literary stuff, of course.

Quote for 9-28-10

I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.

--Dilbert's School of Thoughts

Trying to continue to meet those deadlines. Oct 1 is a day after September 30. Yikes. But I'll keep writing, not much else I can do.

Quote for 9-26-10

Some stories are true that never happened.

--Elie Weisel

Quote for 9-25-10

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware off, no shortcut.


--Stephen King
from On Writing

Sept 30 around the corner

A few more contests I might enter. Have lots of story drafts to choose from and the two characters I devised when I was at Antioch.

We'll see what happens this week.

Hint Fiction

The anthology will be released November 1, and there are signings to be held in Pasadena, CA and in New York. More details when I get them.

I'm sooooooooooooooo excited to be in an anthology with Joyce Carol Oates!!!

Quote for 9-24-10

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.

--Orson Scott Card

Quote for 9-22-10

The story arises in the unconscious.

--Dorothea Brande

another acceptance!

A reprint. Yes, another. Am on a mission to get a lot of stories (I have about 30) that have fallen off the web back on it.

If you look to your right, you can see I've been busy putting up links to my online work and my ego wants that list to grow.

Quote for 9-21-10

In good writing, words become one with things.


--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today, I'm going to work on contest entries. Four contests I'm interested in, one I always enter and so far I've won something. It and another of the four take previously published so that makes it a bit easier. The other two, I plan on using the two stories just finished.

an acceptance

a reprint. I'm sending out lots of reprints due to online journals going defunct. Have written two new stories-- one that just blows me away--and I'm in the process of rewriting one that I mentioned a few posts ago. Found some notes I'd made about it/some lines I'd written and so that one needs a makeover.

Applying for another residency and am considering entering a chapbook contest. In the meantime, still writing.

Quote for 9-17-10

Pen, paper, perseverance, and proficiency.

--Duane Alan Hahn

Quote for 9-16-10

Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.


--Ernest Hemingway

Stuff pressing down. Stuff as in DEADLINES. Have some anthology submissions that have got to get out to the publishers, an application for a residency that needed to be in the mail yesterday (!), a grant application that I need to request and then return!

Yikes!

But on the other hand, I am the revision of one story away from having that short story collection (finally) finished and complete. Had cold-called a publisher who had said I could send it-- do I do that or send it to the agent I met this summer? Or do I make a second collection and flip a coin? Hmmm


And last night I got the beginnings of a children's picture book dealing with the civil rights movement and James Lawson's nonviolent resistance teachings.

Yay!

Quote for 9-14-10

I make up stories so I can tell the truth.

-- Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz

started moving links over from the other blog

my online works. Very slow going. This template is not as convenient as the other one.

I know somebody who knows somebody

and she told me if I wanted her help making my way into the writing industry to let her know.

She'd introduce me to her agent, even. And among other things. Wow. Such generosity.

I'm gonna tuck that little favor card away and pull it out when I need it.

My question exactly

There was an email in my box and it was about that caregiver's anthology that was supposed to come out in 2008 and then was going to come out in 2010 but it's in limbo or something.

I had emailed the woman who had taken over 'cause I was still hoping to get to Ireland but no reply.

The email was from a writer wondering, like me, wt-?

quote for 9-12-10

Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.

-- William Zinsser

Quote for 9-09-10

Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.

--Andre Gide

forgot to mention

I have a poem up today at Camroc Press Review

Quote for 9-08-10

Despite the literary fashion, you have to be attuned to your own ear, your own gifts.


—Richard Wilbur

The poem came back-- with the suggestion that I submit again BUT WITH SEVERAL WORKS. Ha.

Tweaked that story and sent it out. Hope to finish another work today. My goal is to get 50 different/new works out.

I'm at two.

done!

worked on the story. the end was giving me troubles and those logistical things but it's done. a complete, not-so-bad draft. yay.

Writing quote for 9-06-10

Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area.


--Nadine Gordimer

another poem

The second I've written in uhm three years. Got it out.

Yes, I know generally poems go out to magazines in groups but at this poetry-writing rate, I'd be in my mid-50's before I had that packet ready;-p

A new story

Almost. Had it in my head for awhile. Some logistics to work out but I should finish it tomorrow.
fingers crossed.

Writing quote for 8-2-10

Interviewer: How much rewriting do you do?
Hemingway: It depends. I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, 39 times before I was satisfied.
Interviewer: Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?
Hemingway: Getting the words right.


--Ernest Hemingway
"The Art of Fiction," The Paris Review Interview, 1956

Writing quote for 8-24-10

Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening.


--Jeanette Winterson

another work in the mail

A reprint, a work that had previously only been available through the (now-defunct) Amazon Shorts program.

Hope I get a chance to write today.

Not a good comment.

I have to make the time to write today.

Writing quote for 8-23-10

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

--Sylvia Plath

got a story into the mail

have about eight more that need to go out.

Want to use two of them for writing contests coming up but we'll see 'cause I've once again rejoined the workforce.

Writing quote for 8-22-10

The greatest rules of dramatic writing are conflict, conflict and conflict.

--James Frey

Yellow Springs Ohio/Antioch Writer's Workshop

So it's been a minute since the workshop. Met some wonderful people/writers. There was a presentation for the scholarship awards-- didn't know that was going to happen or I'd have dressed a bit differently-- ha!

But it was wonderful!

What happened (from a post I placed on a discussion board elsewhere):

I went to the Antioch Writer's Workshop and came home with two new characters with stories I want to follow.

I met the wonderful Crystal Wilkinson and someone I met at the conference bought me her two books and when I asked her to autograph them, she said that even though she'd never read me, she knew I'd won a scholarship to the workshop and wanted me to submit something to her print mag.

I signed up to pitch to an agent. I changed my mind and scratched my name off the list. Then I heard her talk and she was this wonderful funny lady so I signed up again.
Before my eight-minute pitch session, I was on the phone trying to get through to the unemployment benefits people 'cause I was laid off my job and it had been six weeks since I'd applied. There were 18 calls before me and I was told my wait time would be about 41 minutes which would put me two minutes into my pitch time. Hang up? Explain the situation to the agent? A minute before my session, I went to the assigned room and the work fellow guy told me that things were running late and I had to wait about 5 minutes which was wonderful 'cause then the unemployent people answered.

I went into the session and I never got to pitch the book, not really. We talked about the story that won the scholarship and my publications.

In her talk she'd said collections were hard to sell. I told her I was trying to pitch a short story collection.

She sighed, but not in total resignation. She said, "You're going to send me this collection and I'm going to love it."

"You are," I told her.

"Okay, this is what you do. . . "

She said (One)to send a query so I could get into her computer system. "I'll reply and ask for the collection."(That was #2)
"And then, three," she said, "is the Big Wait."

So I sent the query and two of the stories and she said that she liked what I sent and she'd be glad to read the whole thing.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just gotta get it done.

back to the keyboard

Busy with the bearmaking and life in general. Put the writing aside but tomorrow opportunity to jump back in.

Have been working on a short mystery to send to this weekly woman's publication. I thought it would be easy, but not so!

Some contests I want to enter by the 31/1 so I need to get going.

writing quote for 8-18-10

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.

--E. L. Doctorow

Writing quote for 8-17-10

All I'm writing is just what I feel, that's all. I just keep it almost naked.

--Jimi Hendrix

new story published

B.O.B. up at the wonderful online pub Poor Mojo's Almanac(k) yesterday and today it's featured at FictionDaily! Way cool.

been a bum

haven't written much. not good. I need to finish that collection. working on the bear business. lots of creative spirit flowing but I need to get some words flowing. . .

new poetry book

I Should Have Given Them Water is a challenging new collection of poetry by San Francisco-based poet Eileen Malone. With an unflinching generosity of lush imagery, Malone turns nouns into verbs and verbs into nouns with carefully honed incongruity. She navigates the abstract, messy, expressionistic and humanistic, while maintaining tough, straight forward intensity. These poems are packed with powerful, penetrating struggles by a well-seasoned Feminist (mental health activist), feminine (wife, mother, daughter) poet with an amazing capability for risking, loving, and suspecting her world, all at the same time.

Order Through: Ragged Sky Press
PO Box 312
Annandale, NJ 08801
www.raggedsky.com

Guest blog at The Mom Egg

here

not packed yet

Of course not, otherwise I would not be Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz.

Need to run off the itinerary and stories to read on the road.

Destination: Ohio

I cannot wait to go to Ohio. I want to get away and I'm also looking forward to the opportunity to learn some things/make some contacts that might move my writing career along, although I've been real lazy about building and promoting it.

I'm going to change that. Working with a creativity coach. The support is wonderful-- helping me get on track with what my writing priorities are and to work toward them. I just may end up where I "literaturely" want to be:)

GirlChild Press presents the third anthology in the "girl series" - Woman's Work: Short Stories. The collection will be released on July 16, 2010. Take advantage of the pre-sale price of $10.00 by ordering now at www.girlchildpress.com/products.html. Regular price:$15.00


Woman's Work is a wonderful literary celebration. The writing is razor sharp and the storytelling compelling. In this provocative and entertaining collection, that promises surprises around every corner, 40 eclectic women writers, pull us into their ever-changing universe of shapeshifters, fairies, drag queens, and fat Southern girls. This is an adventure not to be missed. www.girlchildpress.com/products.html


**

This is a beautiful cover, isn't it. So happy to be a part of this anthology!!

Antioch Writer's Workshop

Getting ready to attend.

I am the AWW 1st place winner of the Betty Crumrine Scholarship.

Info:

Betty Crumrine Scholarship--awarded to a single parent who is committed to writing and who could not otherwise attend the workshop. The Crumrine Scholarship was created by friends of Betty Crumrine, who lived and wrote in Yellow Springs and participated in the Antioch Writers’ Workshop from 1986 until 1990. She worked full time at the Miami Valley Arts Council and later at the Miami Literacy Council, raising three children and taking care of her own mother while writing true confession stories and young adult novels. She died of cancer in March 1991. In honor of her encouragement of new writers, the Antioch Writers’ Workshop welcomes applications from beginning writers as well as those in mid-career.

Yay for me. And I get to read-- cross Ohio off my list. I may hit all 50 states yet!

Book Party!

The chapbook party for THE IMPORTANT THING IS. . . by Marjorie Tesser, editor of the MOM EGG, is Saturday June 5 from 4-6 p.m. at Bowery Poetry CLub, 308 Bowery in NYC. Go support a Mom Writer!

This is my new place

Gonna fix it up, move my literary stuff from the other blog to here. I hope to do reviews of books I like and those I don't necessarily like. Announce writing news, mine and others.

So, come back and we'll talk books and writing and hopefully chocolate.