Extended Deadline for the New Millennium Writing Awards

There's still time to enter the New Millennium Writings Awards for Fiction, Poetry, and Nonfiction. The deadline has now been extended to July 31, 2009.

A total of $4,000 in awards will be given - $1,000 each for the best entry in poetry, fiction, short-short fiction, and creative non-fiction. And as an added bonus, renowned poet Nikki Giovanni will be the final judge for poetry.

Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.newmillenniumwritings.com/. Or if you're on Facebook, look for "New Millennium Writings".

Tick, tock, writers...

Belief In Yourself: A Valuable Writing Tool

Writing is an incredibly competitive field and there are so many of us out there. But there are a good handful of truly gifted writers who always seem to continuously get their work out there and read and have a great following of loyal readers to boot. How do they do that? Because they love what they do and, most importantly, they believe in their work.

Belief in yourself and what you do is a major component to success. As a writer, when that belief isn’t there, it comes across in your words and your audience feels it. We’ve all questioned our abilities from time to time and to get over it, you need more than the 10-inch thick skin a lot of people suggest you should have to make it in this line of work.

Here are a few suggestions to help you keep up your positive energy:

* File away everything insightful and useful that you learn from editors, publishers, writing mentors and peers then discard the rest. Just because someone with more experience offers you his or her advice doesn’t mean you need to take it as gold. Take only what you can use or that applies to. Why torture yourself?

* Surround yourself with positive people with a mixture of experience who you know will be honest with you. Having people only give you the good stuff isn’t going to help you one bit. But anything more brutal than constructive criticism isn’t good either.

* Wear rejections as badges of honor. This is something I learned from the phenomenal Mary Rosenblum. It takes a lot of guts to send out a query or your entire manuscript to an editor. And it counts. Be proud of that, use the experience to your advantage and do better next time. I can tell you that before it was accepted, my book “Not Just Spirited: Living With Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD)” that’s coming out in August was rejected so many times, I thought I’d need an extra folder to store them! The problem, as I figured out later, wasn’t that it was a memoir or my writing sucked—because I’d had so many editors actually tell me they’d wished they could take it on—it was because the niche was so specialized, it didn’t fit neatly into a category. Once I figured that out and queried the “right” editors, it was snagged up right away. Listen and learn.

* Have that one person on your side who believes in you even when you don’t. It could be a writing bud, editor, friend, lover, parent, uncle, aunt, child or best friend. As mentioned earlier, that person should be honest but with a good level of decorum. You need someone to light that fire under your butt when you’re discouraged, beaten down or tired of it all. They’ll help you pick up, dust off and move on. That’s so important.

* No matter what never, ever make someone think you have to rip apart everything just to sell it. Of course, you have to make sure it’s “publishable” by having it professionally edited and making appropriate changes. But don’t ever be talked into changing your work into something you never intended it to be. Forge ahead and find that one person willing to take a chance on you.

I realize these may seem like simple solutions but they’ve worked for me. I’m one of the most paranoid, insecure people out there (yeah…that’s something to admit to the world.) But I’ve gotten where I am by building up that little light inside of me and allowing people to see it shine and you can do it too.

We believe in you all. Please tell us about your own success tips and what you’ve done to get there!

Warmly,
Chynna
www.lilywolfwords.ca
http://lilywolfwords.blogspot.com

Interview with WOW! Runner-Up Vera Constantineau

Vera Constantanieau is a runner-up in the WOW! 2009 Winter Flash Fiction Contest. If you haven't done so already, you should check out her award-winning story, "Ten the Hard Way."

Vera’s Bio: I live in Copper Cliff in northern Ontario, Canada with my husband Ralph. We have one daughter, Chloe. The easiest thing in the world for me to do is to spin a yarn about the lives of my characters, but ask me about me, and I will stammer that I have been writing for fifteen years. The truth is I began writing when I was five years old; my first project was a cooking show script, spoken in gibberish which I pretended was French, as I concocted mud pies.

Currently, I write a humor column, From the Porch, published weekly in a Canadian newspaper. My work has been featured on CBC radio, Canada’s national radio broadcast, I have published features and personal essays in Canadian magazines and had short stories included in three anthologies. In the fall, my novella Diamond Day will be included in a new anthology along with several northern Ontario writers.

I read, I write, I breathe… it’s all connected.

Read Vera's prize winning story here, and then return for a conversation with the author.

Interview with Vera Constantineau:

WOW: Congratulations on placing in the WOW! 2009 Winter Flash Fiction Contest! Can you tell me more about your short story, “Ten the Hard Way”? How did you start this story, or what was your inspiration?

Vera: I wrote this story in an attempt to portray a woman acting purely on physical attraction, and then, have her pleasure in the resulting relationship eroded by the realities in his life, wife, children and his basic dishonesty. I wanted her to end it, as she began it, for selfish reasons.

WOW: What was the biggest challenge you faced and overcame while writing this story?

Vera: Allowing the woman to be sexual and selfish without trying to cushion the reader with some kind of apologetic behavior on her part was very difficult. The challenge was to keep myself from caring whether the reader liked her or didn’t like her. To let the character create the response I thought this spare style worked to keep her relatively one dimensional.

WOW: I see from your bio that you have variety of writing experiences. Is there any particular type of writing (fiction, non-fiction; novella, flash-fiction; etc.) that you prefer to write?

Vera: My column is creative non-fiction and for fifteen years it has been very satisfying to write, but I love fiction. With fiction I can manipulate the characters, take them to extremes, rescue them from the resulting mess, it’s all up to me – that’s power.

WOW: What excites you most about writing?

Vera: The development of an idea into a full blown story is exciting. Using the characters to support the idea, throwing in just the right mix of quirks and truth, raising the tension level to capture people’s attention, and supplying a moment where I hope they will gasp either in surprise or pleasure, and sometimes if I do it right, with laughter.

WOW: The twist in your story definitely grabbed my attention because I didn’t expect it. What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

Vera: Whichever type of writing you choose, read as much of that as you can. Read both the good and the bad. Learn to recognize what works and what doesn’t. Above all I think you have to be fearless, not everyone will like what you write but if you do then likely someone else will as well, stay true to your own style.

WOW: That’s great advice. Writers certainly do have to learn to be fearless! Thank you, Vera, and again, congratulations!

Interviewed by: Anne Greenawalt

Exploring and Finding What You Like In The Process

I am going to let you all in on a little secret...

I am finding myself liking to write more and more.

It was not supposed to be this way. I stumbled into writing, more or less, to keep my mind agile and to provide something to do in between job applications and job searches. It still does all of that for me, but now too, it opens a lot of little doors for me and gives me room to try different things.

I always was somewhat of an explorer. After all, I have always wanted to be an archaeologist and teach others about different cultures and global issues. At the same time, I did not want to be confined to one subject area. The interdisciplinary linkages between history and science drew me in, and that's where I found myself, exploring the great divide between subjects, between halves of the mind.

Now, I find myself doing the same thing as a writer. In the past few years, I've blogged, written a book review for an anthropology journal, edited for a science association newsletter, completed some freelance writing on all sorts of topics from math to archaeological sciences (to a diversity of predetermined by the editor topics). I have performed research, learned how embedded hyperlinks work, and how to insert comments and track changes.

In the process, I have explored different academic subjects and genres of writing, and have found not only another way I enjoy exploring, but have explored a little bit of what makes me who I am and do things that I do. I do not like to be confined; I live to be free. I love switching between editing someone else's work and writing my own. I like how I can be reading about the life of a biochemist one minute, then being able to write about algebraic concepts the next. The freedom of writing themes, topics, and styles helps me dabble, as I am not relying exclusively on writing to pay the bills, but maybe someday, I will.

So, now, I think when asked, I'll say that I am not only an anthropologist who is looking for employment, but a novice writer too. That said, this summer's goal is to get started on a book idea I've been sitting on for more than 2 years and watching idly as it evolved in my notebook from an article to something more. It's something a self-proclaimed writer I tutor with encouraged me about doing the other day when he was getting me to open up about what I think about. It only seems fitting to explore this interdisciplinary topic academically, intertwining my academic discipline of anthropology, with something I am finding myself more able to do and did not give thought to before, writing. Not to mention, it has bothered me sitting on this and not doing something about it beyond bookmarking websites and articles on my computer for use as a guide for writing proposal letters or as an academic source to reference.

Anyways, sometimes, a blog post has to be a little introspective I guess. Hope you've had a nice weekend and find some way to explore this week. Thanks for helping me find a new niche for myself over the past year or so. I've learned so much from you all (as I explore more or less uncharted waters myself), and I definitely look forward to learning more!

What if a story could save your life?

by: LuAnn Schindler

A friend once asked me how many books I've read. Wow. I can't even begin to imagine the number of books I've read. Both of my parents were teachers, so I grew up in a family of readers. During elementary school, I remember trekking the block and a half to the library on Saturdays. I read every Nancy Drew book, some of them twice. By junior high and high school, my literary tastes changed, and I read everything required in school as well as multiple mysteries my parents had on the shelves at home. And once I went to college, I majored in English, so naturally, I read non-stop!

But the next question from my friend caused me to pause. "Have you ever read a story that saved your life?" Hmm. Well, there's... No, what about... How do you answer this question? I've read many books that resonated with me or what's happening in my life, but did these books save my life?

It depends on how one defines 'save'. To Kill A Mockingbird saved me from spreading prejudice and injustice. The Great Gatsby saved me from greed and misplaced love. Macbeth saved me from using ambition in the wrong manner.

Still, I'm not sure if I answered my friend's question. Is it possible for a story to save someone? Or do we simply relate to the ideas within the pages and apply it to our lives?

How Americans Talk

Depending on where you live, you might call your submarine sandwich a “hero” (New York City area), a “hoagie” (New Jersey and Pennsylvania), a “grinder” (New England), or a “Cuban sandwich” (Florida).

This kind of information--the words and phrases used in distinct regions of the country--will be included in a new edition of The Dictionary of American Regional English next year. The compete series of five volumes will contain abut 75,000 entries, and will eventually be put online.

When my family moved from the East Coast to the West Coast, I can remember my new friends sniggering at my use of the word “sneakers” instead of “tennis shoes”. (Were we playing tennis? No. That still doesn’t make sense to me.) Some other regional word differences I can think of are soda vs. pop, sofa vs. couch, and iced tea vs. sweet tea. Apparently, there are many more!

Fiction writers may need to know about these regional variations, in order to create characters who speak the way they really would. I just think it’s fascinating to learn about the diversity of our language. What regional expressions did you grow up with?

Now, what was it that I was typing?

The calm summer months. From my youth, I recall the lilac blooms that heralded the oncoming weeks spent free and away from school. I still enjoy those calming images...and then I turn around and realize, I'm not the one who is supposed to be enjoying these months, my kids are.
But often these days, I find myself chained to my desk, trying to fit in my freelance writing business in the midst of my own kids camp, complete with 8-, 5- and 2-year old children running circles around me.
While I love being a mom, I dislike the constant battle to find the elusive, amoeba-like balance for a family. Balance such as slowing my marketing as we neared the end of the school year. Or the balance that precludes any of my fiction writing while I winnow down the paying assignments.
I left my job to stay home, take care of the kids and write. And while balance can be tricky (which is why I'm awake at 4 a.m. on days when the kids' swim meets will run into the night), I also tend to be more lax and willing to put movies on that will entertain, nonchalantly checking the running time.
"Great, an hour and 15 minutes? I can get at least get started!"
Sometimes it works well, sometimes I find myself drifting through the Internet when I last remember writing a blog post. Asleep at the keyboard, again!
I'm fortunate that I am able to work through how to start a draft while I make lunch or that I have some good friends who take pity on me, helping me to arrange a play date for one or two of my kids. Or that I can often mine daily struggles and write something about them.
However, there are days when I wish I could slow down and just enjoy my life as a mom, not only my life as a freelance writing mom. Or just maybe enjoy my life as a freelance writing mom who gets to hit the snooze button more often than not.

Elizabeth King Humphrey is a certified Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coach and freelance writer who enjoys the bubbly joys of life and parenting. She also blogs at CoastalCarolinaMoms.com and TheWriteElizabeth.com, where she contemplates finding creativity in everyday places. She's going back to bed now...hopefully.