Submit? Publish? Blog? Find a private writing retreat?

 

Dear Writers,

 

Many of you have been requesting a workshop on these topics. Here's the scoop on a new series I'm offering Wednesday evenings starting next week:

Virtual! Workshop Series: Literary Submissions and Publication Wednesday nights 2/23 and 3/2 and 3/9

6-8 pm on Zoom

I offer this workshop series at the beginning of each new year to refresh and revive our submission goals and process. We will share the latest news in the world of publishing in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Reassess your goals or set publishing goals for the first time in your writing life. Learn new tips for editing, researching, tracking submissions, publications. Strengthen your professional presence as a writer. Discover conferences and residencies and workshops that will feed your creativity, as well as scholarship and grant opportunities to help finances. Build an multi-planked platform as a writer.

 

In a supportive community of writers, discuss tips and trends for submitting your work out into the world. Learn where to research resources for finding the best venue for a writing project and how to prepare a manuscript. Bring your specific questions to the workshops. If you are ready, push the SUBMIT button! 

$45 each or all 3 for $120

The workshop series will include the latest info:

• where to find the resources you need to get published in all genres
•  guidance from an editor
• discussion of your specific questions
• detailed notes for each workshop
•  the power of joining a community of writers
• tips on how to develop an engaging blog
  

2/23 Wednesday 6-8 pm Workshop 

Literary magazine submissions, chapbooks, and contests for all genres

3/2 Wednesday 6-8 pm Workshop

Author Platform  

Writer residencies, conferences, and workshop opportunities for all genres  

3/9 Wednesday 6-8 pm Workshop

Blogging - find your blog's purpose, create juicy content, engage readers

Call or email me with questions and to sign up.

My February in Tahoe literary highlights

This evening I wanted to make sure I didn't miss these literary events happening in February right here in our own little world of winter! 

The SNU Writers in the Woods reading series offers an incredible lineup of 3 writers this winter and the next reading is Feb 4th at 5 pm Pacific time in the land of Zoom. Gina Frangello is the author of four books of fiction, most recently A Life With Men, which is now under development as a series on Netflix. Her debut memoir, Blow Your House Down, was released in April 2021 to a blaze of rave reviews. Every Kind of Wanting was included by both Chicago Magazine and The Chicago Review of Books as one of the “Best Books of 2016.”

Gina will also be offering a workshop Saturday morning from 10-noon the morning after her reading. What I love about this series is that after an evening of immersing in the mind, sensibility, and language of a writer, I can then find inspiration in their unique teaching styles during these generative writing workshops. They are open to the public, free during Covid, and productive for any level of experienced writer.

The Sierra Writers Conference 2022 is Thursday, Friday, and Saturday Feb 10-12. The theme this year is Stories Matter: (Re) Imagining Past and Future and appropriately, 100% of the conference is online. Among many other workshops and discussions over these three days, here are the daily keynote presenters:

Thursday 5:30-6:30 p.m. | Keynote Address – Kirsten Casey
A Constellation of Words: Poetry and Beyond 

For those of you that visited Kirsten Casey and myself at our workshop table upstairs at the Raley's local artists event this summer, you'll remember how positive and inspiring she is as a writer and a teacher!

Friday 5:30-6:30 p.m. | Keynote Address – Nisi Shawl
Building Inclusive Fictional Histories 

Saturday 3:00-4:00 p.m. | Keynote Address – Kim Stanley Robinson
Writing a Good Anthropocene

I've just picked up Robinson's latest novel, The Ministry of the Future, to start reading before this address. I loved an earlier novel of his, Aurora. This newest novel was actually recommended reading for participants of the climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland. In Bloomberg this past October, 2021, in preparation for his speaking at the COP26, Robinson wrote:  

    The court jester often says things people need to hear, from angles no-one else would think of. Those     in power listen for amusement and crazy insight.This is one way of describing the role science fiction     performs in our culture. It hearkens back to the ancient prophets, famously disregarded in their own        country but listened to for a simple reason: they speak from the future. We’re always interested in the     future. It’s a distinctively human trait. 

So I hope to see you at some of these literary events, maybe in the chat, maybe in a tiny square on my screen, or even better, reach out to me or another writer and get together for a walk or ski to revive our collective creative energy : )

Karen

2022, instant tests, big storms, and how to understand our intimate relationship with writing

All week I've been carrying around the three folded up pages I printed out New Year's Eve from the New York Times. The article, Making These Resolutions Can Improve a Relationship, seems to outline exactly the kinds of questions I want to write from as I assess this past year. 

But conversations with friends about how many instant Covid tests they have at home or when the next shipment arrives at CVS or who thinks they have an exposure have dominated my attention. And then we were blessed with those beautiful fierce storms so I could shovel instead of write. I love that feeling of satisfied exhaustion after a day spent playing in the snow, shoveling, meeting new neighbors, and helping them get their cars unstuck. Nothing better than curling up in a storm on the sofa with Netflix.

Here's some of those questions about this past year from the article:

• What were the highlights or big moments of joy you experienced? 
• What were the lowest points and what was that like for you? 
• How can we make meaning from what we've gone through?  
• How do you want to reconnect with family and friends you might not have seen because of the pandemic?
• What are your financial objectives and purchases?

Although the article specifically focuses on romantic relationships, whose to say our relationship to writing as writers is not an intimacy or a romance? 

So join me if you want in journaling on these questions above and consider that your writing practice or your writing is your partner. The final part of the article suggests creating rituals that create positive emotions you can associate with your partner. Most of my writing rituals have been tossed out the window with the pandemic, so one of my resolutions is to find just one or two rituals I can create. A ritual can be simply a repeated activity. 

Here are some of my writing rituals:

• spend a few minutes reading a real book in bed before I go to sleep
• write in my journal in the morning for a few minutes before I begin scrolling social media or the news
• find a supportive writing group to meet with regularly that can provide some accountability and inspiration
• read poetry in the bathroom!
  

Continuing to investigate short forms - a writing prompt for flash fiction and non fiction

 

In last Monday's workshop, we discussed what makes the writing in flash fiction and nonfiction dynamic enough to create something moving and memorable for the reader within such a small space. George Saunders in his new book writes:

"The true beauty of a story is not in its apparent conclusion but in the alteration in the mind of the reader that has occurred along the way." - George Saunder

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life  (public library) 

Leaving the reader in a mind state of investigation or some altered state seems like a big ask for micro pieces of writing. So what techniques in particular can a writer develop for these short forms?

Dinty Moore, editor of Brevity.com, writes in Lithub:

"Like poetry, flash often relies on the tiny detail, the single image, or some peculiarity of word choice or phrasing—small elements that carry a greater load than they might in a longer work.

Another excellent take on flash comes from Atlantic editor C. Michael Curtis, who is speaking of fiction here, but all that he says applies to nonfiction quite well: “The shorter the story, the more both writer and reader have to depend on hard moments of discovery, flashes of illumination that provide, in their suggestiveness and aptness, what other writers struggle for pages to make clear."

https://lithub.com/on-the-power-of-essayistic-compression-in-flash-nonfiction/

Here's our first writing prompt from last Monday's workshop:

Slow down a memory to write into the small details of a time when you danced with someone. Just write about the dance. Don’t write past the time you spent dancing, although you can write about the future within the dance scene itself. Is it a dance with a parent at your wedding? The first dance you dance with a new romantic interest? The dance with someone you know you plan to break up with? The dance you danced alone because you were rejected by a person?