Interview with Barbara Abercrombie on Cherished

Dear writers and readers,

Here is a fascinating interview with Barbara Abercrombie.  If you ever have a chance to take a writing class with Barbara through UCLA or elsewhere, jump on it!  She has a new anthology of stories about adored animals called Cherished...hope you enjoy her interview!  Cheers, Laura

Hi Barbara!  How would you describe your relationship with writing?  Do you enjoy it, struggle through it, or some of each?

– It’s like a very long  marriage: passionate periods, tough times, and right now kind of mellow.  Writing fiction and pictures books for kids has always been a struggle for me, but now I’m more into essays and non-fiction books and for the first time writing is actually fun.

Your current book, Cherished: 21 Writers on Animals They Have Loved and Lost is an anthology.  How did you get thie idea for this book?

– I had blogged about losing my horse, how much I had loved him and how hard I was grieving for him, and one of my readers (a vet) said there ought to be a book, a collection of pieces like I wrote/blogged. And it was like Bingo! for me.  That was the kind of book I wanted/needed to read. And of course you always write the book you need to read.

Can you tell us a bit about how an anthology is born?

          – First of all I checked out Amazon and there was no book like the one I had in mind. So then I emailed some of my writer friends who love animals and explained my idea for the book, and asked if they wanted to write an essay for it - and if so to send me a few paragraphs about what their essay would be about. Then I found some published essays about loving and losing an animal by Anne Lamott, Tom McGuane, Jane Smiley, Mark Doty etc. and I wrote to them about reprint rights. Finally I had a proposal put together and sent it to my agent.

What did you like best about putting together this anthology?  What was hardest?

      – I loved practically everything about putting together an anthology. I’m a literary groupie so it was like getting to hang out with the band.  Even marketing – something I usually loathe – was fun cause there was always a group of us when we did readings at bookstores.

Do you work with an agent?  How do you view the role of agents today? 

– Agents are important unless you’re self-publishing – They deal with contracts that most writers don’t want to even read.  I sold some of my children’s picture books to publishers and then had my agent handle the contract. I also did that with Courage & Craft – my agent sent it out to everybody in New York and they replied with wonderful rejection letters but basically said, Who needs another writing book? So I did some research on my own and sent it to New World Library in California and they bought it – then my agent handled the contracts and money. NWL has turned out to be the publisher of my dreams – small and very hands on. And they love their writers. The bottom line is that you can sell a book to small publishers on your own (be sure to research what they publish) and then find an agent to handle the deal. The agent’s 15 percent is a bargain.

What kind of publicity help did you get from your publisher?  What are your thoughts about how authors should approach publicity these days?

        – I love New World Library’s publicists – they’re very available and have booked me on radio and pod casts, and do a lot  with magazines – and if I want to do bookstore appearances they set it up for me.  They also expect me to come up with ideas and contacts of my own – as all publishers do now unless you’re on the best seller list. The Internet is hugely important for publicity.  You need Facebook, your own website for the book, and also a blog.  I call myself the Marketing Whore when it comes to publicity because that’s what it feels like.  

What kind of books do you most enjoy reading?  Any current favorites to recommend?

       – I finally read The Help and loved it. Also I just read The Journal Keeper by Phyllis Theroux on a trip to Russia. I loved it so much I got in touch with her via Facebook from Moscow – and was thrilled when she replied. I’m now reading Lacuna by Barbara Kinsolver and a biography of Frida Kahlo. And Thirst – Mary Oliver’s poems. I love reading all kinds of books. You can’t be a writer without reading.

You have facilitated writing groups for women facing cancer.  How did you keep that activity from becoming depressing?

       – There was a moment early on in the workshop when I thought I just can’t do this – a dear woman I loved had  died – but then I realized most people didn’t die. The workshop was filled with people who went on from having cancer to thrive. And I went on to conduct it for another twelve years. It turned out to be much more inspiring than depressing.

You have taught a lot of wonderful classes at UCLA Extension.  What is it like working with such a variety of people, who have self-selected as members of your class?

       –  Joy, pure and simple. I love teaching at UCLA Extension. I love my students and I love the other instructors. I finally found my own community.

You travel a lot; does this feed into your writing or interrupt it?

         – It used interrupt my writing and it would take days, weeks, to get back into it. But there’s nothing like a book deadline to focus you, so for the past year I’ve written every day while traveling.  I love to write in hotel rooms or on boat cruises (as on our last trip to Russia.) or up in Montana where we have a place. My husband and our rather large family are used to me disappearing to write on vacations. 

Can you give us some ideas for creating a wonderful writing life for ourselves?

        – This is the subject of my next book! (A Year of Writing Dangerously.) It’s 356 days of anecdotes and encouragement and writer’s quotes. Kind of like a party – you get to hear how all these other writers struggle and have fits over their work. It’s also about thinking like a writer, writing every day, grinding through the tough times, etc. I just sent in the final manuscript to my editor at NWL.  (Message from the Marketing Whore: it’ll be published May 2012 and author is available to come to any and all groups to talk about the book!)

Any other thoughts to share with writers?

       – Just this: when you write you’re part of a community of writers. You’re in the Writers Club – the only condition is that you write every day. Even if it’s just for ten minutes. Even if you think what you’re writing is all crap (all writers feel this way at one time or another) and you keep going because only you can write your story – and somebody out there needs to read it. ( One of the perks: You get to read as much as you want – because that’s the best way to learn to write. )

Laura's note: If you enjoy Barbara's thoughts, you may want to follow her blog at http://writingtime.typepad.com/   It is often full of inspiration, not to mention many great book recommendations!  Also check out her website at http://www.barbaraabercrombie. com.  Cherished is available now on Amazon.com and you should keep an eye open for author events featuring her at your local bookstores.

Interview with Michael Jaime Becerra

LH: Michael, how did you get interested in writing?

MJB: My mother fostered my love of books with weekly trips to the library. It didn't matter what we were reading, so long as we were reading something. Left on my own, my childhood reading diet consisted of science fiction, comic books (Frank Miller's Daredevil runs were a favorite), movie-adaptation novels, and Mad Magazine. When I was in the fourth grade, I started emulating the kind of stuff I loved to read through a contest called The Book Fair that my elementary school would hold every year. When I was in junior high, my Book Fair entry was a story about a skateboard contest in outer space. It was a poor combination of influences--Thrasher magazine, Douglas Adams, and The Last Starfighter as I recall it--but through a fortunate series of events the book placed at the County Fair that year. Seeing my book, outside of my immediate world, in a glass case with a ribbon on it, had an immediate and lasting impression on me.

LH: Was that your first success?

MJB: While the junior-high skateboard book certainly qualifies, my first published work was a poem in Mosaic, the journal edited by the undergrads at UC Riverside. That poem was about a small moment--the narrator getting a beer for his father during a football game--but the publication gave me the confidence to continue writing about the world I knew: working-class families, Southern California, the meeting of Mexican and American cultures.

LH: What kind of things do you most enjoy writing?

MJB: I write literary fiction primarily, sotries set in my native El Monte, California, though I've been known to branch out into Mexico onoccasion. I feel most comfortable when the story has a start in reality and then quickly takes on a fictional life of its own. Those are the most enjoyable moments for me, using a real-life setting in a completely fictional context.

LH: Do you have an agent? Tell us about your experiences with/without agents.

MJB: My agent took a look at my manuscript at the suggestion of a client, and I feel quite lucky that she saw the promise of my work. Arriving at the point was difficult, in some ways the most difficult part of the process because so much of it was beyond my control. I always tell people that the agents will always be there, and that they shouldn't be approached until the work is truly ready to be published. It also seems crucial that one research the agent(s) to whom they are sending work. Who else does this person represent? What sort of work do they sell on a regular basis?

LH: What are your thoughts about marketing? Do you have any great tips on how to do it well?

MJB: I think the best martketing occurs in person, meaning that an audience may be more likely to connect with a writer and that writer's work if they have a sense of honesty, approachability, and understanding from the writer. I genuinely enjoy doing public readings, meeting with reading groups, visiting classrooms, etc. From a marketing standpoint, each of these appearances is an opportunity to build one's audience, to build one's brand as well.

LH: If you could go back in time and start over, tell us one thing you have learned that would help you to succeed better/faster/with less struggle.

MJB: With my novel, I would have started out with a better sense of direction than I originally did. My first year of so was spent starting and retreating, and restarting and retreaing again. Had I sat down and outlined the opening chapters of the book, as well as doing some more defining of my characters, I feel that I could have saved myself plenty of time and trouble. For me, such planning gives me the sense of having a road map into the book.

At the same time, I think one should remain open to the unforeseeable. If the characters and their story demand something that the author did not envision for them, the author has to be open to elling the story as truly as possible.

LH: Any other thoughts to share?

MJB: Character is king, or queen, as the case may be.

Here is a sample of a novella I wrote: http://atlengthmag.com/?p=75

Here is an interview I did with Willow Springs a few years back:

http://www.ewu.edu/willowsprings/interview/becerra.html

LH: Thanks for letting us have your thoughts about writing, Michael.

Interview with Kay Murphy

LH: How did you get interested in writing?
KM: In 1963, I was in the 4th grade. I was a withdrawn, insecure child with a dysfunctional family and a father who was dying. On every report card since 1st grade, I’d been criticized by my teachers for being “too shy.” Mrs. Walton, however, was a kind and maternal teacher who tried to encourage everyone in one way or another. That year, she taught us how to write dialogue correctly (in terms of punctuation), then she gave us an assignment to “write a story.” We had to include dialogue and it had to be punctuated correctly. (No ditto sheets for Mrs. W!) My story was several pages long. It was about a lonely, shy boy who uses parts in his dad’s garage to build a robot. It had humor and pathos, action and resolution, a beginning, a middle and an end. Mrs. Walton enjoyed it so much, she asked me if she could read it to the class. All these years later, I can still hear her voice—she had a Southern accent—reading it aloud. I can still feel the burn in my cheeks of embarrassment—and the thrill in my heart later when kids in my class said they liked it. I did something right for a change. I did something good for a change. I did something special and not something stupid. I had value as a person. I could create. Mrs. Walton told me that day, “You could be a writer.” I clung to her words like a life preserver in a vast turbulent sea.

I came home that day and told my mother, “I know what I want to be when I grow up. I want to be a writer.” Her response was, “Not everyone can be a writer….” So I didn’t get much support from her. Until my first book was published when I was 26. The day it came out, she bought four copies from four different bookstores. Talk about vindication and validation….

LH: What was your first success?
KM: When I was 21, I entered a writing contest sponsored by Decision, an international magazine with a circulation of six million. (Not bad for 1975.) I won third place (out of thousands of entries), and my story was published in the magazine. In addition, I was invited to attend a writers conference. My first writers conference… sigh… that’s when everything good began to break wide open in my writing. I learned how to write query letters, book proposals, and I learned all the basic marketing do’s and don’t’s.

LH: What kind of books or articles do you most enjoy writing?
KM: I enjoy writing nonfiction. I love reading fiction, but I’m too self-conscious, too self-absorbed to get outside myself enough to create interesting characters. I leave that to the professionals. I like to write pieces that involve universal human experiences, and I like to try, in my writing, to offer hope to those who navigating rough waters. (And I like ocean metaphors.)

LH: Do you have an agent? Tell us about your experiences with/without agents.
KM: Honestly, I have resented the idea of having to have an agent ever since I started writing 30 years ago. If a writer can’t represent herself—if she can’t say, ‘This is what my book is about, and here’s a sample of my writing,’ she may be in the wrong business. I sold my first book on my own—when I was 23. But when I wrote the second book—a True Crime/Memoir (because I discovered my great-grandmother had poisoned a number of people and may have been America’s first female serial killer)—I realized there were publishing houses that wouldn’t consider an “unsolicited” manuscript. So I found an agent who “loved” my manuscript—even though she admitted she’d only read the first few pages and ‘didn’t have time to read the rest’—who ‘presented’ the book proposal by simply emailing some publishers she knew with “Granny was a serial killer’ in the subject line. When she didn’t sell the manuscript in three months, she sent me an email apologizing and offering to let me out of our contract—an opportunity I promptly took her up on. (The book, Tainted Legacy, is now in print.)

LH: What are your thoughts about marketing? Do you have any great tips on how to do it well?
KM: The secret to effective marketing is knowing your audience. And let me just say, anyone who writes a book these days will need to do her own marketing. Unless your name is immediately recognized in literary circles, your book is not going to sell unless you sell it. Now let me be a heretic (my review “nickname” on Amazon is “Heretic”) and say that you should never, ever write a book with the idea in mind, “What is my target audience?” Magazine, newspaper, online writing, yes, you should. But if you have a book in your heart, just sit down at the keyboard and bring it forth; put all the ‘what ifs’ out of your head. For most writers, getting the first draft finished—all the way to the last page—is the toughest task they’ll face. Once it’s polished and published, you can begin to think about who you’d like to read it. If you write a book about business, contact local business groups, chambers of commerce, and other business organizations. Ask to be a guest speaker. If you write a novel that’s historical fiction, contact the museums and history clubs in your area and ask if you can come talk about the book. Marketing should be an ever-widening circle; create a fan base in your local area and it will eventually ripple out.

LH: If you could go back in time and start over, tell us one thing you have learned that would help you to succeed better/faster/with less struggle.
KM: At the risk of waxing philosophical here, I don’t think we can succeed with less struggle. Every success requires sacrifice. Every step forward results in some loss of energy, some part of ourselves given over to the desire to gain ground. Having said that, I will repeat what my buddy and fellow writer Douglas Clegg (The Hour Before Dark) told me years ago: A writer’s biggest challenge is overcoming self-doubt. If I’d had more support and encouragement early on, if I’d had the courage to keep sending things out despite the number of rejections, I know I would have been more prolific.

LH: Any other thoughts to share?
KM: Don’t give up. Don’t stop writing. If you read something you’ve written and it touches you, don’t ever let anyone make you feel inadequate as a writer. Write every day—even if it’s journal writing—and read every day. Send your work out constantly. When my kids were small, I wrote my first children’s story because my son said he couldn’t find anything ‘scary’ to read. He liked “Wolf Cry,” the story I wrote for him, so I sent it out to Child Life magazine. It was promptly rejected. For two years, I kept getting that story back and sending it out again—like a paper Frisbee game. Finally, when I’d exhausted all the children’s magazines, a friend suggested I send it back to Child Life. “After all,” she said, “chances are someone else is now the ‘first reader,’ and the manuscript might just get passed on.” She was right. I sent it again—and it just happened to arrive when the editors were planning a wolf-themed issue. The lesson here is that a rejection is not a statement about the quality of your writing. Write that on a Post-it note and stick it on your mirror. And chant it as a mantra: “A rejection is not a statement about the quality of my writing.”

INTERVIEW with CAMILLE MINICHINO/aka MARGARET GRACE

LH: How did you get interested in writing?
CM: At my liberal arts college, I was told I should do everything – be a Renaissance woman!
So I majored in math, got a PhD in physics, and thought – it's time to be a novelist.

LH: So, what was your first success?
CM: It was a "back page" piece in Ms. Magazine, on both partners keeping their names when they marry. (The piece is on my website, http://www.minichino.com)

LH: What kind of books or articles do you most enjoy writing?
CM: I love it all. I've written 13 mysteries, countless first person essays, blogs, a self-help book, short stories …

LH: Do you have an agent? Tell us about your experiences with/without agents.
CM: My first two novels were published by a small press, Avalon. After that, I found it easier to get an agent. I’ve been with my agent now for 11 books.

LH: What are the advantages and disadvantages to working with a small press?CM: The advantage is a lot of personal attention from your editors. The disadvantage is you don’t get a wide distribution: your press is a little fish in a big pond and you feel like that too.

LH: What are your thoughts about marketing? Do you have any great tips on how to do it well?
CM: Who knows? I do all the things the publishers suggest: website, blogging, visiting bookstores and libraries, courting a niche market, and social networking. So far, no one I know has been able to make a correlation between any of these and sales.

LH: How did you get the ideas for your two series of books?
CM: I'm a retired physicist, so the periodic table was a natural! And I've always loved and worked on dollhouses, so the second series was a natural too.

LH: If you could go back in time and start over, tell us one thing you have learned that would help you to succeed better/faster/with less struggle.
CM: Other than be born to rich, educated parents who were in the publishing business … again, who knows?

LH: Any other thoughts to share?
CM: For me the payoff is meeting with readers, hearing from people who've gotten something from my work, whether it's a bit of information, a chuckle, or a connection of some kind. Publishing one's writing is not for the weak. You have to be very persistent, bounce back after rejections, and – often – keep a day job. Fortunately I love my day jobs (teaching and scientific editing), so I'm not stressed out (well, not too much) when things don't gel quickly enough.
My three words of advice would be: KEEP AT IT.

INTERVIEW WITH MELISSA HART

LH: How did you get interested in writing?
MH: My mother was a writer, and there were always books and manuscripts lying around the house. She’d get up early and write in her converted garage. Seeing my interest, she taught me to use her electric typewriter and bought me a copy of Writers’ Market. I wrote a truly awful short story about a girl in a mental institution who befriends a white tiger cub, and sent it off to Seventeen Magazine. Needless to say, it did not get accepted for publication.

LH: What was your first success?
MH: At fifteen, I had a short story titled “No Paper Airplanes Flew” in a national kids’ magazine called Scholastic Voice. It was a fictionalized account of a substitute teacher who’d just undergone a radical mastectomy, and how her recounting of the experience tamed an unruly class of junior high students. (I was one of the unruly students.) Scholastic Voice paid me $50, and I felt like a real writer.

LH: What kind of books or articles do you most enjoy writing?
MH: I love writing literary memoir and essays that inspire readers to think about subjects—owls, adoption, lesbian mothers—in a new and different way.

LH: Do you have an agent? Tell us about your experiences with/without agents.
MH: My agent, Michele Andelman, left Andrea Brown Literary agency directly after selling my memoir, Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood. At the moment, I’m actively looking for a new literary agent. Michele approached my writing with insight and helped me to shape Gringa into something that would appeal to editors. I miss her!

LH: What are your thoughts about marketing? Do you have any great tips on how to do it well?
MH: If you can write short articles and essays for magazines and newspapers, whether related to the topic of your manuscript or not, this is a terrific way to get your name out there. Most editors ask for an author bio, in which you can include the name of your book and your contact information. I also love to teach at writers’ conferences, where I can network with other writers, plus agents and editors.


LH: If you could go back in time and start over, tell us one thing you have learned that would help you to succeed better/faster/with less struggle.
MH: I would have asked my professors in my undergraduate and graduate programs for advice on how to begin submitting my shorter and book-length pieces to editors and agents. Believe it or not, I used to be shy, and I didn’t take advantage of my teachers as resources. After earning my Master of Fine Arts degree, I knew how to write, but I had to teach myself the business of publishing.

LH: Any other thoughts to share?
MH: It may sound shallow, but I’ve taken for my motto one used by Ben and Jerry of gourmet ice cream fame. “If it’s not fun, why do it?”
I try to write what I love, what’s fun for me to craft. Even when I’m working on a particularly tedious writing project, I try to change my attitude about it so that it’s pleasurable. If this involves consuming large quantities of chocolate, so be it.
LH: Sounds great to me! Thanks for your thoughts, Melissa.

Interview with Gordon Grice

LH: Gordon, how did you get interested in writing?

GG: As I soon as I learned to read, I heard narration unfolding in my head. I knew I’d be a writer.

LH: What was your first success?

GG: My first publication was a prose-poem in a literary magazine called Xanadu.

LH: What kind of books or articles do you most enjoy writing?

GG: I like writing that’s beautiful and frightening at the same time, and that’s what I try to achieve in my own work. My best work is about the natural world.

LH: Do you have an agent? Tell us about your experiences with/without agents.

GG: Before I met my agent, I thought of myself as an artistic sort of writer, doomed to make my living at a day job while scribbling on the side. My big accomplishments were publishing a chapbook of poetry, having a couple of my songs played in a night club, and getting paid $50 for an essay in a litmag.
That all changed when Harper’s reprinted one of my essays from a litmag. It was only days after Harper’s hit the stands that a stranger named Elyse Cheney phoned. She asked if I had any ideas for a nonfiction book.
“Well, I have some essays,” I said.
“I was thinking of something more focused,” she said. She grilled me about my writing and my experiences, and before we hung up we’d hashed out a general idea for a book of essays about animals with some philosophical subtext. Over the next few months, we developed a pitch and a few sample chapters. I really had no idea how to build a pitch, because it had never occurred to me to write a nonfiction book. I’d actually pinned my hopes on finishing a novel. I outlined 31 chapters about the animals I’d encountered in the countryside where I grew up. Elyse told me to cut it down to the seven most exciting ones. We called it The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators.
A week after I sent Elyse the finished pitch, she called to tell me she’d sold it for six figures. After I applied the defibrillator to myself, I told her I was amazed it all happened so fast.
“That’s why you have an agent,” she said.

LH: What are your thoughts about marketing? Do you have any great tips on howto do it well?

GG: The biggest difference between successful writers and unsuccessful ones isn’t talent, but perseverance. My best advice is to keep going. I had a story chosen for Best of the ‘Net a couple of years back that had been rejected 62 times. I kept revising it and sending it back out.
More important, though, persevere with your writing. While you’re waiting to hear about one piece, write a couple more. Always be writing. Besides making you a better writer, it will give you more stuff to send out and thus improve your odds in the marketplace. It will also give you a more realistic sense of the relative strengths of your pieces. Some writers send out one piece, get a rejection, and feel too demoralized to go on. I say, send out a piece, then forget about it and write something better before you even get word on the first one.
Don’t think of the market as a judge of your talent, because it’s not.

LH: If you could go back in time and start over, tell us one thing you have learned that would help you to succeed better/faster/with less struggle.

GG: I’d have written more. When I as young I was easily frustrated. I’d put stories aside because I couldn’t make them work or because my prose was ugly and I couldn’t get it on its feet. Now I know that the only way to get to be a good writer is to do a lot of bad writing. I’d want my younger self to apply ink to paper every chance he got, accepting that clumsy writing is nothing to be ashamed of, that it’s wholesome exercise, that every attempt at improving a line, no matter how lame the result, is a step toward some graceful line later on.

LH: Any other thoughts to share?

GG: My advice for aspiring writers is to find joy in the process. The publishing business is rarely kind to the right people, so if you are only in it for the rewards, you’d probably be happier doing something else. But if you can find the joy in the pursuit of a page that sings, you’ll have your reward, whether you succeed in publishing or not.
(BTW—For UCLA, I’m teaching a short marketplace class again this summer, among other things: https://www.uclaextension.edu/fos/Writing.aspx )

LH: I sure enjoyed your UCLA online class. Thanks for giving us your insights, Gordon.

More Writing Tips: now on Blog Writing!

Here is some great advice for writers considering creating a blog. Cheers, Laura

Re Blog writing: “Quality over quantity. It's better to post one great quality post per week than three so so posts per week. Don't pressure yourself to meet X posts per week or else it can set you up for getting stuck.” From Meryl K. Evans www.meryl.net/blog
“Please don't apologize for not writing often enough or responding to comments in the body of your blog article.” From Shirley VanScoyk http://domesticepisodes.blogspot.com
“I always listen for mention of a news item that would relate to the focus of my blog. For example, when the Attorney General spoke out concerning the reticence of others in regard to race issues, I quickly added something to my blog. My blog focuses on a man who visited the U.S. in 1912. He spoke at the 4th annual meeting of the NAACP.” From Sue Chehrenegar http://chehrenegar.blogspot.com
Several pieces of advice:
“Writing anything can seem like a big task before you start it. Why not create a blog and then write about parts of it every day / other day / whatever. If you do this long enough, then eventually you'll have completed the whole task.
Writing incrementally in a blog also exposes your writing to others and allows them to provide feedback during the process. This can be very valuable.
Just because you publish something in a blog doesn't mean that you can't go back and make changes to it - you own the blog, you can edit / revise old postings as many times as you want.
Depending on what your final goal is, a blog that has developed a following means that you have a ready made audience waiting to purchase your final product...!”
From Dr. Jim Anderson Blue Elephant Consulting www.TheBusinessOfIT.com www.TheAccidentalCommunicator.com
“Write about something for which you have passion. I once obtained a great URL on the topic of human resources for businesses. It got immediate traffic based on the URL alone. The problem was that writing about this subject bored me and I ultimately sold the blog.” From Bob Bentz www.advancedtele.com
“ You should check out copyblogger.com” From Erin Lariviere, http://www.tungle.com
“The most valuable advice I have is to keep it short and link, link, link. The linking provides context and breaks up a screen of text. Keeping it short also makes it less daunting for the reader. The reader should always be at top of mind for a blog post.” From Sean Wood www.communi-k.net

HARO Writing Tips, part 5

Hi writers,
Here is a new batch of interesting writing tips, more HARO advice with special inspiration clues! This is the page to bookmark for days when you’d be tempted to go to my friend Laura Jayne’s blog, http://desdevdys.blogspot.com/ and sink into despondency. After you take this advice, then you’ll want to go to her blog, http://picturespoetryprose.blogspot.com/ to celebrate.

“If you don't have a publisher yet, say out loud, ‘I request a Most Benevolent Outcome for finding the PERFECT publisher for my book, thank you!’ That gets your own Guardian Angel involved in assisting you, and they are only allowed to assist if you request assistance.” Tom T. Moore, http://www.thegentlewaybook.com/ .

“Lucid dreaming, or the ability to become consciously aware while in the dream state, is a fascinating, complex and reality bending subject. My advice to writers is simply this: if stuck, pay attention to your dreams!” Robert Waggoner, of the recently released, Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self (Moment Point Press, 2009).
Jill Nussinow
Sometimes I write about why I don’t want to write about whatever I need to write, which, of course, gets me writing about it. The blank screen or blank page disappears and then I am writing. I guess that you could call that “bitching to inner-self.” Jill Nussinow, http://www.theveggiequeen.com/

“Create a writer’s resume -- sometimes called a functional resume -- which differs from a traditional resume by listing your experience, skills, publications, and clients by category rather than chronologically. Or add a publications list (if you use a traditional resume) that includes the titles and other bibliographical information of your published works as well as links where they can be found. “ From Michele Dagle, Writer-Editor, Editorial Studio michele@editorialstudio.com http://editorialstudio.com/

Craft: Writers write. In the old days that meant many paper files filled with pieces, parts, thoughts and such. Some of us kept them in a writer’s journal. Today, the writer’s journal is a blog. If your goal is to make it as a writer, you must be blogging. The topic is not really that important. It is important that you put down words about something every single day. Rick Grant http://www.rickgrant.net/

Give us your favorite writing tip.

Writers out there, I'd love to hear your favorite tip about writing, whether you're just starting or have years of experience. It could be something about how to think about writing, how to think about yourself as a writer, how to get over writer's block, how to get published, how to get lots of sales, viral marketing, or whatever wisdom you'd like to pass on to other writers.

Looking forward from this winter solstice

The Solstice, the turning of the year. We just passed through the 2007 winter solstice. Even though we aren’t through with winter, the days will get longer from now until the summer solstice. Day length is a trend of cheer all though the period of quiet and cold. But the quiet season should be a time for reflection. The solstice happens at a time that feels frantic to me. But now, I feel like I have two weeks between semesters and after holiday antics, and now I hope to think over where I’ve been and where I’m going. I have decided to visualize where I’d like to be as a writer next year at this time. Perhaps you’d like to try that too!