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March 12 – Panel: Where Do Writers Get Their Ideas?

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Friday, March 12, 2021

12pm

What sparks a captivating story? Do writing ideas just appear out of nowhere? Do authors sit around waiting for great ideas to emerge, or do they systematically go out and find them?

Join five published authors as they demystify what often appears as an inexplicable black box. They will share how and where they find the inspiration for their writing, ranging from lucid dreams, people watching, historical events, and more. Bring your questions about writers’ sources of inspiration for them to answer at the end of the session.

Moderator:

Nita Sweeney is the award-winning wellness author of the running and mental health memoir, Depression Hates a Moving Target: How Running with My Dog Brought Me Back from the Brink and co-creator of the writing journal, You Should Be Writing: A Journal of Inspiration & Instruction to Keep Your Pen Moving. A long-time meditator, three-time marathoner, and former assistant to writing practice originator Natalie Goldberg, Nita founded the Facebook group Mind, Mood, and Movement to support mental well-being through meditation, exercise, and writing practice. Nita’s eBook Three Ways to Heal Your Mind is available for download.

Panelists:

Goal-setting expert Debra Eckerling is the author of Your Goal Guide: A Roadmap for Setting, Planning & Achieving Your Goals and founder of the D*E*B METHOD. Debra helps individuals and businesses figure out what they want and how to get it through one-on-one coaching, workshops, and online support. She is the founder of Write On Online, a website and community for writers, creatives, and entrepreneurs, as well as host of the #GoalChat Twitter chat and #GoalChatLive on Facebook.

 

Kate FarrellStoryteller, author, librarian Kate Farrell is the author of Story Power: Secrets to Creating, Crafting, and Telling Memorable Stories. Kate founded the Word Weaving Storytelling Project and published numerous educational materials on storytelling. She has contributed to and edited award-winning anthologies of personal narrative, Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the 60s & 70s, and Cry of the Nightbird: Writers Against Domestic Violence. 

Marlena Fiol, PhD is a world-renowned expert on why and how people change their understanding of who they are. Her significant body of published material on the topic, coupled with her own raw identity-changing experiences, makes her uniquely qualified to speak and write about deep change. Her latest book Nothing Bad Between Us: A Mennonite Missionary’s Daughter Finds Healing in Her Brokenness is a vulnerable and inspirational tale of personal transformation. Marlena lives with her husband Ed in Eugene, Oregon. To learn more, please visit marlenafiol.com.

The author of three poetry collections, a chapbook of short fiction and You Can Be a Winning Writer, a book for writers, Joan Gelfand’s work appears in national and international journals including Rattle, PANK! The Los Angeles Review of Books, Prairie Schooner, Kalliope, California Quarterly, the Toronto Review, Marsh Hawk Review and Levure Litteraire.  Her chapbook of short fiction won the Cervena Barva Fiction Award. President Emeritus of the Women’s National Book Association, a member of the National Book Critics Circle and California Writers Club, Joan coaches writers. Joan’s novel, Extreme, set in a Silicon Valley startup, was published by Blue Light Press in July, 2020.

Title: Panel: Where Do Writers Get Their Ideas?

When: Friday, March 12, 12pm PT

Where: Zoom (Zoom link provided via email when you RSVP)

Unable to attend? No worries. Register anyway and receive the replay!

Click the button below to RSVP for the panel discussion; we are limited to 100 total attendees, so please let us know early!

 

 

Writing Memoir Is Not for the Faint of Heart by Marlena Fiol

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Therapy is supposed to help, right?

Meditation is supposed to help, right?

Being on a spiritual path is supposed to help, right?

Then why am I still so afraid of being judged?

It’s scary to write a memoir that includes my many embarrassing failures as well as my hard-won successes. It’s even scarier to put it out there into the world.

In just the weeks since my book, Nothing Bad Between Us: A Mennonite Missionary’s Daughter Finds Healing in Her Brokenness,  was released by Mango Publishing, I have received many Amazon and Goodreads reviews, as well as personal notes from readers. 

Some of them are humbling:

“I just finished reading your book. It is a very compelling story that I did not want to put down- A very honest and courageous book. You have “dredged up for public consumption” your internal demons and allowed yourself to be vulnerable. That is a huge gift to all of us.”

Some are funny:

“My dog hated Marlena Fiol’s Nothing Bad Between Us.  She is usually quite tolerant of my reading choices because she knows she can easily distract me, and I will put down my reading to tend to her every whim. Once I began Nothing Bad Between Us, however, I was a goner. I simply had to finish the story of Marlena’s childhood.”

As I write this, I have twenty-eight 5-star reviews on Amazon, some of them from people I know and many of them from strangers. I know the negative reviews will come. 

They always do. 

I’m already experiencing silence from some of my relatives. I’m afraid that they’re shaking their heads, judging me, just like both my parents and my childhood Mennonite church community judged me fifty years ago.

It’s frightening to put myself out there vulnerably with all of the shame that I used to associate with my past. And even after lots of self-help training, this kind of naked vulnerability still triggers within me powerful feelings of embarrassment and humiliation.

And then I remind myself of an important truth: People’s reactions to my book reflect more about who they are than about who I am, as I have shared openly in this published story of my life. Their responses to the book give me glimpses into who they are – just as surely as I’ve given them a glimpse into who I am. 

When my readers send notes of gratitude and empathy, they reveal their own open and grateful hearts. When they respond with silence or judgment, these reactions may indeed express their very real concerns about me. At the same time, they also expose their own fears and anxieties.

In a large-scale study that appeared in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers found significant evidence of this type of projection: A person’s tendency to describe others in positive terms was consistently an important indicator of the positivity of the person’s own personality. There were strong associations between how positively people judged their peers and how enthusiastic, happy, and emotionally stable they described themselves to be, and were described by others as being. Similarly, the level of negativity the raters used to describe others overwhelmingly reflected their own unhappy, disagreeable, or other negative personality traits.

What I found especially remarkable is that this correlation was highly stable over time. The researchers followed up to find out how the raters in their study evaluated their peers again one year later and found compelling evidence for the same patterns. 

These findings point to two important lessons for me:

  1. I must follow Don Miguel Ruiz’s second Agreement: Don’t Take Anything Personally. The many shortcomings and failures I describe in my book serve as a testimony to my imperfections and my brokenness. But my story also shows the possibility for redemption and healing. It is my gift to the world, and I cannot take too personally how specific individuals receive that gift.

  2. Maybe more importantly, I must follow Don Miguel Ruiz’s fourth Agreement: Always Do Your Best. Far too often I, too, unconsciously use others as projected mirror images. When I critically judge someone, more than anything else, I am reflecting a state of dissatisfaction within myself, stemming from my own feelings of fear or inadequacy. I must do my best to see my own failings with compassion and forgiveness so as not to splatter them all over others. 

We do not see the world as it is, we see the world as we are. —The Talmud

As a consultant and professor of strategic management, Marlena Fiol, PhD, guided her students and clients in coming to know themselves deeply, visualizing their dreams and identifying and removing the barriers to achieve them. Over half of her 85 published articles and books relate to identity and identity change. Her work has been cited over 20,000 times.

Today, as a blogger, essayist, novelist and memoirist, Fiol is still engaged in a similar mission. Every blog, essay, book or workshop provides an opportunity to explore who we are and what’s possible in our lives. Her new book Nothing Bad Between Us: A Mennonite Missionary’s Daughter Finds Healing in Her Brokenness (Mango Publishing, 2020) is a vulnerable and inspirational tale of personal transformation. She was raised in Paraguay on a leprosy station, and today lives with her husband in Eugene, Oregon.

You Made the News! Now What? by Nita Sweeney

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by Nita Sweeney, award-winning author of Depression Hates a Moving Target and coauthor of You Should Be Writing

A media outlet interviewed you. Congratulations!!

Contributing to articles is a fabulous way to become a well-respected expert in your field!

But once the article goes live, your work isn’t over.

First, share it all around.

I’m so grateful to have landed with Mango Publishing Group. My editor and their social media coordinator share pretty much anything I send their way. So my first step is to send a link to any new piece to them.

Tweet the link and tag anyone else in the piece, including the publication and especially the journalist who wrote it.

Post on Facebook. If you have a business page, start there, but there’s rarely harm in sharing to your personal page at a different time for more visibility. If your friends won’t celebrate your success, why are they your friends? Don’t overdo the promo, of course. But people want to know what’s going on and might be interested enough to share the article.

Also post in any Facebook groups that allow promotional links. Find ones that are the right fit for you and your topic. I belong to many groups but also started my own wellness group where I share relevant information.

Are you on LinkedIn? That’s where the biz folks are. If there’s any business angle post it there.

Pin to a board on Pinterest. Create a board for a specific topic or a “Where I’m Quoted” or “Featured Ins” or some other catchy title related to your topic. Things pinned on Pinterest have a very long shelf-life.

Instagram allows you to use Link Tree to create a link in your bio where you can add articles, social media platforms, and your website since Instagram only allows one link. Post a photo from the article,  preferably the one closest to your quote, then say the link to the article is in your bio.

Don’t forget other relevant organizations. Would the piece interest your high school, college, or professional association? Send it all around.

Hashtags

Be sure to find relevant hashtags because that’s how strangers find articles on social media. Check out Frances Caballo’s excellent post on hashtags for authors. Sometimes that’s what you’ll want, but if your feature covers more than writing, use a hashtag appropriate for your topic. Tons of articles cover hashtags. Here’s one I like. Choose hashtags for the correct social media channel. Popular Twitter hashtags may not trend on Instagram.

Blog It

If you’re new to this process, you could blog about the experience of pitching to a journalist and doing the interview. Write about moving forward with a more involved marketing strategy. Or blog about your topic and link to the piece. Be sure to use the WordPress plugin Yoast or another search engine optimization (SE)) tool. I love Yoast because it removes the guesswork.

Email It

Do you have an email newsletter? It’s lovely to include a link to this new “featured in” with your next newsletter. If you were quoted at length, send the whole quote as the newsletter content with a quick “Not sure you saw this” note. People subscribed to your newsletter because they want to stay in touch.

In the News Page

If it’s your first interview, now’s the time to start an “In the News” page on your website where you collect these things. Leave it as a draft at first, until you collect a few, but have them all in one place on your site.

Save It

And do save a pdf of it. In Chrome you can “print” to “save as pdf.” I do that with every article. Sometimes articles disappear and you want to save it for posterity.

Go you!

An earlier version of this post appeared on Nita’s blog.

Nita Sweeney is co-author with Brenda Knight of the writing journal, You Should Be Writing: A Journal of Inspiration and Instruction to Keep Your Pen Moving. Nita’s running and mental health memoir, Depression Hates a Moving Target: How Running with My Dog Brought Me Back from the Brink, won the Dog Writers Association of America Award in the Human/Animal Bond and was short-listed for the William Faulkner—William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition Award. Nita’s articles, essays, and poetry have appeared in many magazines, journals, books, and blogs. She writes her own blog, Bum Glue, publishes the monthly e-newsletter, Write Now Columbus, and coaches creatives on writing and meditation in Natalie Goldberg style “writing practice.” Nita has been featured widely across media outlets about writing, running, meditation, mental health, and pet care. When she’s not writing or coaching, Nita runs and races. She has completed three full marathons, twenty-seven half marathons (in eighteen states), and more than one hundred shorter races. She lives in central Ohio with her husband and biggest fan, Ed, and their yellow Labrador running partner, Scarlet, the #ninetyninepercentgooddog. You can contact Nita via her website or follow her on your favorite social media channel.

Why Enter Writing Contests? by B. Lynn Goodwin

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You polish your writing, imagining your audience. You read it over. Out loud. Does it say exactly what you want it to say? You have a friend read it to you. Impressed, she says, “You should submit this to contests. Put yourself out there. Get some recognition for your work.”

Maybe you leap at the idea. Maybe you hesitate. After all, it’s more work. Besides, it makes you feel vulnerable. There’s almost always a fee and you’re guaranteed nothing. Why bother with contests when the judge isn’t an agent or editor who could take you on as a client? 

I’ve run contests for Writer Advice, www.writeradvice.com since 2006 and for the Women’s National Book Association since 2019. I’ve been a judge for Story Circle Network and a NorCal organization seeking local books. I’ve seen a huge range, and this organization gets polished submissions. Their award will carry prestige. 

Placing in a writing contest is a huge boost to your work. You all know that acceptances mater. No need to elaborate on that. Here are some other perks you might get: 

  • It gives you a chance to see how your work fares in the world. 
  • It gives you exposure.  Contest judges know people. Maybe they’ll make a referral to an agent.
  • Contest winners usually get published. Published online? Share the link with agents, editors, and anyone who might be interested. 
  • Winners get paid. That’s usually the reason that contests charge fees. Those who run the contests need to cover expenses.  
  • The biggest payment, though, is the boost to your self-esteem. Who couldn’t use a little of that?
  • There’s also the matter of name recognition. Wouldn’t you like to be Caitlin Contestant, winner of WNBA-SF’s Effie Lee Morris Contest? 

Wouldn’t you like to share your story with the world? Contests can help you do that. This year’s judges are eager to read your work. Learn more at https://wnba-sfchapter.org/2021-effie-lee-morris-contest-get-ready/. We’ll be accepting submissions until April 1, 2021.

B. Lynn Goodwin

Lynn Goodwin owns Writer Advice,www.writeradvice.com. Her YA novel, Talent, republished on November 1, 2020 by Koehler Books, won some awards. She’s editing the sequel, Ground Rules. Her memoir, Never Too Late: From Wannabe to Wife at 62 also won awards. Visit https://writeradvice.com/books-by-lynn/.

Her flash fiction has been published in Flashquake, Nebo, Cabinet of Heed, Murmur of Words,100-Word Stories, and Ariel’s Dream. Other works have appeared in Hip Mama, The Sun, GoodHousekeeping.com, PurpleClover.com, and elsewhere. She is an editor as well as a writer. She lives her energizer-bunny husband and their exceptional terrier.

Holiday Storytelling for Children by Kate Farrell

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This holiday season many families will celebrate with relatives miles apart. Though we may gather online in group video conferencing calls, we won’t see one another face to face. Even if some live close by, many families will prefer to visit outdoors with safe and limited social distancing for a brief interaction or to exchange gifts.

This year, children might find the holidays strange and unsettling, but we can make this a holiday to remember with simple, creative, storytelling activities. Use the quality time we do have during the holidays to share stories, playful make-believe stories with puppets, or tell stories about the good old days when you were young.

PUPPET STORIES

Young children have their own stories to tell. When creating original stories, their unique imaginations will often communicate what they cannot say—if we listen. Providing a safe space and time for the children’s story making, not only develops oral language, it offers an insight into their own points of view: What characters and situations do they create in their make believe world?

You might guide them with a story starter, like “Once upon a time,” or “One day.” But once they begin their open-ended story, listen with acceptance and enjoyment. You might encourage them to continue by asking, “What happened next?” And they may need help ending the story with a stock phrase, such as “And that’s the way my story ends.”

Wooden spoon puppets can create holiday magic. You may think that wooden spoons are only for stirring gingerbread dough, but they can just as easily stir up a good folktale or creative drama. With a handful of inexpensive, wooden spoons and a selection of non-permanent color markers, decide on the characters needed to enact a favorite folktale, like “The Gingerbread Man,”  “Three Little Pigs,” or “The Three Billy Goats Gruff.” Then draw the facial features and color the skin of the creature or character. Read the folktale over a few times for its basic action, but once the wooden spoons take off, the story might stir up a different kind of trouble in your children’s hands.

Create a series of stories using action figures, telling in tandem with your child. A special holiday gift this year might be action figures from a movie or TV series. Enter into the fun by pretending to be one of them and act out a story with your child.

For example, when my son was in pre-school, he became captivated by the wildly popular ad campaign of the California Raisins, based on a make-believe rhythm and blues band with the popular song, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” The Raisins promoted a healthy snack in a series of Claymation TV commercials with fantastic, but hip adventures. We did have a few of their action figures and enjoyed eating raisins.

One night at bedtime, we started to tell original stories about the California Raisins getting into scrapes of one kind or another. The Raisins were definitely on the wild side: car chases, catching ghosts, and mountain climbing. My son and I would take turns trading Raisin episodes, some of them outrageous.

The same can be true for a favorite puppet. Ask the young child to describe the puppet’s personality, maybe its unique voice, or special powers. Give the puppet a name and ask it to tell its story. If there is another puppet, they could develop an action story together.

Tips for Telling: It’s important is to honor story characters your child finds interesting, whether they originate from a folktale, cartoon, or other media. Accepting the child’s imagination is one way to bridge the cultural gap between generations. Telling a fantasy story, back and forth, is a way for you to enter into your child or grandchild’s world as a co-creator.

YOUR CHILDHOOD HOLIDAY STORIES

Telling your own childhood memories can be among the most important stories you tell. Children love to hear about your adventures and how they turned out. It deepens the bond of shared experience, since the child identifies with you and is vicariously involved. He may ask you to tell certain stories again and again—a clue to how he/she most clearly connects with your life.

The personal story is excellent device for bridging generations and reaching out to other family members. Ask grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, caregivers, and siblings to participate.

Tips for Telling: Set aside a quiet time to reflect on a real life incident from your childhood. Close your eyes and pinpoint an age, perhaps the current age of your child or grandchild. Focus on a time during the holidays. As random images and fragments rise to the surface, choose one that is a real story with a beginning, middle, and end.

These questions might help trigger a memory:

  • What was your favorite holiday gift as a child?
  • What are some of your favorite holiday traditions and why?
  • What are some of the different places you have spent the holidays?
  • What do you like to eat the best during the holidays and why?
  • Did you have a holiday adventure?
  • What was the most memorable holiday in your childhood? What happened?

When you have found the story incident, live through it again and open your eyes. You may want to replay the event more than once. As you do, recollect all sense impressions vividly. Hear, see, smell, taste, feel all the sights, sounds, objects of your experience. Feel the emotions once more. Rehearse the dialogue. Find a quiet time to tell the story with a special setting or time of the day.

Make this a holiday to remember!

Kate Farrell, storyteller, author, librarian, founded the Word Weaving Storytelling Project and published numerous educational materials on storytelling. She has contributed to and edited award-winning anthologies of personal narrative. Farrell’s new book, a timely how-to guide on the art of storytelling for adults, Story Power: Secrets to Creating, Crafting, and Telling Memorable Stories, was released in June 2020. Recently, Farrell presented workshops for adults on the art of storytelling at the San Francisco Public Library, Mechanics Institute, and the San Francisco Writers Conference. Kate is now offering virtual workshops for libraries and writing groups, as well as performing virtually as a storyteller.

Website: https://katefarrell.net/

Blog: https://storytellingforeveryone.net/

Family Storytelling for the Holidays by Kate Farrell

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This year, more than ever, as we gather around a tree, table, or screen, we can comfort one another with fond memories—a gift of continuity and hope.

Often, however, the memories we share with family members are fragmented and fluid, without a clear purpose in their telling. We might ignore significant family stories from the past or neglect to add more recent experiences. Over time, family tales can become random, superficial—their meaning lost. 

Yet our family stories, once shaped into memorable forms, can still be saved and passed down through the generations. Just as pre-literate tribes shared a common sense of identity, history, and values in their stories, so we can discover exciting, new ways to both preserve and create a family tradition of storytelling.

Family stories matter. Family stories directly impact how we see ourselves because they give us an idea of where we come from and where we’re going. Each family story is a pattern in a patchwork quilt of many colors and fabrics. Like the all the pieces in a multi-colored, homemade quilt, our family stories are a combination of the cultures, histories, and traditions we’ve inherited. 

And just like an embracing quilt, our stories bring us comfort: They give us a sense of belonging and create a core identity that can be a great source of empowerment. Sharing family stories can give our children an emerging sense of self, both as individuals and as members of a family. Family members overall can enjoy higher self-esteem and greater resilience—because they are able to draw from a deep, ancestral identity and contribute to it.

If we don’t preserve our family legacy through its central narratives, we will lose it by default. Each generation will be defined by the mainstream media—and given a superficial group identity: boomers, millennials, Gen X or Z.

Family Folklore

Family folklore is a ragbag collection of true stories and traditions gathered from the remembered experiences of generations—past and present. It is transmitted through the art of storytelling, either in person or recorded. Storytelling is the main difference between family folklore and the study of genealogy or family history—those record data and information of the past. Family folklore is the age-old custom of passing down stories by word of mouth from one generation to the next. Since family folklore exists as part of the day-to-day life of a family, it is always changing and growing.

Family folklore is both traditional and evolving. It belongs to the entire family, to all the branches in the family tree, and everyone participates in it. Each generation forgets or changes the stories told by the previous generation and, at the same time, adds new stories and lore. In our modern times, with its rapid social and technological change, we might believe the previous generation lived in an entirely different historical era. Yet the lessons of their stories can have as much or greater value to the newer generations. 

Collecting family folklore can be a daunting project that could require direct and wide-ranging family engagement. To be practical, you might want to collect, frame, and tell stories from limited sources to share with your closest family members. Even so, preserving past stories is only half the picture. You’ll need to keep your eyes, ears, and mind open to record the stories and lore as they are unfolding. 

New traditions are as valid as those that existed for generations. So, even if your focus is just your branch of the family tree, and limited to those family members who live nearby, you’ll need to develop a manageable approach: how to organize lore from the past as well as new traditions and stories from an ever-changing present.

As you reflect on your own family memories and how to retrieve them as stories, you’ll increase your ability to recall them in greater detail. You’ll develop a sense of remembered place and people, enhanced sensory images, and clarity of dialogue. Once you connect to the story making process, you’ll be more able to guide other family members in interviews and recordings.

Unavoidably, you’ll develop your unique point of view, your historical perspective of family events. But be aware that your impressions are only the starting point. Family members can often have an entirely different take on the same event and widely divergent opinions of a family member. Invite members to tell their versions.

Nevertheless, continue to begin with your own memories and refine them in an ongoing process:

  • Stretch your family memories into past decades
  • Open your mind to new perspectives 
  • Test your information or interview relatives to verify
  • Identify your gaps in information
  • Collect new generational stories
  • Become aware of new traditions today

Make this a holiday season to remember!

Kate Farrell, storyteller, author, librarian, founded the Word Weaving Storytelling Project and published numerous educational materials on storytelling. She has contributed to and edited award-winning anthologies of personal narrative. Farrell’s new book, a timely how-to guide on the art of storytelling for adults, Story Power: Secrets to Creating, Crafting, and Telling Memorable Stories, was released in June 2020. Recently, Farrell presented workshops for adults on the art of storytelling at the San Francisco Public Library, Mechanics Institute, and the San Francisco Writers Conference. Kate is now offering virtual workshops for libraries and writing groups, as well as performing virtually as a storyteller.

Website: https://katefarrell.net/

Blog: https://storytellingforeveryone.net/

The Power of the “To Write” List: List-Making as a Writing Prompt Tool

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by Nita Sweeney, award-winning author of Depression Hates a Moving Target and coauthor of You Should Be Writing

You’ve heard of the “To Do” list, but what about the “To Write” list? It can be a powerful tool in your writing kit.

• The Back of the Writing Journal

I learned about “To Write” lists from best-selling author Natalie Goldberg, of Writing Down the Bones fame. As I sat in the classroom at Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, New Mexico, I watched her pick up her writing journal, flip to the back, and show us a list of scrawled topics she’d penned on the final page. She carried a notebook everywhere and jotted ideas on the back page as they occurred to her. “If I’m stuck, I look at these,” she said.

While I’d read about these lists in Natalie’s books, to see the real thing left quite an impression.

I began to do as she did and still carry a notebook at all times. When I’m at a loss for a writing topic, I flip to the back, pick one, and go!

• List-Making Exercises

But what really stuck with me were the list-making exercises Natalie led. 

In her strong Brooklyn accent, Nat might say, “Tell me every lunch you’ve ever eaten. Ten minutes. Go!” Off we would jump, deep into the pages of our writing journals, pens flying as we wrote about chicken cordon bleu, pasta primavera, and French fries with ketchup.

To the fiction writers, she suggested writing these lists from the point of view of a character. “Tell me everything Hester Prynne ever ate.”

The topics Natalie offered varied, but here are a few of my favorites:

  • The things I carry (a spin-off from The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien).
  • Write the name of every place you’ve ever been
  • List every member of your family
  • Make a list of everyone you’ve ever met
  • Write the names of all your pets
  • Describe every car you’ve ever owned and tell what happened to it
  • Write a list of every home in which you have lived
  • List all your loves
  • Tell me everything you know about the color blue (or the sky or a rock)

 

• Now Dive!

In the next writing session, Natalie would ask us to choose one thing from our list and drop into that. 

“Go as deep as you can,” she would say, reminding us that specificity and sensory detail is key to painting a picture in the reader’s mind.

• Be Flexible

When you begin, you might fill your allotted writing time with the list itself. But as you grow more comfortable with the list-making process, you might allow your mind to naturally land on one thing, perhaps related to your current project, and delve into that. Either method works.

• Priming the Pump

The point of these exercises is to bypass the anxiety many writers face. Call it writer’s block or procrastination or sheer terror. Regardless of the name, the solution is the same—get the pen moving.

Making a list tricks that part of the mind that fears writing is too complicated or exhausting into just starting. It primes the pump. You begin by jotting down “Fido, Rover, and Spot,” and before your brain has time to panic, you’re writing about how your mother carried three black and white rat terrier puppies in a wicker basket around your family farm.

• Other Benefits

Even if you don’t face the dreaded writing paralysis, list-making can help you access new material or provide insight on subjects you thought you had already covered in detail. Any new angle to enter the mind will prove useful.

Do you use “To Write” lists? I’d love to hear how they work for you!

An earlier version of this post appeared on Nita’s blog, Bum Glue.

Nita Sweeney is co-author with Brenda Knight of the writing journal, You Should Be Writing: A Journal of Inspiration and Instruction to Keep Your Pen Moving. Nita’s running and mental health memoir, Depression Hates a Moving Target: How Running with My Dog Brought Me Back from the Brink, won the Dog Writers Association of America Award in the Human/Animal Bond and was short-listed for the William Faulkner—William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition Award. Nita’s articles, essays, and poetry have appeared in many magazines, journals, books, and blogs. She writes her own blog, Bum Glue, publishes the monthly e-newsletter, Write Now Columbus, and coaches creatives on writing and meditation in Natalie Goldberg style “writing practice.” Nita has been featured widely across media outlets about writing, running, meditation, mental health, and pet care. When she’s not writing or coaching, Nita runs and races. She has completed three full marathons, twenty-seven half marathons (in eighteen states), and more than one hundred shorter races. She lives in central Ohio with her husband and biggest fan, Ed, and their yellow Labrador running partner, Scarlet, the #ninetyninepercentgooddog. You can contact Nita via her website or follow her on your favorite social media channel.

November 11 – National Novel Writing Month – Now that You’ve Begun, How Do You Keep Going?

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WNBA-SF Lunch n’ Learn

Wednesday, November 11, 2020 at Noon PT

National Novel Writing Month – Now that You’ve Begun, How Do You Keep Going?

Congratulations! You’ve taken the huge step of signing up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and you’re in the throes of writing your novel.

But what happens if (when?) the exuberant exhilaration wears off? How do you keep going? 

Don’t panic! Whether it’s your first Nano or your fifteenth, time-tested methods will help you keep going once that initial excitement wanes. 

Join award-winning author, writing and meditation coach, and fourteen-time NaNoWriMo winner Nita Sweeney for a lunch n’ learn full of tips to carry you through November and across the NaNoWriMo finish line. Nita’s first book, the running and mental health memoir, Depression Hates a Moving Target: How Running with My Dog Brought Me Back from the Brink was a multi-year NaNoWriMo project. Her second book, You Should Be Writing: A Journal of Inspiration & Instruction to Keep Your Pen Moving, coauthored with Brenda Knight, offers author wisdom to help you on your NaNoWriMo journey.

In this workshop Nita will discuss:

  • Using candy-bar scenes to stay motivated
  • How community can help (or hinder) your progress
  • The role of writing “fuel”
  • The importance of maintaining your writing “machine”
  • Structures to manage time and emotion
  • And much more!

Title: National Novel Writing Month – Now that You’ve Begun, How Do You Keep Going?

When: Wednesday, November 11, 12pm PT

Where: Zoom (Zoom link provided via email when you RSVP)

Click the button below to RSVP; we are limited to 100 total attendees, so please let us know early!

Nita Sweeney is the award-winning author of the running and mental health memoir, Depression Hates a Moving Target: How Running with My Dog Brought Me Back from the Brink and coauthor of the writing journal, You Should Be Writing. Nita coaches creatives in writing and meditation, blogs at Bum Glue, and publishes the monthly email newsletter, Write Now Columbus. She lives in central Ohio with her husband, Ed, and their yellow Labrador retriever, Scarlet.

 

September 9 – WNBA-SF Membership Orientation

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Join us:

Wednesday, September 9, 2020

at Noon – bring your lunch!

There are so many benefits for members of the WNBA-SF and many of our members don’t take advantage of all of the events, workshops and networking opportunities available. 
 
We welcome new and seasoned members to this live interactive workshop(we will record it!) Join past president Joan Gelfand and current president, Elise Marie Collins.
In this interactive virtual workshop, past president Joan Gelfand and current president, Elise Marie Collins will give you the scoop on navigating your member benefits. Women’s National Book Association was founded in 1917 and has 12 local chapters. WNBA is a United Nations nongovernmental organization.
You will learn:
  • How to be listed in the National Women’s National Book Association Directory
  • How to get your book featured on the WNBA National website.
  • How to get your book in the Bookwoman Newsletter
  • Where to join the WNBA book club
  • Where to find other WNBA local and national events(right now we can join fantastic events hosted by other chapters.)
  • Find out how to volunteer for WNBA-SF and connect with other women in publishing, writing, and promoting books.
  • Discover how you can write articles for the WNBA-SF Chapter website, blog, and newsletter!
  • Reduced entry fee to submit to the Effie Lee Morris Writing Contest.
  • How to propose an event for our local chapter.
  • How to propose an event for the national chapter.
Believe it or not, because events are now virtual, you have a great opportunity to interact with even more phenomenal women in the world of words, so don’t wait, know your benefits!
 
RSVP here (link will be emailed to you once you register). We have a limit of 100 attendees at this event, so register early!

September 30 – Blogging for Authors with Nina Amir and Nita Sweeney

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Wednesday, September 30, 2020

12pm

Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, a blog can be a fun writing endeavor that also helps you build platform, gain authority, get published, and promote your books. Despite these facts, many writers balk at the idea of starting and maintaining a blog. Others begin blogging but have no idea how to do so effectively.  

If you’d like to learn why and how to blog—and to do so successfully—join two long-time bloggers and published authors—Nina Amir and Nita Sweeney—for a Virtual Lunch ‘N Learn for the Women’s National Book Association – San Francisco Chapter, on September 30 at 12pm PT.

During this workshop, Nina and Nita will discuss:

  • How blogging helped them get published and market their books
  • The primary reasons writer should become bloggers
  • Strategies for successful author blogs
  • What topics to blog about
  • How to gain expert status as a blogger
  • Tips on sharing posts, blogging consistently, best practices, and more

Grab your lunch, a cup of coffee, and a notebook. Join us for a fun, interactive session.

Title: Blogging for Authors

When: September 30, 12pm PT

Where: Zoom (Zoom link provided via email when you RSVP)

Click the button below to RSVP for the mixer; we are limited to 100 total attendees, so please let us know early!

Nina Amir is a 19X Amazon bestselling hybrid author of such books as How to Blog a Book, The Author Training Manual, and Creative Visualization for Writers as well as a host of ebook writing guides. She supports writers as an Author Coach and Certified High Performance Coach (CHPC®)—the only one of 800 elite CHPCs working with writers. Additionally, she is the founder of the Nonfiction Writers’ University, the Author of Change Coaching Program, and the Write Nonfiction in November Challenge. An award-winning journalist and blogger, she has three blogs: Write Nonfiction NOW!, How to Blog a Book, and As the Spirit Moves Me.

Nita Sweeney is the award-winning author of the running and mental health memoir, Depression Hates a Moving Target: How Running with My Dog Brought Me Back from the Brink and coauthor of the writing journal, You Should Be Writing. Nita coaches creatives in writing and meditation, blogs at Bum Glue, and publishes the monthly email newsletter, Write Now Columbus. She lives in central Ohio with her husband, Ed, and their yellow Labrador retriever, Scarlet.