writing life

Mama lost her pen today, but she’s working on a post about her current configuration of childcare and work and how things are shifting…soon. Please stay tuned.

In the meantime, I wanted to share news of the next hour-long She Writes webinar with the GwP community, because it holds a special place in my heart.

My editor from Sisterhood, Interrupted and Kamy’s agent from I Do But I Don’t: Why the Way We Marry Matters are teaming up to offer a candid conversation about what happens INSIDE PUBLISHING. It’s a 2-part series, though you can just take part 1 (From Submission to Sale) or part 2 (From Sale to Publication). The webinar will be offered both live and as a download, after the fact.

It’s the kind of thing I SO could have used when I was a graduate student in Madison, WI harboring dreams of publishing a book, when the world of publishing was still utterly foreign to me and I pretty much had no clue. Or the kind of thing I could have used mid-book, when I was in the dark about what would be happening around the bend. I learned as I went and will be forever grateful to Amanda for showing me the ropes. So I love that Amanda and Erin are now pulling back the curtain and letting others in, too.

Here are deets:

INSIDE PUBLISHING: Your Book, from Submission to Publication (a 2-part series)

With Erin Hosier and Amanda Johnson Moon

***INSIDE PUBLISHING Part 1: From Submission to Sale -May 7, 1-2pm ET***

***INSIDE PUBLISHING Part 2: From Sale to Publication – Aug 11, 1-2pm ET***

Want the inside scoop on what happens when your book proposal gets submitted to editors? Have a proposal ready to go, but want to know more about the publishing process and timeline before you jump in? Or do you have a book deal, but you’re still confused about what happens next? And how about several months after publication? What happens inside your house then?

In this revealing webinar, the first in a two part series, literary agent Erin Hosier and editor Amanda Moon pull back the curtains to shed light on what goes on in a major publishing house once an editor receives your book proposal, how the editor and agent work together on a project, and what the heck a ìP & Lî is. Find out why working with a freelance editor might be the best investment you’ve ever made for your book proposal, and how you can feel empowered and prepared with answers going into a process that’s often shrouded in secrecy.

Through a lively exchange, Erin and Amanda will speak candidly about what you need to know to be a savvy and informed author in today’s marketplace. Takeaways include:

• A glossary of important terms and lingo you need to know when your proposal is being submitted to editors

• A timeline that walks you through a typical day in the life of your editor and your manuscript, and what really happens behind closed doors, from editorial meeting to publicity and more

Erin Hosier has been an agent for 10 years at The Gernert Company and Dunow Carlson & Lerner, where she has sold both fiction and a variety of narrative, practical, and illustrated nonfiction to major publishing houses in NYC and around the world. She is especially interested in the following categories: memoir, sociology, biography, art, the performing arts, pop culture, health, science, and humor. Before becoming an agent, Erin grew up in rural Ohio, attended Kent State University while studying Public Health, and completed internships at Planned Parenthood in Cleveland and Ms. magazine in NYC. She currently cohosts the monthly reading series “The Literary Death Match” in NYC at the Bowery Poetry Club.

Amanda Johnson Moon has worked as an editor in the publishing industry for over ten years. She began her career as an intern at Yale University Press and Writers House. She has served as an editor at Palgrave Macmillan and Basic Books. She has worked with authors including Deborah Siegel, Alice Miller, Tony Wagner, Mary Daly, John Merrow, Henry Giroux, Leonard Sax, Malina Saval, Nancy Rappaport, Sue Barry, and Andrea Tone. She has acquired, edited, and managed many award-winning and positively reviewed books for the trade and academic markets in psychology, women’s studies, education, science, memoir, and more.

To register and reserve a spot, click here.

I promise I won’t hawk wares when not appropriate here, but I thought GwPenners might be interested in this innovative online get-the-juices-flowing writing course that’s open 24/7 for a month once its starts and you do it at your own pace, more or less — it’s worth $99 and we’re givin it away for free:

Let Your Mind Stretch and Bend

Today I wrote my She Writes on Fridays post on why I decided to NOT write my next book, and lessons I learned along the way.  Marco, who was integral to the project, made the image for the post, which I’m re-posting here.  Sadder but wiser, I wanted to share the news with the GwP community.  I’d welcome your comments over there–eager to hear if others have been in this boat.

Here tis: 6 Things I Learned from NOT Writing My Next Book.

Attention all GwPenners with a book idea: I strongly encourage you to take the She Writes webinar with Christina Baker Kline this Wednesday!

Christina is an experienced book proposal consultant to both nonfiction and fiction writers, and every one of the 22 book proposals she has written or edited has sold to a major publisher. I’ve become a huge fan of her blog, A Writing Life: Notes on Craft and the Creative Process. You can learn more about her consulting services here.  Details about her webinar:

Write a Nonfiction Book Proposal that SELLS Wed, Mar 31, 1-2 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
Do you have a great idea for a book, but no idea how to pitch it to agents and publishers? Or have you written a book proposal that isn’t selling? In this marketplace, it’s not enough to have a great idea for a book. You must create a flawless book proposal to sell it. But the skills and knowledge it takes to write a great book proposal aren’t always the same ones it takes to write a great book. You must be able to sell you idea, and yourself, assertively and persuasively. You must convince a publisher that not only is your idea a brilliant one, but that you—and only you!—can write this book.

In Christina’s webinar, you’ll gain the tools you need to write a book proposal that sells, including:

• the essential elements of every successful book proposal
• how to craft an attention-getting query letter
• the most effective ways to differentiate yourself from similar projects
• the bells and whistles to avoid
• how to write a persuasive three-to-five page pitch
• the 10 things you can do to make your proposal stand out

Register for the live event or order the download here.

(You can also check out Kamy’s interview with Christina on She Writes Radio right here).

For my (new!) regular column over at She Writes, called She Writes on Fridays (because “she’s” trying, really really trying), I wrote a very Mama w/Pen-ish post, which I wanted to share here.  In “Through the Maternal Looking Glass,” I struggle with the inevitable question: is “mommy blogging” narcissistic?  Of wider interest? Neither? Both?

Sayeth fellow GwP blogger Natalie Wilson in comments over there: “The “new momism” documented by Susan Douglas is alive and well. We are supposed to be do-it-all supermoms consumed with our children. Yet, dare we blog/write about this and we are narcissists. Post-feminist society my foot. Adrienne Rich is rolling in her grave..”

And sayeth my partner in crime over at She Writes Kamy Wicoff: Bad writing is narcissistic. The narcissist fails to observe the telling details; fails to achieve the clarity and compassionate attention which characterize the writing that moves us and changes us. Are male coming-of-age stories, so ubiquitous in our literature, narcissistic by definition, simply because of the perspective from which they are told? Diminishing women who write simply because they write about motherhood is indefensible — the deeper question, I think, is whether writing that takes place in nearly real time, a kind of continuous unedited “feed” from a person’s latest experience to a written form shared with the world, can be GOOD or not. If it’s good, I’m in. If it’s not, I’m out.

What sayeth YOU?

(Photo cred: We Picture This)

This is Alison Piepmeier, recovering well from brain surgery, and planning to be back on Girl with Pen really soon.  In the meantime, I’m delighted to introduce you to this month’s guest columnist, Eliza McGraw, writer, mother, and great friend of mine.

Earache

I’m here in Charleston, South Carolina visiting my pal Alison Piepmeier, whom you all know from her blog here on Girl with Pen.  Theoretically, I am helping her, Walter, and Maybelle out, given Alison’s recent brain surgery.  And I am bunking with the baby and did just now make some pumpkin muffins, but I am not sure that I am helping as much as I am just, as always–we have been friends since 1994, when we met in graduate school, I just have avoided putting my education to the same kind of productive use that Alison has–enjoying being with Team Biffle-Piepmeier.

To be here for the week did, however, entail a thorough job of organization on my part.  I live in Washington, D.C., and am a freelance writer.  I also am the primary caregiver, driver, cupcake-maker, room parent, tutor and hockey mom to my 6 and 8-year-old children.  My days are happily complex so the list on instructions I left behind–also known as “the matrix”–included such entries such as “Wednesday–bring in a green food for St Patrick’s day,” “Thursday:  put Simon’s lacrosse shorts in backpack,” “Friday is P.E. day–Macie
in sneakers.”  It had a long list of contact information for the many family members, friends, and neighbors who knew I’d be away, permission slips for various pickups, and a refrigerator roll call so my husband Adam would know what I had made to eat.

On Monday, I received an email from Adam inquiring when the pediatrician’s office opened, since Macie (my 6-year-old) had an earache.  We’re not an earachey kind of family, as a rule–no tubes, no audiologists–so I was concerned.  Macie has also wound up in the hospital more than once, so any time she develops the slightest sniffle, I get a little anxious.  Also, it was only day two.  Things were already falling apart already?

Adam is an architect, and while it’s not as if he were expected in the OR momently, he was supposed to be at work with roll of drawings spread out on the desk (my mental image of architectural design), not heading out to the pediatrician’s.  If you looked at the matrix, there was no mention of “Take Macie to pediatrician.”  (If there had been, I would have written, “Remember insurance card and to stop for bagel on the way
home at bagel shop on Connecticut Avenue.”)

Even knowing that Adam, eminently competent and adaptable, had Earache 2010 covered, I felt like something was a little off all day as I played with Maybelle, went to the grocery store with Alison, and generally existed here in Charleston, 539 miles from the situation room at home.  When I called and heard Macie crying in the background (over Adam’s shouting from the front seat “She’s fine!  We’re going to get medicine now!”) I experienced that sensation that makes you realize why people say hearts “sink.”  Even once I received the update that Macie was at my mom’s and tucked under the same animal-themed blanket I used to curl up with when I felt sick (nosebleed stains, 1970s brown and orange zebras) while watching Mulan, I felt like I should have been with her.

But as the day wore on–hearing Macie’s voice be a tad bossy about which of the previews she deigned amusing enough to watch reassured me that her health was stabilizing–I realized I only sort of felt that way.  I missed her, and hated to think of her in any kind of pain.  But I was glad to be here, with Alison, Walter, and Maybelle.  I learned that is possible to be in the right place, even if that place is not with my own children for a certain painful moment, the one thing even I never planned for.

For anyone in NYC this coming Friday, February 26: Women’s Studies Quarterly is hosting a day-long conference at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in honor of its Mother issue, featuring scholarship, poetry, and prose on mothers, mothering, and motherhood. Participants include Andrea O’Reilly, Meena Alexander, Miranda Field, Pamela Stone, Nicole Cooley, and many others. I’ll be talking with novelist Amy Sohn about “mommy lit” and her novel Prospect Park West over lunch. Hope to see you there!

If in NYC, join me at this year’s Memoir-a-thon sponsored by Brooklyn Reading Works! It’s the first time I’ll be reading with my hubby, graphic designer/writer Marco Acevedo.  Deets:

Memoirathon at The Old Stone House (Third Street & Fifth Avenue in Park Slope), Feb 11 @ 8pm

And a note from the organizers about this year’s theme:

A lot of New Yorkers have their own recession story to tell, whether it’s from the past year, the past decade or the accumulation of a lifetime.

During this year’s Memoir-a-thon, you will get to listen to the personal reflections and insights on how some writers have managed to survive, preserve their sanity and even have fun during hard times.

You’ll be amazed to discover just how resilient and resourceful people can be, while still managing to find humor, cause for reflection and even gratitude, in some of life’s most challenging situations.

Whether you found the past year “the year you’d like to forget” or “the year of positive thinking”, you will be inspired and entertained by tonight’s lineup of writers who talk about infinitely new ways of being.

Just a quick share:

The Council on Contemporary Families has opened nominations for its Eighth Annual Media Awards for Outstanding Coverage of Family Issues competition. We (I’m on the Board!) honor outstanding journalism that contributes to the public understanding of contemporary family issues, in particular the story behind the story: how diverse families are coping with social and economic change; what they need to flourish; and how these needs can best be met.

The Council will present three awards — two for journalism in text form (print- or web-based); and one for broadcast journalism (audio or video).  CCF recognizes that America needs a balanced national conversation about the cultural, legal, and psychological issues that shape both private life and public policy. Essential partners in this process are the reporters and producers who present complicated family issues in their broader social context.

Past winners include journalists from USA Today, Time magazine, the Boston Globe, the San Antonio Express-News, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, KPCC (Southern California Public Radio), Thirteen/WNET, AlterNet, the Associated Press, among many others. Topics have ranged from the consequences of parental snooping on tech-obsessed teens to hunger in Oklahoma and the role of religion in American family life. You can read about last year’s winners, who reported on raising special-needs children, contentment and self-sufficiency among older women living alone, and life in three Texan foster-care families.

Writers, editors, and producers may self-nominate.  For the nomination form, and more info, go here!

So many end-of-year appeals, so many worthy causes to support!  I wanted to share one from an organization that is particularly close to my heart: Girls Write Now.

The amazing girls and women of GWN set out to raise $50,000 at the end of the year, and they are only $7,000 short.  Here’s a little about them, below.  To join me in helping them meet their goal, please click here.

About Girls Write Now Girls Write Now is the first and only East Coast non-profit organization to combine mentoring and writing training within the context of all-girl programming, matching professional women writers one-to-one with underserved girls from public high schools across New York City. While almost half of NYC’s youth fail to complete high school on time, 100% of Girls Write Now seniors graduate and go on to college. Girls Write Now has been featured on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams and in The New York Times, and honored by First Lady Michelle Obama and The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities as one of the top 15 after-school arts and humanities-based programs in the nation.