New Market: Momsense

I've just learned of a market that's reported to pay between $50-$150 for 600-1200 word stories and articles. Their writer's guidelines state they'll get back to you in 10-12 weeks, which is decent in my opinion. Another neat feature about this magazine's communication with would-be contributors is this page, which includes a calendar of themes for the editorial content, complete with deadlines for submissions. These are 6 months out, so we've missed July/August already. We'll just keep watching!

Intriguing Questions Lead to Compelling Narratives

When I was trolling for writing gigs yesterday, I found that Common Ties has a new feature called 20 Questions. If you're not familiar, Common Ties is a website that buys personal stories based around a different them every month. Now they've added these 20 questions and the idea is to answer one, and submit it for publication on their site. (It's really 19 questions and an open ask-and-answer option.) They pay $50 for accepted answers of 50 words or less. It's a great deal, but also a wonderful writing prompt. If you've found yourself floundering for something to write just pick up a pen and answer one. Better yet, dedicate a cheap spiral notebook to the cause and go on a journey - one question a day for 19 days!

1. What door do you wish you never opened?
2. What is your most obsessive thought?
3. Where is your favorite place in the world, and why?
4. What's the one thing your parents don't understand about you?
5. If you could relive a single day or moment, what would it be?
6. What were the strangest circumstances under which you have been intimate?
7. Under what circumstances have you been closest to death?
8. What is the most gracious act of kindness you have witnessed?
9. What is the worst betrayal you have ever experienced?
10. What is the most bizarre thing you have seen or done?
11. What is the greatest risk you have ever taken?
12. What is your earliest, most vivid memory?
13. What is the most meaningful "I love you" spoken by you or to you?
14. What was the single most terrifying moment of your life?
15. If you have experienced a moment of sudden faith or loss of faith, what prompted it?
16. If you could take back one thing you have done, what would it be?
17. What is your greatest talent or accomplishment?
18. What is the most joyful moment you have experienced?
19. What is the most painful moment you have experienced?

Essay Publishing Opportunity for Moms and Dads

Here's a market that many of us are qualified to write for. Parent: Wise, Austin is looking for short essays about being a parent or grandparent for their Mother's Day and Father's Day issues. They're looking for poems too! And this opportunity pays quite well. I know you've got something to say. Why not dust something off and send it in. No excuses - there's plenty of time and nothing to lose!

Here's the announcement:
02/05/08
Parent:Wise Call for Essays! We're Looking for Writers Each year, Parent:Wise produces two "special issues": The Mothers' Day All-Essay Issue and the Fathers' Day All-Essay Issue. The issues are among the most popular we publish (we normally have only a few copies left after printing 32,000 of them!). The issues are filled with essays by local and national writers (and, yes, everyday folks just like you!). The essays are serious, sad, thoughtful, and laugh-out-loud funny. And they all have one thing in common: they are about the mothering or fathering experience. If you would like to submit an essay about motherhood, fatherhood, grandmotherhood, grandfatherhood, or your favorite uncle who was your second dad, we'd love to hear from you! Essays should be between 500 and 1,000 words. (If you'd like to submit poetry, that's great too! Poems should be no more than 25 lines.) Submissions should be sent to Editor@ParentWiseAustin.com. Published essays will receive $50; poetry receives $25.

Deadline: March 31, 2008

On Markets and Geting Published

When I started writing I was so eager to be published. I scoured magazines and then websites looking for markets. I looked for things I thought I could write and then tried to write to the specifications listed. I didn't get published. It wasn't until I started writing, writing, writing all the time that I got published. What happens when you write more is that you have tons of stories, half-stories, and snippets lying around. Then you come across some request for submissions on say, heart warming dog stories - and what do you know, you've got one of those mushy-goo-goo dog stories right there on your hard drive (or blog).

First, wiggle your fingers around the keyboard for a while. Even if it's only ten minutes, write something! And if you get stuck just remember the advice from Natalie Goldberg - you don't have to make it up, just write it down! After you write something, you're allowed to browse through the market links listed in the right column. You just might find something. Maybe not today, but maybe tomorrow or the next day - IF you keep wiggling those fingers.

Caveat: I went ahead and listed Chicken Soup for the Soul, but if you look at their submission guidelines, they say it can take up to three or four YEARS before you hear back from them about a decision. I'm not that patient. That said, you can often find calls for submission listed elsewhere for this series of books when they are getting close to a deadline. Then you can go back to the main site to review their guidelines as to the format they like.

Good luck!

Piecing Snippets Together

This is the Black Widow spider my kids found in our front yard this summer. There was an exciting 30 minutes where we determined this was indeed a true Black Widow and then proceeded to plot ways to kill it without getting bit. We settled on immobilization by hairspray. We saved our trophy in a freezer weight Ziplock and showed the neighbors. I argued with the Bug Lady about whether or not my Black Widow was a Black Widow.

A few years ago, when I lived in Texas, I killed a tarantula in front of my house. I wrote about it. When I was a kid I used to collect eggs from a chicken coop and one day a spider in its web blocked my path. I've written about it, because it's one of my first memories.

So what? I'm not sure, but these these vignettes could come together nicely to paint a portrait of what? I don't know yet. But three is a nice number to work with. And spiders are almost universally scary. This is the neat part about collecting little stories. Over time, they just might become something.

Make Up Your History

The one in the middle is my 93 year old great grandmother, who told me stories over this holiday about her grandparents farm, falling off the backside of a horse, and the two-holer that the women visited in pairs. Then she asked and who are you again? I'm thinking I might not get all the details of those stories.

The one on the right is the great-great granddaughter with a joy for history and an obsession with all things Little House on the Prairie. After hearing about her great-great-great-great grandfather, who was a farmer, a homesteader, I tried to convey to her that her grandparents were just like Laura and her family on the prairie. But how?

Sometimes we can't get all the details so we imagine them. There's nothing untrue about it. If we can get the facts of the story across in a way that's interesting enough to get passed along, it will stand the test of time.

There are resources for this. Books like Everyday Life in the 1800s and The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860-1876 are wonderful resources for writers of fiction and personal history alike. Another good resource is Wikipedia. I Googled "1873 Wikipedia" to get a list of historical events that happened that year. The Internet is your friend for research. In five minutes I found out what school children did on a typical school day in the 1800s, what kind of food they ate and how it was prepared, and some general information about farm life during that time. This was a quick and dirty seach but you get the idea. Don't let the story die just because it's only a snippet. You can build it.

You can also pick an event from a person's life, and then build a story you know around that context. For example, I know that my grandmother was born in the spring of 1914 months after Ford Motor Company announces the eight hour work day and just before the start of World War 1. She fell off the horse when she was twelve, so that would make it the summer of 1926. Maybe the talk that day was of Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel. I don't know what my grandmother and her cousins were up to the day she fell off the horse's rear and became forever after the butt of all their jokes. But I can make it up with a level of believability if not accuracy.

It may not have happened just in that way, but both did happen and we build a more complete portrait of a person when we set them at a specific moment in time. Imagine how your 'character' would have reacted. Throw in a typical meal and the feel of the clothing and you paint a picture too interesting not to read. Sometimes making up your history makes it more real.

We can imagine it and you never know, we may just get it right.

Welcome

Photo: FreddieBoy, Flickr

Welcome to Write Your Way! This blog is devoted to all types of life writing, including journaling, keeping a diary, writing personal history and memoir. Writing from your own life is a great way to preserve your stories, work out your issues, leave a family legacy, entertain others, and can even provide valuable material to transform into fiction. Whatever you choose to do with your lifewriting, that's the point - it's yours to Write Your Way.

Come back for writing prompts, inspiration, market information, and to learn more about the genre's loosely referred to as New Autobiography and Memoir.