Tag: writers

The Write Balance

On By Sherrie CroninIn features and reviews, writing3 Comments

Today it is my pleasure to welcome author Bonni Goldberg and her non-fiction book, The Write Balance.

Author’s description

In The Write Balance, the companion book to the beloved bestseller, Room to Write, Bonni Goldberg demonstrates how to find fulfillment as a writer by embracing three key aspects of writing: 1) Percolation: what takes place before a first draft is written; 2) Revision: the writer’s role after the initial draft; and 3) Going Public: the writer’s mission once the writing is done. Filled with tools, examples and exercises, Bonni’s guide offers motives, choices, and encouragement for writers to appreciate and to be creative in the phases before and beyond a first draft. Whether you’re new to writing or a pro, become more passionate and balanced in your writing life.

About Bonni Goldberg

Bonni Goldberg is the author of The Write Balance: How to Embrace Percolation, Revision & Going Public, the companion book to the best-seller Room to Write: Daily Invitations to a Writer’s Life. Bonni is an award-winning poet and writer. She is the creator of the 2 Minute Journals™ series. Both traditionally and indie published, her books include non-fiction for adults and fiction and non-fiction for young readers. Her essays and blog posts can be found in numerous print and online publications.

Bonni teaches creative writing at colleges and leads writing workshops internationally for all ages. She knows everyone is creative, and she supports people to discover and share their authentic, meaningful and imaginative experiences through words.

Whether through her writings or through teaching, her methods and perspectives continue to empower thousands of adults, families, and children.

Bonni is also a Jewish educator. She speaks, writes, and leads workshops on Jewish topics such as Jewish identity, rituals and antisemitism at Jewish women’s events, JCCs, and conferences.

Bonni Goldberg lives in Portland, Oregon with her partner in life, and some creative projects, artist Geo Kendall.

Two Surprises from Bonni Goldberg

I got the chance to ask this author a question, so I inquired as to what single piece of advice in her book she thought would surprise people the most.  She asked me if she could give me two. Of course 🙂

She says …

I’m not so great with single. May I cover two? First, writing advice books, including mine, are filled with what you should do like write, revise, and publish. But along with tips, exercises and perspectives about the excellent reasons writers should do these things, I include good reasons not to do them sometimes. I hope people find those sections refreshing, as well as useful. The second type of advice readers may be surprised by is the physical body exercises I offer. Think of them like writer yoga, only they aren’t for tight shoulders or carpel tunnel. They’re mind-body exercises. I wish everyone tries at least one. We spend so much time in our minds as writers. The body is a powerful writing resource for balance and change, too.

Find Bonni Goldberg

Website: http://www.bonnigoldberg.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bonnigoldbergbooks
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/bonnigoldberg
Instrogram: www.instagram.com/goldbergbonni

Get the The Write Balance for Free

Get your FREE copy of “Writing & Marketing: 8 Authors Reveal Their Secrets” here: https://bookhip.com/PASGHHQ

Yes, there is a giveaway

Bonni Goldberg will be awarding a prize to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. The winner can choose between a 30 minute coaching call, a Q&A Zoom with their group, or feedback on 3 double spaced pages of their work (via email). In addition, a free ebook about balancing writing & marketing will be given to everyone who enters the raffle.

Enter here to win.

This post is part of a tour sponsored by Goddess Fish. Check out all the other tour stops. If you drop by each of these and comment, you will greatly increase your chances of winning.

My Favorite Excerpt

If percolation is really such an essential element of the writing process, why do we resist it? For one thing, many people feel impatient about it. It requires a state of stillness we are not accustomed to. For another thing, sometimes being as free form in our writing process as we are during percolation creates anxiety. Without our ideas firmly planted in writing, we feel dizzy and out of control. Also, most of us learn to accomplish our goals by taking tangible actions, especially when it comes to writing. We count words, pages, chapters. As a result, even writing teachers feel compelled to provide students with word-generating activities to get their uncensored words out or to help them avoid procrastination. Procrastination is a myriad of excuses for not writing. Sometimes we confuse it with percolation because in both cases we’re not producing visible words. The similarities between the two make us uncomfortable; but percolation isn’t procrastination. We need the energy percolating supplies to our ideas. The psyche is at work. Our senses are attuned inward. We’re feeding our idea.

Thank you!

Bonni Goldberg — we appreciate your sharing your book The Write Balance with us! Best of luck with sales, and with all of your future writing.

Find Your Way Back

On By Sherrie CroninIn courage, features and reviews, into a butterfly1 Comment

Today it is my pleasure to welcome author Javacia Harris Bowser and her collection of essays, Find Your Way Back.

Author’s description

Award-winning freelance journalist Javacia Harris Bowser is convinced that writing is a superpower. She sees her life as proof of it since writing has helped her navigate marriage, crisis of faith and body image issues. It also helped her to beat cancer.

 

As a Black woman from the South, Javacia has used the written word to explore issues of gender and race as well as religion. Find Your Way Back is a collection of essays that demonstrate how Javacia has used writing to achieve some of her wildest dreams such as being a public speaker, having her own column, and being her own boss. The book also explores how writing, self-love, and faith helped her overcome her worst nightmare: a cancer diagnosis in 2020. Javacia’s goal is to show readers how writing can transform their lives as well. The book includes prompts throughout to help readers start their own writing journey.

 

This book is for the woman who has wanted to write since she was a girl but struggles to find the time or the courage to put her words on paper. Find Your Way Back, shows that instead of putting writing on the back burner when life gets turned upside down, we should turn to it to help life make sense again.

About Javacia Harris Bowser

Javacia Harris Bowser is an award-winning essayist and journalist and the founder of See Jane Write. A proud graduate of the journalism programs at the University of Alabama and the University of California at Berkeley, Javacia has written for USA Today, HerMoney.com, and Good Grit magazine. Named one of Birmingham’s Top 40 Under 40, she believes we can all write our way to the life of our dreams.

Find Javacia Harris Bowser

IG & Twitter @seejavaciawrite, #FYWBBookTour

IG @TheLiteraryLobbyist #TheLiteraryLobbyist @DawnMichellePR on Twitter

Buy Find Your Way Back

Amazon: tinyurl.com/findyourwaybackbook

See Jane Write: https://seejanewritebham.com/product/findyourwayback/

Yes, there is a double giveaway

The author will be awarding one $25 and one $50 Amazon/BN gift card to randomly drawn winners via rafflecopter during the tour.

Enter here to win.

This post is part of a tour sponsored by Goddess Fish. Check out all the other tour stops. If you drop by each of these and comment, you will greatly increase your chances of winning.

My Favorite Excerpt

– from “Write Like a Girl”

On my eleventh birthday, I declared I was a woman. I have no idea why. My budding boobs barely filled my training bra, and I wouldn’t get my period for another year. But it was as if turning eleven declared I was number one and said it again for good measure, and I believed it.

I can’t recall exactly what I decided to wear on this special day, but I do remember slouch socks were involved. I also remember that I didn’t want a party because birthday parties were for children. A woman–especially one who at the time fancied herself a poet–should spend her birthday having a quiet evening at home writing in her journal, reflecting on her past, and making plans for the years to come.

What I’m trying to say is eleven-year-old me was ridiculous. But I think about this girl often. Sometimes to become the woman you’re meant to be, you must remember the girl you used to be. Sometimes you must write like a girl.

When you write for a living, it can be hard to remember how to do this. When you write for a living, you can easily forget to write for yourself. You can forget to write simply for the love of words, for the joy of stringing together sentences. It can be hard to remember what it felt like to write with no regard for readers or a deadline, but that’s what writing like a girl is all about.

Sometimes I think back to that eleven-year-old girl–who thought she was a woman–and I challenge myself–just for a few moments–to forget about building a brand or pitching publications and just write. Yes, I can get back to business later, but right now, just write.

Thank you!

Javacia Harris Bowser — we appreciate your sharing your book Find Your Way Back with us! Best of luck with sales, and with all of your future writing.

And the winner, she is ….

On By Sherrie CroninIn women6 Comments

The world of science fiction has changed. When my father introduced me to his favorite books decades ago, there was not a female author to be found. Not long after, I discovered Ursula Le Guin, Kate Wilhelm and Vonda McIntyre on my own. So, women could write this stuff. Well then, that was what I was going to do someday, because I ‘d already been told my first career choice of becoming an astronaut was “not realistic.”

It wasn’t many years at all before women did go into space. As I grew into adulthood, the list of women who wrote speculative fiction grew by at least an order of magnitude. In fact, it has now increased to the point where five of the six 2019 Hugo nominees for best novel were women. Wow.

One of the presenters was artist Afua Richardson, comic book illustrator for Marvel’s World of Wakanda

Check out the list of nominees below.

It should also be noted that Artificial Condition by Martha Wells took best novella this year; If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again by Zen Cho won best novelette; A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies by Alix E. Harrow won best short story and best series went to Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers books. Yes, they are all women.

The Calculating Stars
Mary Robinette Kowal
Winner
Spinning Silver
Naomi Novik
Nominee
Revenant Gun
Yoon Ha Lee
Nominee
Record of a Spaceborn Few
Becky Chambers
Nominee
Space Opera
Catherynne M. Valente
Nominee
Trail of Lightning
Rebecca Roanhorse
Nominee

It’s hard to find a simple explanation for this change. One could guess it is because the world has become more welcoming to women pursuing dreams of all kinds. But that should result in something more like woman being half the nominees, not most of them.

It is true women that as a group tend to be more verbal than men.  (Yes, men tend to be more mathematical. I’ve no quarrel with statistics, only a quarrel with extending those generalizations into making assumptions about individuals, or to making assumptions about why the tendencies exist in the first place. Life is complicated.)

Anyway, today’s world of SFF writers could, in part, reflect the fact that women make up a larger percentage of the writing and the reading community in general.

Another theory is that society is more supportive of women then men who write variations of speculative fiction that shade into romance. This gives women writers (for once) a larger menu of styles and subject matter to chose from. I can see this perhaps accounting for a larger number of female SFF writers over all, but few if any of the female-authored pieces nominated for awards could be considered part of this hybrid romance genre.

Maybe it’s this simple. Most of the best SFF last year was written by women, and that’s that.

I was happy that my particular favorite, The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal, won best novel. For those of you not familiar with it, it is part of collection of stories (and two novels) set in an alternate world in which women were admitted into the USA’s initial space program. Guess you can see why I’d have a fond spot in my heart for this premise.

I watched Mary Robinette Kowal’s acceptance speech from my perch in the spotlights. (I was a volunteer running the spotlight for the show.) Astronaut Dr Jeanette Epps was on stage with her and it was a one of those weird maybe-all-is-right-with-the-universe-after-all moments. I loved it!

(Read more about my Worldcon adventures at An Irish Worldcon: I’m here!,  at Feeling at home, at A New Irish Experience and at Forward into the Past.)