Cleveland Boot Camp for Writers July 27th

WriteStuff Writers have partnered with Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Cleveland, Ohio to host the first ever WriteStuff Writers’ Boot Camp on Friday, July 27th! Cleveland area writers, authors, screenplay writers, and book lovers are invited to this one-day event inside Joseph-Beth’s Legacy Village store in Lyndhurst. Learn from publishing professionals, interact in workshops, and further your own personal writing journey!
All the info

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Setting a Summer Writing Schedule

I've been writing on the edges of my children's time for so long. I learned the hard way that when you have small children it's very difficult to set and stick to a writing schedule that involves any time that they are awake. Once they got school-age it was easier to write during the day when they were gone if I wasn't also working a day job somewhere. If I did have an outside job, I had to learn to be disciplined with my time when they went to bed, which was 8:30pm until they got to grade 4, then 9:30 to high school, then between 10 and 10:30pm during high school.

This is a milestone age year for my kids: Ibop turned 18 so is an adult, Sbop will be 13 and thus a teenager, and Tbop will be 10 and, in his words, finally a big kid! So since I will no longer have any small children in my house I think this year I can set a good working schedule for during the day. My summer schedule in prior years has been 10:30pm-1:30am, Mon-Fri sometimes later if I'm on a streak, and generally 5 hours on Sundays throughout the day and late night. However last year I got a grip on my insomnia and started sleeping during the night on a regular basis. I'm 35 now so I have to be careful with my health; not sleeping right definitely has a negative impact on my health and overall feeling of well-being. I can't sacrifice my sleep for my writing anymore. So no more writing into all hours of the night for me!

Mercury Man is usually a big help but he was going to grad school for the past 2 summers so couldn't help much. But this summer he is completely free! I am really excited about that because he can do way more childcare and housework activities now. My plan for my summer writing schedule so far is this:

Weekends when I'm not taking the kids to an activity of theirs or at some business event or conducting a workshop I will write 6:30am-12:30pm, break for lunch, then do some blogging writing from 1-3pm. Mon-Fri I'm gonna really try to write from 8:30am-6:30pm with a half-hour break for lunch and two 15 minute breaks thrown in there. Since we have a lot of activities and travel planned I have fun and flexibility with this plan built-in.

Do you have a writing schedule? How strict are you at sticking to it?

Looking for My Fitness Entries?

I decided to move my weight and fitness posts to their own blogs. My intention for Trula's Blog: On Being a Writer & Mother was to write about parenting my kids, my various mother-related writing projects, my marriage, and other personal things. The Fitness Challenge was taking the focus off of that. I also have learned a great deal about weight loss and exercise since I started this in earnest and I want to share this with the world. You would not be reading this if you have no interest in taking charge of your weight, fitness, and overall health, so please join me at:
Get Supple: How to Lose Weight & Get Fit!

It will take me a week or so to move all the entries as I am swamped with work. I am spending the bulk of this week catching up on book and zine orders, marketing both magazines, working on new blog projects, and working on 2 book projects: Mama Poems II and Musing Monogamy.

Second Issue of My Magazines Published

The Ultra Mama Zine (formerly Trula Mama Zine which ran for 2 years) is a grassroots indie-published quarterly magazine, created for mothers who want less stres, more fun, and increased personal awareness in parenting. Zine dimensions are 8.5 x 11 with a full color cover and back. The inside pages are black and white with grayscale artwork and photos. The zine has on average 50 pages, and is composed primarily of the writing of zine founder Trula Breckenridge and freelance writers with minimal advertising.
Check them out:


http://www.mspmedia.net/ultra_mama_zine_2.html


http://www.mspmedia.net/ultra_kids_2.html

ultra mama zine * ultra kids

Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art~don Miguel Ruiz

Each is $2 and can be ordered online at Mama Specific Productions

How to Submit to This Here Indie Biz

Ok folks here's the deal. This is not Random House, Harper Collins, or some other big-name publisher. This is Mama Specific Productions AKA MSPmedia run by me, Trula Breckenridge and a few friends and relatives. This is a laid-back, DIY, indie biz, ok?

While I appreciate folks wanting to adhere to industry standards and wanting to follow mainstream submission protocol, it really isn't neccessary when dealing with me. Please, don't make it harder than it has to be, it's really not complicated to submit. In short, all you have to do to submit to any of the upcoming book projects is to follow the call for submissions. That's it.

Please don't send me email asking what specificially I am looking for; that is in the call for submission, ok. Please don't send me email with links to your prior writing and then request that if I like what I see to email you back if I want you to submit. If you want to submit...then just submit. I'm not going to know if I will accept it until I read it, ok. Please don't send me email asking if it's the right email address!! What the - ok. and please don't send me email asking if I will publish your writing that is NOT about any of the book projects. The answer is no, so why waste your time and mine. and please don't email me constantly wanting to know if your work has been accepted. I promise you, you will get a response either way prior to the reply date posted on the call for submission. Speaking of which, here are the current calls:

Futuristic Motherhood
Teen Mama Perspectives
Mama Poems II

Last but certainly not least, please DO get the name of the project right prior to submitting!

***edited to add***

I am accepting submissions from people everywhere, not just residents of the USA.

***edited to add***

To be considered for acceptance your submission must be about...what the theme of the project is about. If your work is tangential to the theme or you are unsure if it relates to the theme, it probaby is not right for the project. Please do not email me or contact me asking if I will accept submissons that are sorta/kinda/loosely related to the theme...all I can tell you is that to be considered for acceptance your submission must be about...what the theme of the project is about.

New Zines for 2007

The Ultra Kids Zine (formerly Trula Kids Zine is for children ages 6-12, featuring games, puzzles, stories and drawing for and by kids.
Buy here for $2


The Ultra Mama Zine (formerly Trula Mama Zine which ran for 2 years) is a grassroots indie-published quarterly magazine, created for mothers who want less stres, more fun, and increased personal awareness in parenting. Zine dimensions are 8.5 x 11 with a full color cover and back. The inside pages are black and white with grayscale artwork and photos. The zine has on average 50 pages, and is composed primarily of the writing of zine founder Trula Breckenridge and freelance writers with minimal advertising.
Buy here for $2

My Sci-fi Pen Name

I have decided to use a pen name for my science fiction/fantasy/alternative writing. It is Mercury Lynch. I like the word mercury for a variety of reasons: 1)It is the hottest planet in our solar system and closest to the sun, which I like thinking about as I am a big freeze baby 2)Mercury the metal is poisonous and contact with it in even small amounts can lead to insanity. Mental illness runs in both sides of my family and I have been directly affected by it (just one example: one of my older sisters tried to kill me when I was eight) and I have...both a deep fear and fascination of becoming crazy. Taking Mercury as a name is sort of a way for me to confront and embrace my fear, and 3) I just like the way the word sounds and always have. When I was in 2nd or 3rd grade there was a girl in my class when I was in Catholic school whose last name was Mercurio, I used to make up teasing songs about her just so I could say her name a lot. Suffice it to say she didn't appreciate that very much ha ha.

Lynch is my husband's last name. When we married I went right on using my maiden name because I never understood why I should change my birth name or my title, and it was no big deal to him; he didn't care either way. However other people care, like some people in both our families and even total strangers so I get addressed as Mrs. Lynch instead of Ms. Breckenridge quite frequently, which both irritates me and frightens me. Using his name as my pen surname is sort of my way of embracing his name and acknowledging a cultural standard for married women as well as confronting all the reasons why I (rightfully) fear losing my birth name.

I've got a bunch of sci-fi stories done and I'm going to start submitting them around. They are quite different from my mama-oriented work, which is another reason for the pen name. We shall see how they are accepted, I am excited about this phase as a writer.

Mean Mama

Because my writing has been so mama-focused (for example some of my books are Afro Mama, Veggie Mama, Teen Mama, etc) my kids like to say when they get upset with me that I should call myself Mean Mama. Oh my, this hurts me so much, because I don’t want to be mean and don’t consider myself to be a mean mother.

I do yell too much.

I used to curse frequently. Not at them, but around them. I have since stopped and that makes a world of difference to the atmosphere of our home. Now I am working on my yelling. I don’t yell as much at them anymore, but now they say I am making scary faces. Often I am not even aware I am doing it. For example, say I tell them to pick up the floor. No response, so I ask them this time. No response. So I say it again (I usually start yelling the third time) but now that I am working on not yelling, I say in a normal tone of voice but firmer this time, Please pick up the floor NOW. My kids will say Ack! Why are you looking at us so crazy! and scurry to pick up their toys and stuff.

LOL! It cracks me up. But it’s not really funny…I want my children to respect me, not be afraid of me. and I don’t believe that raising kids with fear is neccessary to inspire respect. I want to be a gentle mother.

See more progress on: be a gentle mother

Octavia Butler Died

Oh my word I was hoping this was not true:
http://darkush.blogspot.com/2006/02/octavia-butler-died-saturday.html

Here's the story from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/books/260959_butlerobit26ww.html

Rest in peace, Sistren. RIP

She was at the Black to the Future Science Fiction Festival in Seattle in 2004 and I had a chance to go and didn't. A friend of mine went and got to meet her and talk with her.

I will never get to meet this woman. I should have went. She is one of my favorite writers EVER and a big influence on my own sci-fi writing. Oh my god, I am all torn up.

Musing Monogamy

I'm musing on this because I am working on an article about monogamy. I am in a long-term monogamous heterosexual marriage, our tenth anniversary of being together will be Feb. 14th (legally married 7 years come May 7th). Because of my sexual identity/orientation and marriage I am fully aware that I have a socially-approved and culturally-backed bias toward monogamy.

However I am also aware that monogamy is not natural to people; we are naturally a promiscuos species. So it goes against our nature to have one sexual partner for a lifetime or even a short period of time. Monogamy became a social standard in most cultures for 2 primary reasons. One, it allows men to control/know that the children born to their partner are actually their biological children (let's remember that DNA testing and knowledge is very new to our species).

Two, it cuts down on the spread of sexual diseases and consequently children born afflicted who are disabled for life or dead. Currently there are not many sexually transmitted diseases that will kill you, and there are even drugs now that prevent an HIV-infected mother from passing the virus to her baby, but consider what life must have been like in a small village or town 300 years ago. 1,000 years ago. 2,000 years ago. 3,000. Imagine an outbreak of syphillis or a similar disease, imagine how it would decimate a small town, village, tribe of people.

Even with all the advances in medicine today, the reason my husband and I chose to be in a monogamous relationship was for health. We both had gotten STDs in the past from sleeping around. I was also plauged as well as by various 'lesser' infections like bacterial and yeast. We both wanted to enjoy a thriving sex life without fear of contagion or having to hinder our sexual enjoyment with barrier methods. My husband also did not want to have children outside of our relationship, which is always a possibility when having sex with women of reproductive age even with protection. I also did not want to have children with other men, which again would be a possibility. We both had also been stalked in the past and had jealous/controlling lovers, so we both also did not want to have to deal with the possiblity of a lover becoming jealous of our marriage. So we chose to be monogamous.

If you are in a monogamous relationship, why did you choose monogamy?

Now this question is for anyone who has been in or is currently in a monogamous relationship, regardless of sexual orientation. You do not have to be nor do I assume you are hetero to answer and/or participate in this discussion.

20 Questions Needed!

please forward freely . . .

OK - please help! - If you're a person who wouldn't mind becoming a famous writer before you're dead, give me one question you have about getting from here to there. Big issue or small. I'm pretty sure you can post anonymously on both of my sites, so please don't be shy.

> post here: www.arielgore.com
> or here: www.livejournal.com/users/arielfiona

List

I have a list of 31 bookstores/places to contact about me coming to do a nook signing. I’ve been ambivalent about traveling much during the winter, but since I plan to not let this winter defeat me/give in to winter depression I’m going to get myself out there. At any rate they are all relatively close to home, within a 5 hour drive from me.

See more progress on: set up a book tour and promote my books

Blast From the Past

So I'm slowly moving entries from my old blog over to here. I kept this blog from 2002 to 2004. I kept it in sections themed Children, Marriage, Causes, Spirituality, Friends & Family, Books, Work, Miscellaneous, & Writing. On the entry page of the old journal I had these goofy pics of me:

Writing Category

here are all the posts I made about writing, writers, workshops, book projects, calls for submission, etc:

Working On: Chipped Nails & Hairy Legs
Mama Poems II: Call for Submissions
Futuristic Motherhood: Alternative Visions of Mothering
Teen Mama Perspectives: Call for Submissions
My Sci-Fi Pen Name
Indie Book Distribution
Mean Mama Book Project
Sistah Vegan Anthology
Octavia Butler Died
Kola Boof Interview
I Don't Curse Anymore
I'm a Busy Bee
Workshop Preparation
Grrrrr
The Mother-in-law Pledge
Writing Schedule
Met Harlan Ellison
Back Working for The Man
Suppress

Grrrrr

The worst thing about writing is how tedious it can be sometimes. Especially the editing part. Editing is definitely not my strong point. But it's not like I don't handle constructive criticism well or that I feel loss at chopping bits here and there of switching stuf around...I just would rather not do it. I love writing in the flow and churning out pages, I imagine painters must feel something similar when throwing paint on the canvas. Once it's done, let it set and dry. I was very surprised to learn that often painters go back and paint over a painting or other wise change it in some way, I didn't realize that.
Anyway. I think what also gets to me in the editing process is how asinine I find my own writing sometimes. I'll write something, I'll think it's completely brilliant and then go back over it later and see how stupid it is, or how facile or completely unoriginal. That sets my teeth on edge.

Writing Schedule

I've been struggling lately with keeping my schedule for writing together. I've been working so long on the Mama books that I've neglected my other writing projects. I've got a lot of new stuff I've been mulling over in my head.
For years I wrote during the night, but now that I've been working on sleeping more it's cut into my writing time. That sucks. What I really need to do is keep track of my time better. I get a lot done but I am sure there is time I could be using more productively.

Writing Group

Last Saturday I attended the second meeting of a new writers group. It was so cool! I really like all of our members. Though we are at different stages in our writing careers, everyone is encouraging and helpful to one another. This meeting we did critiques on work submitted by four members. I was one of the four, and I submitted an essay about, what else, motherhood. Another woman also submitted an essay, and two guys submitted short stories, both of which were really good.

During each critique everyone gave their comments about the essay or story. I felt that everyone gave constructive criticism, no one gave a change/improvement suggestion without also giving a valid reason. The authors of each piece were very gracious about accepting criticism as well, either noting that they would include suggested improvements in their revisions of the essay/story or explaining why not making the change would be right for the story or essay.

After critiques we did a writing exercise. One of the members was thoughtful enough to pick up a batch of paint color cards from Home Depot. We each selected 3 cards, and on each card were 4 colors. The point of the exercise was to write a story using as many as possible of the 12 colors on your selected cards in a specified amount of time. We chose 20 minutes. After the timer went off we each read our story aloud to the others. This exercise was challenging and fun, and for me produced a short story idea I'm going to continue and flesh out.

Which reminds me to print out submission info to other publications for the rest of the group for our next meeting.

For The First Time

I can still remember the first time I wrote a story. I was 8 and it was summertime, and I was sitting under one of the flowerbushes in our backyard. 2 of my brothers were playing footbal in my mother's garden. My dad saw them and hollered for them to come inside. I stayed outside, and for a long time no one called for me. I hadn't bought out the pencil and paper planning to write a story, but to play tic-tac-toe with my friend Samantha, who had already gone home.

I remember how hot the day was, and how sleepy I felt. But I did not want to inside and take a nap. I sat under the bush, languidly waving away bees and mosquitos, and as my mind wandered, I thought about how quiet it was and how much I liked the quiet.I wished I was an only child so that I could have such peace all the time. I imagined what my life would be like then. It seemed so real to me I wrote it down, and then decided I wouldn't like being an only child. The girl in the story became another girl, and I wrote about how she spied on the kids next door who were part of a big family like mine.

It was actually a good little story. I finished a bunch of pages before my brothers came out again. Being nosy big brothers they demanded to know what I was doing, proceeded to snatch the pages out of my hands, and then laughed at my story and ripped it up. I was very angry, but not too upset because I figured I could write it down again later. I ran to tell on them however, and they got called in yet again. I was going to write the story down again but instead fell asleep under the flower bush.

Environmental Stuff

I've been working on a new section for Veggie Mama about recycling. It's slow going, I've been so busy with all the book production (which is NOT going well, but that's another topic) and trying to hire folks and get my finances straight, I just haven't had time. But it is very important to me...doing my little bit helps me feel safer, and calmer about all the mess and nonsense that's goin on with environmental issues. The past three days here have been Ozone Alerts...I wasn't too sure what that means so I called the paper that had it (The Plain Dealer) and they put me on hold and then disconnected me. So as usual I turned to the net for information. According to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences alerts are needed when too much ozone accumulates at ground level. You can read here for more information.

I get aggravated with myself because I forget to do little things, like carry my cloth grocery bag when I go shopping or hang the clothes out to dry instead of using the dryer. These are easy things I can do, and when I don't do them I feel like a lazy spoiled American. I really should hang the clothes because it's not like it would be for a long time or anything, here in Tundraland we only have sunny weather for 2-3 months out of the year, then it gets cold.