|
Book Proposal/Query Letter Book Camp |
Archive for the ‘Newsletter Archive’ Category
Women WRITE Now!
Monday, March 14th, 2011| Women WRITE Now! A seminar for women writers and women who want to write |
Do you want:  ~ advice about how to find an agent? ~ to find out how to sustain/improve your writing life? ~ to connect with experts in social media and self-publishing? ~ to understand the fast paced changes happening in the book industry? |
Marita Golden’s E-Newsletter – February 2011
Thursday, February 17th, 2011Finding Time to Write!
The voice on the phone was tinged with desperation and confusion. The question was sincere and very simple: how do I get back my “flow” how do I regain the ability to write regularly and with power? The writer had attended a weeklong writing workshop where her novel was praised as compelling and skillful. Buoyed by the response to her writing she returned home but found that within a few weeks she had “lost” the ability to keep writing, that the inspiration that had carried her through the uncharted waters of the first 100 pages was now gone, faded, a distant memory she could no longer conjure or even remember. Her 9-5 and the demands of her life as wife and mother now seemed to have colonized all the time she once had used to write. The story was in her heart, filled her mind, but suddenly she just wasn’t’ “feeling” the story and now couldn’t find the time to write and felt guilty and depressed.
Marita Golden’s E-Newsletter – August 2010
Friday, August 6th, 2010Next Generation of Black Writers
From Left to Right - Abdul, Nkenge, Marita, Stacia, & Jalal
Remember these names-Abdul Ali, Jalal Naeem, Stacia Yearwood, and Nkenge Feagin. These are writers who represent the best of the next generation of Black writers. Each one has been accepted by the MFA Graduate Creative Writing Program at American University and will begin the program in September. There writers, two poets and two fiction writer are symbols of the promise and healthy of the future of African American writing.
Marita Golden’s E-Newsletter – April 2010
Friday, August 6th, 2010Poets – Politics – Jazz
April is the month devoted in Washington, D.C. to a month-long celebration of jazz. It’s also National Poetry Month. Two art forms distinguished by what appears to be a dynamic, almost spontaneous beauty, but that in reality, result from wedding discipline to inspiration. Last month I attended the Split This Rock poetry festival, which brought together poets from all over the nation and all over the world, to celebrate the poetic imagination and the need to continually work for peace, justice and equality.
Marita Golden’s E-Newsletter – February 2010
Friday, February 26th, 2010Are You Ready to Write?
February is Black History Month. What better time to think about writing your story? In February we officially honor African American trailblazers. Prominent among those honored are writers. Writers like Frederick Douglass, born into slavery, a man who put language at his command. Douglass used words as an orator and a writer to change his personal history and in support of societal change for us all. We honor Zora Neale Hurston, best-known as the author of the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. But Hurston was also an anthropologist, whose groundbreaking field work in the American South, Haiti and the Caribbean shaped the
future of anthropology. We look at and interpret history, the past and the present in a much more complex and rich way, because of the contributions of Douglass and Hurston. To paraphrase lines from a poem by the Persian bard Rumi, they went in the direction where there was no direction, and there they found themselves and all of us at the end of their journey.
Marita Golden’s E-Newsletter – November 2009
Monday, November 16th, 2009Writing Life Tips
I’m always reading and currently I’m finishing On The Line, Serena Williams’ autobiography. The world’s number one women’s tennis player tells a fascinating and compelling story of her rise. Like all good stories, at it’s center is a strong main character who gets us on her side rooting for her. I found it especially interesting that despite her God-given talent, drive, training and enormous ambition, Serena talks in the book of regularly using affirmations and positive self-talk to keep her focused and winning and playing her best. She also writes about how she focuses much more on herself and her game when she is facing an opponent than figuring out the other player’s weaknesses or strengths. At one point she says “The more I play the better I play.”Productive writers do all the things Serena talks about in her book. They think positively, focus on themselves and not what other writers are doing and they write a lot, in order to become better writers. I’m sure Serena would endorse my suggestions for flipping that annoying negative self-talk about what you can or can’t do as a writer into a positive conversation. We’re heading into the end of the year and thinking about a new year with new possibilities. What better time to revise that tape playing in your head?
~ I don’t have the talent to write becomes
I have all the skill, and creativity I need to tell my story
Marita Golden’s E-Newsletter – August 2009
Tuesday, September 29th, 2009What’s In Your Kindle?
I’ve been asked quite a lot this summer if I’ve purchased a Kindle, the electronic reading device sold by Amazon that’s all the rage. While I remain old school in my reading habits, preferring the feel of paper to molded plastic, I think the Kindle is a great idea. In fact the Kindle is an idea whose time has come and one of these days I WILL buy one. As long as people are reading books be it on a cell phone, a computer screen or an electronic book, I’m happy. We live our lives through stories and all the new technology is an adaptation of inventive genius to our instinctive need for narrative. Yes, newspapers are folding and bookstores are closing but books are as popular as ever, that’s what the Kindle proves to me! Marita
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~