Have a Molehill to Move?

We have a super special guest today! I met her through FreelanceSuccess.com and she's one of the most upbeat and inspirational writers I know. When I was looking for writing mothers to interview, Jen Jen Singer of MommaSaid.net was one of the first Mamas (Or Mommas) that I thought of... I've been struggling with motivation lately but after reading Jen's story, I feel like my mountain might actually be a molehill.

1) Introverts 'recharge' by spending time alone, extroverts 'recharge' by spending time with others. Which are you and how does it affect your writing?

I’ve always said I’m enough like my mother that I can talk to anyone, anywhere, yet enough like my father that I don’t want to. I can pour on the charm for a TV segment or a book-signing, but the next day, I have to hide in my office and write. I do need to get out, though, if for no other reason than to get blog fodder, but also because I like to be with people. But I also like being alone now and then. And with one kid playing “Smoke on the Water” on the keyboard outside my office right now while two others discuss the finer points of the Lego Indiana Jones game, now would be great.

2) What writing-related duties exhaust you?

Book publicity exhausts me. On the one hand, I love talking on the radio and doing interviews. On the other hand, I find that, around book launch time anyway, it takes up so much time that I don’t get to write as much as I’d like to (or need to.) I didn’t write a word in my book that’s due September 1st for five whole weeks while I was doing publicity for “You’re a Good Mom.” That’s fine – better that than no one cares about your book, right? And I do love a good publicity “get,” like when I appeared on Sally Jessy Raphael’s radio program twice. But it can get tiring.

3) What writing-related duties energize you?

I love when I get lost in writing a blog or a page in a book. I lose track of time, and I don’t think about anything else but what I’m writing. Well, also Scrabulous -- I swear I have writing ADD. But when I’m in the writing zone, it jazzes me like tennis can, only without all that sweating.

4) How do you motivate yourself each day to get your butt in the chair and keep writing?

Deadlines are very motivating, as are checks. But honestly, I just love writing. When I’m stuck with writing something (and it’s someone else’s move in Scrabulous), I go to the gym or anywhere but my office. I often come back with something to write about, which, in turn, keeps my butt in my office chair.

5) What specific challenges have you faced and how did you motivate yourself through them?

Last June, I had four chapters left to write in “You’re a Good Mom (and Your Kids Aren’t So Bad Either)” when I found out I had cancer. Still, I managed to finish writing the book, beating my extended deadline by a week. I discovered throughout chemotherapy and radiation that writing anchors me and gives me hope. Plus, it’s cheaper than therapy. Besides, the steroids my oncologist prescribed made for a lot of sleepless nights, so I figured I might as well write while I was up at 3 a.m., because it was better for my psyche than trolling cancer support chat rooms and crying. I have found that once you’ve written on the oncology floor at the hospital, writing seems easier. I have a September 1st deadline and 41,000 more words to go on my next book, the second in a series of MommaSaid branded parenting guides due out in 2009 from HCI. And yet, it doesn’t phase me. My next PET scan, however, does. I’ve been in remission since January, but I’ll have quarterly PET scans this year to make sure my lymphoma doesn’t return. If it does, I’ll pack up my laptop for the hospital.

~~~

If you are as motivated by Jen's story as I am, you can check out more from her at MommaSaid.net

Notes from an Accidental Humorist by Judy Gruen

Happy Sunday Mamas! Today we have a great essay by Judy Gruen about how to market yourself in a niche ... in her case, the humor (or as Kai and I would say, humour) market. This is a favorite (or as Kai and I... oh nevermind..) topic of mine since I've written a LOT in my niche market. And I tell every new writer I can get my hands on to specialize and corner a niche market... So, without further blabber from moi... heeeere's Judy!

When an editor at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner called to tell me she was buying my essay, “Fear of Fat: Don’t Let It Make You Skinny,” I didn’t try to act cool – I shouted "Yippee!" right into the phone. I was only 22 years old, and this was my first freelance sale. Not only had I earned fifty whole bucks (in the mid-1980s, this was only paltry, but not laughable), I had broken into the newspaper business, or so I thought.

What was really happening was quite different, though I wouldn’t realize it for years. This first sale, and the several that followed, were paving a foundation for my career as a humor writer. The Herald-Examiner, at the time the scrappy underdog daily paper in L.A., bought a few more of my pieces, and then I sold a few to the Chicago Tribune when I lived in that city during grad school in journalism. Inspiration struck quickly, as native Chicagoans kept asking me in disbelief, “Are you sure you’re from LA? You’re so . . . normal!” Apparently, they expected native Angelenos to have purple and blue hair that looked like it had been cut by a 4-year-old who’d been mainlining sugar all morning. I was no different than any other essayist: I recycled as many of my life's experiences as possible into humor fodder: When a boyfriend jilted me, for example, I skewered his metrosexual habits, such as sending his jeans to the dry cleaner and stuffing shoe trees into his sneakers, in the Chicago Tribune. (That was fun.)

Though I kept selling humor pieces, the very idea of trying to become a professional humorist seemed absurd. After all, how many Erma Bombecks could one country support? No, I was a practical gal, and my day job for years was writing and editing for health care publications, both at a major research university and later, at a health care corporation. I loved my job. It was interesting. It was relevant. It paid.

But several years later, after I had left my job and worked at home as mom to four children, there was simply too much hilarious material to ignore, so I wrote my first book, “Carpool Tunnel Syndrome: Motherhood as Shuttle Diplomacy.” Then, when I hunkered down to do the hard, gritty work of marketing the book, I realized I had to market myself as a humorist. That’s when I realized my career focused had changed, perhaps for good.

It’s hard to market yourself in a limited niche, and the key thing I’ve learned after working at this for seven years is that you have to keep searching for your audience, the people who will relate to your voice. For years, I avoided marketing my work to Jewish publications, even though I’m Jewish, since I didn’t want to limit my audience, nor did I want to be pegged as solely a “Jewish writer.” But over time, editors of Jewish publications and web sites started coming to me – they had heard my voice and recognized it in the pieces I had sold to them. In the past two years, I’ve become a regular humor columnist for two Jewish print magazines, the “Jewlarious” section of the web site aish.com, and started podcasting my program, "Just Off My Noodle," on the web site of a national Jewish organization. I no longer shy away from writing about this aspect of my life, as it actually widens my audience, and I can almost always adapt my work written for these outlets into more generic humor, such as for my blog on MommaSaid.net, for my email newsletter subscribers, and other media outlets.

If you are writing for a limited market, you’ve got to love what you do and love your topic. If you aren’t getting pleasure from your work, rethink your writing emphasis. Finally, persevere and carry a thick skin. If you’ve been at this for more than 15 minutes you know editors will ignore you more often than they'll pay attention, but if you keep polishing your work and continue hunting for new, like-minded audiences, you can and will break through!


Judy Gruen’s latest book, The Women’s Daily Irony Supplement, has earned numerous publishing industry awards, including a Gold ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award, a Silver “IPPY” from Independent Publisher, and a Bronze Benjamin Franklin award from the Independent Book Publishers Association. Her work has also appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Family Circle, Woman’s Day, and many other media outlets. Read more of her work on www.judygruen.com.

I know I left my inner peace around here somewhere...

I just HAD to post this tonight. Tonight we have a guest post from Aileen McCabe-Maucher (plus more letters! RN, MSW, LCSW). She is a a licensed psychotherapist, registered nurse and author of the forthcoming book, The Inner Peace Diet that will be published by Penguin in December 2008. And, she's a mom to a two-year-old girl.


When I read Aileen's bio, I had one huge question:


"How can I be ambitious AND have inner peace? I’m an ambitious person by nature… but I want to find that peace. How can I do it?"

Here's what she had to say:

When I think of maintaing both a sense of inner peace and personal ambition the following quote by Lao Tzu comes to mind "By doing nothing one could accomplish everything.'"

As a busy mom, writer and psychotherapist, I rarely have time to "do nothing." As I type this entry after midnight, I have two loads of laundry in progress, a feverish child in my bed, and a desk piled high with work. A part of me thrives on burning the candle at both ends and having multiple projects in the works. However, a larger part of me, simply just wants to be relaxed and enjoy exactly where I am in this moment. For me, inner peace is simply about being in the present and knowing that everything will be okay, regardless of how crazy it seems now. Meditation is a great way to infuse your day with inner peace. I try to set aside ten minutes each morning to simply sit and breathe. During meditation, I slowly breathe in and out through my nostrils and gently let go of any thoughts or worries. I allow everything to be as it is. Having thoughts occur during meditation is as natural as breathing. I welcome the thoughts and then quietly let them go as I surrender to silence. At first, I found meditation challenging. I ,too, am ambitious. It was hard for me to sit still and I was eager to get started with the next item on my list. However, after a lot of practice meditation is now my favorite part of the day.

Paradoxically, I find that after this ten minutes of "doing nothing" but meditating, I am most productive. Some of my best ideas and freshest writing come to me after meditation. In a sense, meditation fuels my ambition yet also sustains my sense of inner peace.

That really spoke to me. I am a pretty driven person. I'm a check-it-off-move-to-the-next-thing type of gal. But lately I've been thinking about how to find a peacefulness inside. A small part of my brain wonders what other women do who are stay-at-home-moms... and who don't drive themselves batty trying to write until midnight each night, get workouts in every day, work a full time job ... and expect that they won't lose their temper or snap at their kids.

Surely they have some kind of peace. I'm considering taking a few weeks off from any writing whatsoever, maybe even a computer break for two WEEKS this summer, after my book deadline of course. But maybe I can work a little harder at getting that "everyday peace" that Aileen is talking about.

Thank you Aileen!

Powerful Post of the Week

I'm on a group called MomWriters and recently we got into a discussion about women and writing. Fellow MomWriter Kimberlee Jackson wrote this powerful post and agreed to let me post it here.

~~~

I have noticed as humans we want to fit things into categories and label them forevermore as one thing or another; enter the stereotype. While no one has labeled women writers as the archaic "hysterical and emotional" there are plenty of people willing to put us in that category. As we scramble to earn a name in our respective genres I question if we are striving to measure up to those labels? If so, why? Do the comfortable labels fit so well? Do we shrug our shoulders and sigh accepting that womens writing has always been thought of as one way? Maybe so, but I read Virgina Woolf and note she was unwilling that women write like men but that they find there own voice not powered by emotion alone. Here is a passage from "A Room of One's Own":

"One has only to skim those old forgotten novels and listen to the tone of voice in which they are written to divine that the writer was meeting criticism; she was saying this by way of aggression, or that by way of conciliation. She was admitting that she was 'only a woman', or protesting that she was'good as a man'. She met that criticism as her temperament dictated, with docility and diffidence, or with anger and emphasis...She had altered her values in deference to the opinion of others" (121)

So I am of the opinion that as women writers, the struggle is to remain true. This takes guts to convey passion supported by facts rather than a strong emotion. No writing is more powerful. Emotion in writing is appropriate when something emotional is happening but must not be the driving force and power in writing.

Use emotion to fuel your research about a topic you have a healthy passion for and make the reader think. If you have the ability to write in such a way, the worlview of women's writing will change just as the reader's mindset will be changed by the way you write. Using emotion to thresh out the ideas you want to immortalize on paper is part of the writing process.

I believe in pushing the envelope. Am I able to write that way yet? I am learning. Do I fit neatly into one category? I don't know for sure, I guess I ought to find out and go from there. What do I like best about the women writers I've been intorduced to this past semester? Some of their words rattle around in my head and I think on them. The words stay with me. Do their words make me a better person? Not necessarily so but they cause me to think more deeply on the subject they are writing.

We studied Joyce Carol Oats and her writing on family issues made me think. I felt some strong emotional responses but it is not enough to just stop there, she gave me pause to wonder what my idea of family is and how we all differ in our family dynamics. She didn't create a platform that one family was better or worse than another but this was how she knew family to be. Oats didn't tell me what to think, she prompted me to think.

~~~

Thank you Kimberlee!

Who Am I?

Today we have a writer that I'm very familiar with because she's from my country! She's a PWACer, just like me! And an FLXer. (I think she's stalking me!) So, ladies, please put your hands together for Marijke Vroomen-Durning.

Hi, my name is Marijke and I’m – well – that’s the problem. Who am I?

I’ve never been one to suffer from an identity crisis. I’ve always had a spot in the world, however fragile it could be at times. But, sometimes I’m so many people that I begin to wonder who I really am.

The unarguable facts are that I’m a newly minted 47-year-old mother of three (for 21 years and counting) and wife of one (almost 23 years and counting). But I’m also a nurse, a writer, an editor, a quilter, a freelancer, owner of Dee, the greyhound (although Dee may argue that she’s the owner!), sister, daughter, friend, mentor and acquaintance. I’ve participated in groups where I felt I belonged and I’ve been part of groups where I’ve felt like an outsider. There have been times when I’ve felt invisible and other times when I felt like the elephant in the middle of the room. But which one of those is me?

I love being a mother but, I’ve never lived through my children. Some mothers become the super-mother and everything they do and think is about their children. I’ve never been able to do that. I always thought I was a bit on the selfish side because, I couldn’t do that. I am their mother, but a mother is not who I am. Does that make sense? I would take a bullet for my kids and I can’t imagine life without them. I feel for them and every hurt they have, it seems that I feel it 100 times over. I take such pride in their accomplishments, I think I’ll burst sometimes, and I quietly mourn their disappointments. But being a mother wasn’t and isn’t my meaning in life. At least, not that I know of.

With my oldest living on his own now, my middle one in university and my “baby” graduating from high school next month, my life is shifting from mom of children to mom of adults. It’s a very different way of thinking and it takes a different mindset. My role as mother is no longer the primary thing in my life. While they may need me from time to time to help them, they don’t need me. My job is pretty well done.

So, am I to identify more as a wife? No – I love my husband, but I don’t identify myself as a wife. Am I a nurse? For years, that is how I identified myself – I felt like being a nurse went to my very core because of my knowledge and because of my experience. But, I haven’t worked clinically in over a year now and only sporadically before that for several years, so can I/should I say I’m a nurse?

Am I a writer? Now that’s the one that gives me pause. Am I a writer? I think about writing all the time. I dream about it sometimes. I see things that need to be written; I hear stories that need to be told. I sit in front of the computer and start to write – and the words just flow, as they are doing now.

I read a good piece of writing and I get it. I get how the person made the words flow and helped me feel what he wanted me to feel. I read bad writing and cringe, because there are so many good writers out here in the real world.

Some writers see their work as just that – work. But that’s how I saw nursing. It was a job; sometimes I did it better than other times; I could be mediocre, and I could be really good. But writing, my writing. All I want to do is write. So, maybe I’ve finally discovered who it is that I am.

I am Marijke, mother of three adult children, wife of one, I used to be a nurse, and now I’m a writer.

And I like to think that I’m a pretty good one.

Marijke (which is pronounced muh-RYE-kah/keh) lives in Montreal, Canada and has taken her nursing background to carve a spot in the health writing world. She has started writing about other things, such as quilting. She writes for several blogs but the two she loves to work on most are Help My Hurt, a blog about pain and living with pain, and her newest one, Womb Within, a blog about the health and issues in pregnancy.

A Question of Sanity...

I have been sitting on a bunch of guest posts for a while. A couple of weeks back, a friend posted this on a mailing list we're both on. I thought it was harried, but hopeful at the same time. I have taken the liberty of entitling it...

A Question of Sanity

Today I am questioning my sanity...it is nights and days where it seems like everything goes backward, that in reality it is going forward. I have been home just over a week after spending ten days in hospital due to threatened premature labor. This little one is now full-term and had me in hospital last weekend with major contractions and nothing happening. I turned full-term on Thursday which I am really grateful for and am now looking forward to actually having her.

Yesterday - what a mixed bag. No I didn't try to put the dog in the fridge as he would not fit - thank goodness. That is the state my brain was in - forgetting things, misplacing items, running late for daycare, not realizing we were out of gas for the car, it was a great start to the day.

So very soon, my family will increase from four males (five including the dog), to two females - myself and our little girl. There was no mistaking the ultrasound and this pregnancy has been nothing like any of the boys ) I would not have it any other way. This year has been a huge learning curve in family, relationships, learning about myself, who I am and what is important to me. Writing is more viable than ever as a way of life and I am developing this as I go along. I am still doing my magazine and web work, have a special book to contribute to and another series of ebooks in development on writing.

This year, I can see that dreams do come true, miracles happen and I am often surprised when one problem is solved without a huge amount of fuss or planning. Having to be humble and ask for help has been a huge thing for me to learn to do. I realise now I can be independant and still have help without having to do everything alone.

Life is a gift and something to treasure. There have been times when I have been in a depressed state, so angry I resembled a mean looking bull about to charge the poor person caught in the corner of the fence, or the teary momma who wants to just sit down, cry and bury her head in the sand. I haven't buried my head in the sand - I mean the sand in the eyes and nose would be the pits. I have managed to coral that mean bull and have to take him for walks every day to keep it calm, the depressed person is unable to stay sad as the eternal oprimist comes through and has to laugh and see the good in every situation. Plus with a lovable nut for a husband, three active young boys and being alive, there is so much to enjoy and appreciate.

Keep going with your writing, sit tight with our dreams - I am now daring to dream again and I have this nagging suspicion that I am on the right path to getting everything that I have always desired for my family. Love we have in abundance and everything else is a huge bonus.

Better go before the 5 and 2 year demolish their bedroom with the toy tools they found this morning. Mister 2 was up at 5 and wanted to play and I made him go back to bed as the crows hadn't flown past and the sun was still in bed. 6am saw the 5 and 2 year playing in their room making a ruckus and bouncing on the beds, so mom got out of bed, got them settled as the sun was still not up and then at 6:30am, they wandered into the office where I got them drawing. So children keep me very engaged and I am so tired at the moment that my eyes feel like they are about to fall out of my head. How my hubbie can be such a heavy sleeper is beyond me...yes I am a bit envious as I am a light sleeper so hear most things that go on.

Washing beckons, columns call ahead of schedule due to bub and I have a need to clean. So have a wonderful day and know you are not alone in "the land of the Momma".

--Susan Thompson is a full-time mom, copywriter, freelance writer based in Australia. Widely published, she is always looking for some new project to get the creative instinct happening.

Want to read some more from Susan?

Mid-North Monthly Website Administrator/Writer
Web Wombat Lifestyle Contributor
Fatherhood - Me A Dad (written under her male alias Aidden Williams)
Creativity is Not Extinct
Step-Parenting A Foreign Word

Is the Spin Cycle Sexy?

Last year, I was fortunate to stumble on one of the most spectacular talents to have sloshed out of small publishing since... well, since! You see, Natalie R. Collins is a good buddy of mine. I tell people, "I knew her when she was nobody." She writes books about Mormons in Utah and as a result, she gets lots of requests from Utah authors for blurbs.

Now, when you're a Big Name Author from a Big NY Publisher, like Natalie is, you get a lot of requests to blurb absolutely awful books, mostly small published, self-published, and POD vanity published. And you don't have a whole lot of time to comply—especially for the bad ones, which you must read to find out they are bad and then deal with the fallout from the disappointed author when you refuse to blurb the book. Said fallout is often quite nasty. It's enough to make many BNYP-ed authors turn down all indie books sight unseen.

But Natalie is a nice lady; she was quite anguished. We talked it over. And we wandered through JulieAnn's web site—which was, at the time, a fright. I stumbled on JulieAnn's blog, though, and it convinced me. It was funny. It was crazy. It was quite well written with an incredible voice. I said, "Nat, give this chick a chance." But Natalie, on the horns of a pressing deadline just couldn't commit to it. But I was so sure, I offered to screen the book first. Deal was, if I loved the book, she had to read it.

Well, I got JulieAnn's book in the mail and started reading it before bed. And then I stayed up til 4 AM finishing it. I don't do that with too darn many books! I wrote to Natalie, saying that she absolutely HAD to read and blurb the book. And I wrote to JulieAnn about how much I loved her novel. And we became friends. The rest is history. Someday, I will be proud to say that I knew JulieAnn Henneman when she was nobody.

On today's blog, JulieAnn Henneman is our guest blogger sharing the travails of writing erotica while parenting a small boy...

Is the Spin Cycle Sexy?

She reached for him, and felt his hands cover her breasts before their mouths collided in a fiery...

"Mommy, I want lunch!" My four year old smiles at me with his little gap-toothed grin and I smile back at him, feeling as though I was just caught by a cop in the back seat of a Chevy.

"In just a second, mommy just needs to finish this one little bit of work, okay?"

"Well, can I watch tv in your room? I wanna watch Blue's Clues."

"Okay, there. Now shush, so mommy can work." I begin again by reading and catching up.

... a fiery melding of tongues and hot breath...

"A clue! Mommy there's a clue!"

"What? Oh, that's great sweetheart, be quiet now, okay?"

I suddenly here a loud beeeeeeeep followed by loud, rhythmic pounding. The washer is off balance again. I make my way down to the basement trying to come up with a phrase that is the equivalent to "quivering" or "swollen member". I adjust the load for the thirteenth time. I ascend back up the stairs.

My son is standing at the top of the stairs in his Spiderman underwear and wearing my red, Italian leather pumps.

"Mommy, do I look pretty?"

My son has two older sisters. They ask him this question before they leave for school every day. He invariably tells them they look 'booger'.

I tell him that yes, he looks very pretty, and to go finish watching his tv show.

Back to work.

"Where should we go?" She asked, panting into his ear.

"Here." He lifted her from behind so her legs straddled him, and moaned as she felt his—

"I want peanut butter and honey but not too much peanut butter on the bread mom."

"Uh-huh, okay..."

—desire for her straining through his—

"Mooooom, I went poo-poo and pee-pee in the big potty. Come wipe my bottom!"

My son kneels on the bathroom floor with his derriere perched up in the air like the All-Seeing Eye.

"Okay, son, I really need to finish some work, so you need to be really quiet for a while. Alright?"

"Okay, but what happens if apples get warm?"

"I don't know, son. Just play with your toys for a few more minutes."

—trousers. She could feel his need and she ground her hips into his laundry—

The laundry buzzed its final buzz and I continued. But little did I know the laundry wasn't quite finished.

Her breathing was haggard as his hands wandered over her body.

"I love you Dora"—

"Dora? Her name's not Dora!" I yell.

"Yes it is! Can I? Can I please watch Dora instead of Blue's Clues?"

"Son, finish the show. I'll be done in a minute."

But that's it. My sexual libido and creative fire have been whittled down to a memory and a piece of cold coal and I know I'm done for the afternoon. I fix my son lunch and watch as he happily plays with stickers while eating quietly. The laundry begins to pound again and I'm fed up.

The washer practically jumped off of the floor as it shook and I vow to never wash rugs with towels again. I had adjusted this load too many damn times today and it's almost done, so I hop on the washer, my weight bearing down on it so it made merely a jittery tremor.

Bump, bump, bump, bump.

I begin to like my washer as it hums mercifully below me. I find myself giggling with... with what? Glee? Happiness? With... oh...oh my!

I make my way up the stairs lazily, a half smile on my face. I trip a bit on the upper stair and break into laughter.

"Look mommy, I'm being good so you can work!" He says proudly. He has now donned a black cape.

"Yes you are baby, thank you. Mommy's done working for a minute, so why don't you get some stories and we'll read and take a little nap."

I'll get back to my story after our nap—when I put in the white load.

JulieAnn Henneman lives precariously in suburban Utah, USA. She is the mother of three children, a poet, creative writing instructor and coffee freak. She is the author of Always Listen to the Ravings of a Mad Woman (Draumr Publishing, 2006), and four other completed but unpublished books which she is marketing to agents and editors. JulieAnn also writes award-winning erotica under the pen name Trinity Wolf, with her debut short story available at Forbidden Publications.