Writer Mama Riffs on Raising A Writing Career Alongside Your Kids

Jason and I dashed Samantha over to a friends and then zipped up into the city to see the fabulous Marc Acito perform Marco, The Musical!

Actually, we zipped a bit too much and overshot our turn. Someone who knows please tell me why men get so upset about getting lost?

Fortunately, I finally asked my (exhausted, so I cut him some slack) husband to please stop so I could ask a nice fellow who was loading his bike into his car (this is Portland after all) where we went wrong.

And, what do you know, we got there. On time and everything. (Honey, I hope you are reading this but somehow I think you are too busy with your play that opens this week.)

Anyway. We got there. And we were so glad we did. Even Jason has to admit that it was totally worth getting slightly lost for the pleasure of an evening of laughing uproariously.

My absolute favorite part was a song that Mark sang (and wrote, I imagine) called, “I’ll be there for you.”

OMG, hilarious! I was dying!

So, my dear reader. If you live in any of the following places, I hope you will cancel all of your plans and make an evening of enjoying time with Marc Acito: [These dates edited on May 5th to just the list of "singing," complete list of appearances here.]

Seattle - Elliott Bay Book Co; May 6 at 6pm (book “singing”)

LA - A Different Light Books; May 7 at 7pm (book “singing”)

NYC - Barnes & Noble; May 12 at 7pm

Menlo Park, NJ - Barnes & Noble; May 13 at 7pm

Beaverton - Borders; May 20 at 7pm (book “singing”)

Cannot WAIT to read Attack of the Theater People. I will definitely post an Amazon review as soon as I do.

I hope you will read it and post a review too. And definitely see Marc, if you get a chance.

We all need to laugh uproariously sometimes.

If you just can’t make it to an appearance, you can always read Marc’s hilarious blog or just check out his Hair Museum at his website.

Go, Marc! Hope to see you on the bestseller list soon.

Thanks to Sandy over at Coolstuff4writers.com for inviting me to do an interview for their newsletter/site.

You can read the interview here.

And check out their “cool stuff” while you are over there.

Here’s a cool women writers mug.

The women writers book bag is cool.

And here’s a Jane Austen mug.

Great prices!

Have fun.

Thanks to Allena Tapia. It’s always a great feeling to know that your hard-wrought words are in the hands of conscientious and appreciative reader.

This about.com review is one of the best my first book, Writer Mama, has received yet.

Which only fuels my fire to work twice as hard on my Get Known Before the Book Deal rewrites, which I have received back from my editor.

The best part of my editor’s feedback on my forthcoming second book?

“This is exactly the book I’d want to give to every writer at a writing conference.”

Yes! Onward…

There is a new review of Writer Mama over at the Reading and Writing Lounge blog.

And a couple of new success stories (scroll down) from Joanna and Andrea on the Success Stories page of this blog.

Do you have a success story related to Writer Mama or a class with Christina Katz? Share your success with us!

It’s a great opportunity to appreciate all of your hard work and celebrate it with other writer mamas!

Post it here (in the comments).

A couple more blogger reviews of Writer Mama appeared last week.

Apparently, Writer Mama is “worth it’s weight in gold,” according to Andrea McMann over at Writing From Kiddom.

And Jenn Hollowell over at Working Writer says thanks to Writer Mama, “I saw potential for bettering my career I didn’t think possible before.”

Shucks, you guys. You know I never tire of hearing such things.

Don’t forget my offer for ten free essay markets if you purchase a new copy of Writer Mama. The scoop, the whole scoop, and nothing but the scoop is here.

Hey, thanks for the reviews, mamas!

Here’s the latest additions to the WM Buzz page:

Writer Mama Rocks! 

 How Often Do You Write?

Must-Haves for WAHMs

These posts are full of rich and chewy inspiration. Check them out!

Here’s a nice review of Writer Mama from Haute Writer: Mommy, Wife, Writer.

Thanks, Haute Writer. I love the idea of writing on despite (or perphaps because) the toilet overfloweth.

Write on!

According to Stephanie Sheaffer of Metropolitan Mama blog, my cute little book (cute on the outside, kinda butt-kicking on the inside), Writer Mama, is going to help land her on Oprah.

Okay by me.

On Friday, Stephanie wrote a nice review of Writer Mama that you may want to check out, so you can get on Oprah too.

We’ll be doing a Q&A in early 2008. I’ll be sure to keep ya posted.

Write on, mamas!

I’d love to see you at the Wilsonville Public Library this Sunday from 3-5 in the afternoon where you can come hear me talking about how to write and publish nonfiction AND support the Wilsonville Public Library at the same time.

How awesome is that?

We’ll be giving away a $25 gift certificate for books from Writer’s Digest and a year subscription to Writersmarket.com. Yahoo!

Writers ages ‘tween and up will learn a lot from this presentation, which is not just for moms.

Here’s the scoop on the upcoming event. It’s the last one I’ll be doing for awhile, so I hope to see you there!

Northwest Author Series Presents Christina Katz!

Author Christina Katz, whose book Writer Mama, How to Raise A Writing Career Alongside Your Kids was published in March by Writer’s Digest Books, will present to aspiring nonfiction writers on October 21st from 3-5 p.m. at the Wilsonville Public Library.

The topic is: You Can Write and Raise Kids – with lots of writing for publication tips for all nonfiction writers (not just moms) to discuss on a gloomy October afternoon.

Exercises during the second hour will help audience members brainstorm their own nonfiction writing topics.

Aspiring writers of all ages, mamas and otherwise, are encouraged to attend. Katz has recently signed another contract with Writer’s Digest Books for a second book. The title will be announced in early 2008. Cost: $5.00 at the door. Portland poet Sage Cohen will host.

Christina Katz has mentored hundreds of writers through her classes over the past six years. As a freelance journalist, she has written over 200 articles for national, regional and online publications. The popularity of her article, “The Art of Making Time for Yourself,” landed her an interview with Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America. Christina is a graduate of Dartmouth College and holds an MFA in Fiction from Columbia College, Chicago. She lives in Wilsonville, Oregon with her husband, Jason, and daughter, Samantha.

This event is part of an ongoing series, the Northwest Author Series, created by Christina Katz and sponsored by Wilsonville Arts & Culture Council & the Wilsonville Public Library. The series runs the third Sunday during the school year from 3-5 p.m., except in December. The series covers diverse genres and brings writers to Wilsonville from all over the Pacific Northwest.

Upcoming authors include: Elizabeth Rusch on writing for children (November), Heather Sharfeddin on contemporary western fiction (January), and more!

Add us to your calendar for an ongoing continuing education experience that can’t be beat. That’s the Northwest Author Series. The third Sunday of every month, except December, through June 2008. Thanks!

For more info, please visit: http://northwestauthorseries.wordpress.com/

Thanks for spreading the word, supporting the Wilsonville Public Library, being a lifelong learner and cultivating writing community!

Cheers,

Christina

I spent the lion’s share of my twenties in Chicago. I’d just gotten my B.A. from Dartmouth College in English and spent the summer as a T.A. at Phillips Andover’s Summer School.

I was preppy. I was incredibly naive. I was scared. And when I landed in Chicago, after driving all night to get there from Mass. in my boyfriend’s old Buick with “My Kind of Town” by Frank Sinatra booming through the speakers and the Sears Tower lit and looming through the windshield, I was a quite a lot like Dorothy, only I woke up in Chicago instead of Oz.

Over the next nine years, I sometimes followed (and sometimes didn’t follow) the yellow brick road wherever it took me.

And then one not very happy day (if I am remembering correctly, not much else was going very well), I said, “Screw it. I’m writing.” And I got myself an application to Columbia College Chicago’s Fiction Writing Program. Graduate school was a place where houses didn’t fall from the sky. There were no wicked witches there. Just a lot of other aspiring writers just like me, who wanted to write and after that pretty much didn’t have clue.

I met my friend Kristin Bair O’Keeffe there and we became fast friends. United by our literary desire and our belief that were hot stuff (I’m not sure if we were or we weren’t, but we sure thought we were) we wrote a lot of pages and started a graduate student reading series called “Readings in the Raw.”

Chicago was the place where I dared to make a commitment to writing. It was a commitment that I paid thousands of dollars for. And it was totally worth it. I highly recommend graduate school in writing to anyone in their twenties who wants to write. The hard work that I did at Columbia, writing thousands and thousand of pages over the course of three years, didn’t get me published outside those at the school, but it gave me an important foundation as a writer that I have drawn on over the years and continue to draw on as my writing career grows.

I’m going back to read as part of an event for Creative Nonfiction Week, which is a joint effort between the Fiction Department, the Journalism Department, and the English Department. If you are going to be around, please come by and say hello. You can learn more about Creative Nonfiction Week here.

Now if I can just get the sound of Frank Sinatra out of my head, I’ll get back to work.