Writer Mama Riffs on Raising A Writing Career Alongside Your Kids

2008 CLASSES WITH CHRISTINA KATZ

Writing and Publishing The Short Stuff
Especially For Moms (But Not Only for Moms)!
Prerequisites: None
Finally, a writing workshop that fits into the busy lives of moms! You will learn how to create short, easy-to-write articles-a skill that will make it easier to move up to longer, more time-consuming articles when you’re ready. Try your pen at tips, fillers, short interviews, list articles, how-tos, and short personal essays-all within six weeks. Classes begin February 13, 2008.
Cost: $175.00.
Register at Writers on the Rise

Targeting Your Best Writing Markets
Prerequisites: Writing and Publishing the Short Stuff or Permission from Instructor
Learning to sift through and analyze markets is one of the biggest challenges of launching a writing career. This class will help you tackle the markets head on while covering: idea management, how to discover your best audiences, how to allow those audiences to lead you to fresh ideas, how to break a magazine down into the key areas that matter most to freelancers, and how to start specializing right away so your career will achieve lift-off faster. Classes begin February 13 and August 20, 2008.
Cost: $175.00.
Register at Writers on the Rise

I’m very pleased to announce my (recently revised) class line-up for 2008.

I have a couple of “new additions” this year that I’m excited about:

Targeting Your Best Writing Markets (which is being offered in February, for those of you who have taken Writing and Publishing the Short Stuff and are looking for the next step)

&

Crafting the Nonfiction Book Proposal (which is being offered one time in June, please read the suggested prerequisites if you are interested)

I’ll be posting a flyer for the entire 2008 year soon. In the meantime, the 2008 schedule is posted on the classes page at Writers on the Rise and registration is now open.

Still Need a Holiday Gift?
If you’d like someone to give you a partial class payment as a holiday gift, feel free to have them contact me at writer mama @ earthlink dot net. They can always make an electronic payment towards your balance. (And they’ll probably notice that I have the best priced e-classes around.)

Here are the two classes being offered in February. Hope to “see” you in then!

Writing and Publishing The Short Stuff – Especially For Moms (Dads Welcome too)!
Finally, a writing workshop that fits into the busy lives of moms! You will learn how to create short, easy-to-write articles—a skill that will make it easier to move up to longer, more time-consuming articles when you’re ready. Try your pen at tips, fillers, short interviews, list articles, how-tos, and short personal essays—all within six weeks. Class begins February 13, 2008. Cost: $175.00. Register.

Targeting Your Best Writing Markets
Learning to sift through and analyze markets is one of the biggest challenges of launching a writing career. This class will help you tackle the markets head on while covering: idea management, how to discover your best audiences, how to allow those audiences to lead you to fresh ideas, how to break a magazine down into the key areas that matter most to freelancers, and how to start specializing right away so your career will achieve lift-off faster. Class begins February 13, 2008. Cost: $175.00. Register.

The public is invited to support Willamette Writers Books for Kids program just in time for the holidays. By shopping at Barnes & Noble, Clackamas Town Center on Sunday, December 9th from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. and using a special Books for Kids Bookfair Voucher they can help raise funds to purchase more new books for the Willamette Writers Books for Kids Program. The store will donate a percentage of every sale made with the voucher to the Books for Kids program. Vouchers are available online at www.willamettewriters.com, by calling the Willamette Writers office @ 503-452-1592, or at the store on December 9th.

Willamette Writers will present these special events at the Bookfair from 1 to 5 p.m.:

·    1 - 3 PM - Readings by award winning local writers and poets, including Susan Fletcher, Kristina McMorris, Christine Fletcher, Samantha Waltz, Steve Perry, Sage Cohen, Pat Cason and others.

·    3-4 PM - Yes, You Too Can Write A Screenplay - A workshop and panel discussion on screenwriting opportunities with Cynthia Whitcomb, who has sold over 50 scripts to movie studios and television networks, and Bill Johnson, author of A Story is a Promise and several award-winning plays.

4-5 PM Writing in the Dark, in the Basement, in the Bathroom, or at the Park - A workshop and panel discussion of Mom Authors with Chelsea Cain, Heather Sharfeddin, Elizabeth Rusch and Christina Katz, moderated by Diana Page Jordan.

About Books for Kids

Willamette Writers, Inc.’s Books for Kids program collects and distributes new and good quality used books for less fortunate children and teens in the Portland Metro, Eugene, Medford and Newport areas. The program distributes over 25,000 books every year through over 50 agencies, and organizations, and has distributed over 150,000 books since its inception in 1994. It operated on grants from such foundations as The Rose Tucker Foundation, The Autzen Foundation, and the Jackson Foundation , and from donations from writers and readers throughout the state. All grants and donation and go directly to purchase new books; Willamette Writers, Inc., a 501(c)(3), pays for storage and distribution. Donations to the program are tax- deductible.

About Barnes & Noble

Barnes & Noble supports Willamette Writers Books for Kids and Young Willamette Writers through sales of its books at the annual Willamette Writers’ Conference each year. It also helps sponsor the Barnes & Noble / Willamette Writers Kate Herzog Scholarship for students graduation from high school or who are freshmen or sophomores in college. The store at Clackamas Town Center, is located at 12000 SE 82nd Ave, Portland.

Remember the Books for Kids Mottos are “A Book May be a Lonely Child’s Only Friend” and “Every Child Needs a Book to Call Their Very Own”.

If you’ve taken Writing and Publishing the Short Stuff, you’re going to love this class!

Targeting Your Best Writing Markets

A New E-mail Class with Christina Katz

• February 13 - March 26, 2008
• August 20 - September 24, 2008

Class Maximum: 12

Anyone who has ever tried to launch a writing career can tell you that one of the biggest challenges is learning how to sift through and analyze potential markets. I can promise you this: , after you take this class, it will be a lot easier, make a lot more sense and go much faster. Furthermore, the experience of comparing which markets are a good fit for you with which markets are a good fit for your classmates will help you “get” marketing your writing a lot sooner than you would on your own. And lastly, if you have any nagging concerns about “selling out” by paying attention to the most appropriate channels through which to sell your work, you won’t any longer after this class. This is also an important class for starting to develop an all-important writing specialty, the same one that will come in really handy when you are ready to build a writer’s platform.

If you feel ready to start submitting your writing on a regular schedule, don’t go it alone. Join other writers who are in your same shoes and learn faster from Christina Katz and each other. We’ll cover: idea management, how to discover your best audiences, how to allow your best audiences to lead you to fresh ideas, how to break a magazine down to the keys that matter most to you as a freelancer, how to cultivate several approaches and go in the direction of the most natural growth for your writing style, and how to start specializing right out of the gate.

Duration: Six lessons with six assignments completed in six weeks

Dates:

Class work turns around on Wednesdays (please specify your class date when you sign up in the “notes” or “message” section):

• February 13 - March 26, 2008
• August 20 - September 24, 2008

For more info, please visit the Writers on the Rise Classes page.

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.

Hiya writers,

Thanks so much for all the great comments from the folks who are participating in the giveaway. I am (just barely) keeping up with all of them this month, as the giveaway takes a pretty big bite of time. Next month I hope to respond to each day’s comments in a blog entry.

We’ll see if I can keep up with myself! So far, so good.

We kicked off the Northwest Author Series last night here in Wilsonville with Marc Acito and he was just so damn good.

I felt really proud of myself for bringing such a high-quality literary experience to my home town.

I’m up next on October 21st and I’ll be offering tips and tricks for aspiring nonfiction writers of all ages.

In fact, I am much busier this fall than I expected to be. And here I thought I was going to sink into my writing cocoon and “disappear” for a while into book #2.

Apparently, that’s not how it’s going to work. But that’s okay. Because I have found that when I am out and about, inspiration comes to me, instead of me having to try and find inspiration.

You can view all of my upcoming events right here in my blog on the page marked “2007 WM Events.”

Thanks for continuing to spread the word about the giveaway. Don’t forgot about the other giveaways: 10 autographed copies of Writer Mama and a one-hour phone consult for the participants who inspire and encourage fellow writer mamas and bring new participants in! Need a refresher? Read “Da Rules.”

Well, I just wanted to say that I am really enjoying the giveaway and reading all of your comments. I hope that everyone will read and learn from and be inspired by each other’s comments too.

If you are looking for the Writer Mama Back-to-School Daily Giveaway, scroll down to view today’s giveway. Good luck answering the question to be entered to win!

On to the announcements:

1. There is one more space left in the October 3rd Writing and Publishing the Short Stuff class. [Update: The class is now full.] As soon as that spot fills, I will roll out the 2008 class schedule for the next year including all four of the 2008 dates. The next WPSS class won’t start until February 2008. To learn more about WPSS, please go to:

http://writersontherise.com.hosting.domaindirect.com/classes.html

2. Please note: I have decided to postpone the October 3rd Platform Building Basics for Writers class to February 2008, since I need to devote time to writing my second book for Writer’s Digest Books. The updated registration info will be posted shortly along with the calendar for 2008. [Ed note: I haven't taken the vacation yet, however, I am going to see Becoming Jane this afternoon. Guess I'll have to wait until we take a nice long weekend in October.]

3. If you have ever wanted to expand your poetry repertoire, be sure to check out Sage Cohen’s Poetry for the People class, which is going to inspire writers of all stripes. Sage is the managing editor of Writers on the Rise zine, a published poet and essayist, and is currently working on a couple of book deals of her own. Check out her upcoming class here.

In gearing up for my next round of classes, I review the feedback forms from the last class so that I can improve the class accordingly. I am often amused to notice that those who put the most into the classes in terms of effort and positive attitude clearly gain the most from the experience (and offer the most glowing reviews both of the class and of me as an instructor).

In my classes, students succeed as much as they apply what is offered and tie it into their own process and what works for them. Therefore, self-reflection is tied into the class. I don’t offer “insider secrets,” I hold the space where folks who are ready to work can do so and reap the benefits of the work that they do.

Check out these comments from a former Pitching Practice students for a clearer idea of how my teaching style is helpful to my students:

Christina was the task master/deadline diva I needed to keep my butt in the chair. She encouraged my muse and calmed my perfectionist so I could keep typing and focus on sharpening my writing and launching my work into the world.

~ Gigi R., Portland, Oregon

This class is the fabulous next step for anyone who’s been writing and is now serious about breaking into the magazine market (and yes, you have to be serious). Christina provides quality instruction and lots of tips on how to break in, along with valuable marketing information. This class is a must!

~ Joanna N. Bellingham, Washington

A whole boatload of “insider secrets” won’t do you any good if you don’t immediately apply them to your process. But six weeks of hard work can change everything.

That’s what I offer. If you are interested in Pitching Practice, an invaluable class where participants polish their query-writing skills, please let me know. Class begins tomorrow.

I also couldn’t help noticing at the Willamette Writers Conference that two of my former students who’d completed a full round of classes with me (WPSS, the old WPNA, PP & Platform Building) likely landed their first book deals.

I’m not bragging, I can’t take credit. But I think this paints a clearer picture of what is required from writers in terms of commitment-level for higher levels of success. Whether that level of commitment is exercised through my classes or elsewhere, I thought readers of this blog might be inspired by this quality of example. I know I am!

Still plenty of room in the October 3rd Writing and Publishing the Short Stuff Class.

And still room in the August 15th Pitching Practice Class.

Here’s the list:

1. I went to my mailbox at the post office today and it was like Christmas! Full of great giveaways for the Writer Mama Back-to-School Daily Giveaway that starts September first! I am giddy with excitement. Hope you are too.
2. If you’d like to post the badge for the giveaway in your blog or on your website, I made an even smaller size that should (fingers crossed) fit in any blog sidebar. You can find the badges, in assorted sizes, here. Thanks for spreading the word!
3. Less than one week until the next round of classes starts. There are a few spots left in Writing and Publishing the Short Stuff and several in Pitching Practice. Please register right away as I’m my own administrative assistant around here. I will firmly shut the door on registrations on Tuesday, August 14th at midnight.
4. Fair warning: The October 3rd Writing & Publishing the Short Stuff is filling up ALREADY. These moms are on it. I love that. Saves me time and frustration of doing things at the last minute.
5. I’ll be away this weekend, and back atcha on Monday! We’re doing a trial run with our now nine-month old pups at a local kennel and hitting the beach! Hopefully it won’t be too cold. (Sorry, all you folks in a heatwave, not trying to rub that in but it is like Fall here already. Hope I didn’t just jinx us.)

Happy end of summer weekend everyone!