Everything Writers Need | Writers of Kern
If you wanted the handouts from the August 17th WOK Meeting, you can download them from here. Click here to get the document.
And click here to get the Powerpoint presentation.
These will open in separate browser windows and you can save them to your computer from there.
Show off your mental gymnastics and writing skills! Write NOW is a new feature for the The Write Way Newsletter – providing members with an opportunity to get published in the newsletter and on the WOK website. Each month’s assignment will be different. The deadline will always be the last day of the month, with publication happening in the next month’s newsletter. These opportunities are open to members and non-members of the Writers of Kern.
Deadline: August 31, 2019 – 50-word story about a “Back to school” memory
Submission guidelines:
Send your 50-word story and your name as you wish it to appear, in an email with the subject “Back to School” to: [email protected]
The best of the submissions will appear in the newsletter for September and all submissions will appear on the Writers of Kern Blog. Stay tuned for next month’s Write NOW assignment and keep those pens and pencils ready!
War Monkey Publications, LLC
is pleased to announce open submissions for our upcoming anthology:
FROM THE YONDER
A horror, short-story collection of regional legends and tall-tales from around the World.
We are seeking short story submissions (1000-7500 words) for this anthology. The stories must be based upon a regional/cultural legend or tall tale from any location or culture in the World. “Regional” can be a specific place (Loch Ness) or a larger region (Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest).
We are seeking
stories in the horror genre. Inclusion of elements of other genres is welcome,
so long as, overall, the story is an horror story. The subject of the story can
be based on any legend, so long as it has a horrific flavor. Ghosts, hauntings,
alien abductions, monsters, demons, spirits, witches, etc, all are acceptable,
as long as the subject is based on an actual legend or tall tale.
Submissions are open between 1 August and 19 September 2019.
Submission info will be posted on our website: https://warmonkeypublications.com/submissions
The Submission Deadline is:
Talk Like a Pirate Day, 19 September 2019, at 11:59PM MST
Submit via Email to: [email protected]
Sue Monk Kidd’s latest novel, The Invention of Wings, is the compelling fictional story of real-life American heroine, Sarah Grimké. Raised in Charleston in the antebellum south, Sarah abhors slavery. Her family owns slaves and the pervading southern culture embraces the “right” to own slaves as a way of life. Sarah is given a little black girl, Handful, as a hand-maid on her eleventh birthday. The two become friends and the novel traces their life journeys over the next three decades. Sarah becomes the first American female to write positional papers on not just abolition, but on the need to give women the same legal rights as men in American society. This fictional novel will educate the reader about not just historical events in the American landscape but it will prod the conscience and current consciousness about racial tensions that still exist in our society. Highly recommend this book!
Malcolm Gladwell’s latest work of non-fiction, David and Goliath, challenges the perception of what constitutes “giants” in our lives. Perhaps, just perhaps what seems like a formidable foe rising up against us is actually at a disadvantage because of its size. Consider the childhood Sunday school version of the story of David and Goliath from the Old Testament of the Bible. The giant warrior representing the Philistine army facing off against King Saul and the Israelite army in the Valley of Elah issues a daily challenge to the opposing soldiers. Not one of the Israelite warriors, dressed in full armor with weapons, dares to go against the nine-foot giant. A slight teen-ager, however, visiting his brothers on the battlefield, hears and answers the challenge.
David and Goliath is a powerful little book about confronting the “giants” in one’s life. Is dyslexia the giant? A weaker,smaller high school girls’ basketball team? How about the challenge of getting into an Ivy League university? Challenge the odds. Perhaps, in fact, very likely, the underdog has the advantage in unique situations. Gladwell encourages the individual to face the “fear of being afraid.” Once we face a particular fear, we might very well be on the way to victory in our lives. I highly recommend this book for inspirational and encouraging true-life stories that defy traditional thought.
Professional or aspiring writers seeking a powerful, inexpensive application for producing prose, scripts, or research papers should consider Scrivener. Scrivener is software that allows you to organize a large writing project, so that you can easily switch between scenes, arrange scenes into chapters, store your
research, sort, categorize, and search. Then when you’re ready, you hit a button and it spits out a formatted manuscript or e-book. It has some neat features, like a full-screen clutter-free writing space, a random name generator, target word counts, and ‘snapshots’, which allow you to roll back and compare previous versions of scenes. The one thing Scrivener doesn’t do is help you get started or coach you through structuring a story.
Although Scrivener was originally written for novelists, it is adaptable enough to be used for almost any sort of project. The writing function is smooth and efficient, and organization by scene or section allows easy editing and manipulation, and makes writing out of order much simpler. The corkboard and outline features are extremely handy. The program’s ability to store all sorts of research material eliminates the need for scattered outside files. There is a lot to explore, and there is definitely a learning curve, but don’t let all the features overwhelm you. Use what you like and ignore the rest, until you need them.
Scrivener 2.0 is available for both Mac and PC. You can get a free 30 day trial from their website, Literature and Latte, and the cost of purchase is only $45., which is an amazing value for writers.