So how’d you like it?

I put The Incident up over the summer because I was going to be on the road while my home was for sale. 8400 miles later, I’m home again, except my place has been sold so I’m staying with friends while I figure out what’s next.

Serendipity, as always, is playing a role. At the beginning of July, my plans to visit family on the East Coast were bumped a week due to circumstances beyond my control. Denver was kind of on the way, so I decided to attend the RWA conference  and see if romance writing would be a good fit for me. (2018 workshops are still listed at that link, but if they’ve been removed when you read this, check RWA events.)

Well, it was an amazing conference, loaded with so many sessions you could only attend a fraction of them, with thousands of people attending. After listening to an editor and agent address a sub-group of people who write Romantic Women’s Fiction (where the woman’s journey is the core of the story and the romance is secondary), I decided to give traditional publishing another try. So I spent a day pitching and had a really good response. Still waiting while requested materials are reviewed by several people.

I also got to talk with Robin Cutler of Ingram Spark about getting my back list onto Ingram as well as Amazon. That work’s on the list for the next few weeks. Now that CreateSpace is closing, I want to make sure I’ve got everything with Ingram for distribution beyond Amazon. (In case you didn’t realize, CreateSpace was also a division of Amazon – they’re consolidating services to KDP, but no longer doing Expanded Distribution.)

Last week, I gave a Basics of Self-Publishing class through Community Education at Sierra Community College and realized how much I enjoy helping people figure out this process – at the same time I’m hoping to land a traditional contract for Peg’s Story, One Woman’s Journey. Each route has its benefits and drawbacks.

However, with either road to publishing, building a readership is key.

That’s where you come in – while The Incident trickled out over 13 episodes, my followers increased. However, you’re not commenting! Tough to know what you want that way.

Please take a minute to comment. I’d really like to know:

1. Did you like having a story come in pieces over two months? Would a few weeks be better? Or a short-short that’s all in one blog? Or a whole novel over months?

2. Do you want the fiction to keep coming or would you rather I go back to writing about writing? Or do you want both?

3. I keep hearing that a newsletter’s better than a blog because you address people who want to hear from you, as individuals. Would you want to be on a mailing list that alerted you when I post new stories and/or gave you other updates and/or writing tips?

4. Do you care what time of day the blog arrives? (If so, when’s better?)

Let me know soon, so I can have a story or article ready for you next week!

www.sherimcguinn.com www.amazon.com/author/sherimcguinn

#writingconferences #RWA #writingprocess #travel #freefiction #CreativeWritingConference #fiction #RomanceWritersofAmerica #newsletters #Writing

History vs. The Moment

I’m prepping to move – something I’ve done every few years for most of my kids’ lives. They’re all in their thirties now, so that’s a lot of moves.

Now I grew up in the same house for fifteen years, with weekends at the farm that had been in the family over fifty years before I was born – then moved to the farm. So of course a lot of stuff accumulated. I played with the tea set my mother had when she was a little girl and read books that had been my grandfather’s. There was also a stereoscope with cards to view from his grand tour of Europe – circa 1890. These things weren’t artifacts to be examined in a museum, then forgotten. They were part of my life, along with the stories that went along with them. So I grew up with history as part of my world.

But when you move a lot, the treasures get condensed a bit each trip. I just finally did away with the last box of memorabilia I’d kept from my kids – artwork, report cards, stories they wrote. I chose a few items too cute to lose to scan. The rest, well, no one really cares. And when we talk about our personal past, we don’t always remember things the same way. Looking through some of the things my kids wrote back then, I realize we didn’t always see things the same way while they were happening, either.

We’re focused on the moment these days. It’s reflected in the way we get news and react to it, all fleeting. We’re living in the moment. And if the past doesn’t really exist as one truth, there may be some benefit to that.

But I don’t think that’s the whole story, because all that past I grew up with is still with me in my present, and while I read a lot of history, what sticks with me the most are the stories I heard along the way. I think feeling connected all the way back over more than a hundred years informs my understanding of the world around me right now.

So I’m thinking it’s important for us to pass on those personal histories, to make them a part of the lives of today’s children, to give them a context for the moment in which they live. You don’t have to wait until you’re old. Start an electronic scrapbook. When you make an album of photos from a trip or birthday or place you love, add a page telling about the day or what you felt was special about that particular sunset photo.

Putting words to it will enrich the experience for you, even if no one else ever looks at it. I know. I’ve already done this for my twenties. And someday a grandchild or a stranger may read it and look at the photos, and their sense of the world will expand.

www.sherimcguinn.com www.amazon.com/author/sherimcguinn

#historyvsthemoment #history #writingforgrandkids #scrapbook #mindfulness #photoalbums #livinginthemoment #inspiration

Me Too: Evil Woman & Female Hero

In the literary context, Merriam Webster defines heroine as “the principal female character in a literary or dramatic work” and they give “the heroine of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet” as an example.  There’s a problem with that.

According to opensourceshakespeare.org, Romeo speaks 163 times to Juliet‘s 118. Juliet is clearly the lead female and second character by size of role, but by appearing in both opening and closing scenes while Juliet does not, Romeo clearly has the primary lead. This is often the case in movies. If there’s a leading man in a movie, the leading female may play more of a supporting role than an actual lead. This has been a way to blur the lack of true female leads. This is also reflected by the way awards are given for movies. For example, Oscars are listed with leading and supporting men coming before any women are listed.

However, there is hope. The Me Too movement may be making a dent.

I just finished writing a screenplay for a company that produces a lot of movies for television. They provided a rough treatment for a starting point, along with the instructions that not only did they want the villain to be a woman, the primary protagonist was to be female as well. I’m calling her a female hero because she is definitely not playing second fiddle to any of the actors and she is the one who takes action to save the day. In reality, the leading actor is playing a supporting role to her lead.

Creating a female hero to triumph over the evil woman made this really fun to write. And since these guys have a good track record for selling their films to major outlets, I have to believe they’ve checked the market and found that the industry wants more women in leading roles. We’ll see.

Amazon Author Page

IMDb

#evilwoman #heroine #shakespeare #movies #hero #Oscars #strongwomen #womeninfilm #FemaleRoleModels #film #MeToo