Tag: submit

Writing as Healing

I hope you agree, it’s better late than never to share my notes and lessons from last year’s “Writing as Healing” panel sponsored by Fine Lines.

We had a panel of authors who rocked my world.

First came Abigail, who requested to not have to go first, but did anyway. She bravely shared her truths, how the truth feels, and how she faces it. Then, Kathy shared her heartbreak, her honesty, and how writing helped her. How writing keeps her son’s name in the conversation. Suzanne gave us beautiful words among hard lessons. Her storytelling wove around the room and embraced us. She reminded us of the rewards after the pain. She asked us to be truthful, see the joyful bits, and inspired random acts of storytelling to share with the universe. Start that unknown conversation. Share and be shared.

words help kgAll of our panelists emphasized that everyone has the chance to show purpose with words and live through the tough bits. By sharing her journey, each person has come to help others, others who have grieved, and those who need to remember. Life is fragile and precious.

When and What to Share?

When it comes to trauma and grief or whatever you’re working through, time does not equal readiness to share your work. Write for yourself first. Then, when you’re ready, polish. Be sure there is a message. Perhaps a resolution. When you hit send or publish, you have a responsibility to the reader, what is your gift to them?

Not a me-moir, (As memoirs are often described by agents and publishers.) too centric and full of unmanaged bits. You have to tame your story. Give this portion of your life an arc, a relatable beginning, middle and end. Fill it with language that moves. These things will make it a gift to the reader.

It’s Your Story

Your grief, stress, trauma or any life difficulty is real and yours and it is not to be compared. Write to release. Drink water. Breathe. Take breaks. Empower yourself with empathy and fill your soul with the stories of humanity.

Submission and Rejection

Don’t be crushed by rejection. No one is rejecting your truth or your experience. What is most commonly being rejected is form, style, and fit. Your story must fit into where you send it, and there are reasons you should know (by reading writer guidelines and copies of published materials) and reasons you can’t know, like there is already a similar piece set-up in publication or similar editorial factors that aren’t public, yet.

Letting Go

The most important lesson is to let go. For many of us, we let go by letting the words go. Giving them the freedom to surge from pen to paper or from fingers to keys, the words’ life is new but the pain’s energy dissipates, maybe never to disappear, but to release the power it once held. Writing is healing.

– Mardra Sikora

Fine Lines is Dedicated to Improving Literacy

First, The Importance of Literacy

“Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories. Literacy is a platform for democratization, and a vehicle for the promotion of cultural and national identity. Especially for girls and women, it is an agent of family health and nutrition. For everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right . . . . Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential.”

-Kofi Annan – a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1997 to December 2006. Annan and the United Nations were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize “for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world.”

Fine Lines is dedicated to the development of writers and artists of all ages.

Mondays with martinWhat started out as a classroom newsletter in 1991 has now turned into a 50 state writing network and a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit, educational organization. The first issue was 4 pages long and allowed students many opportunities to show others clear thinking and proper written expression. Each quarterly issue is about 300 pages filled with fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art by “authors and artists in process” who wish to improve their composition craft.

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Our Motto is “Write On,” Do You?

Dear Writers,

Mondays with martinPlease tell all people you know who like to read and write and have good stories to tell that Fine Lines wants to hear from them. Contact the elementary schools in Oregon. Invite the community college students in Florida. Notify the writers on your email list that we are looking for traditional and non-traditional writers and creative ideas wherever we can find them.

We are now in our twenty-third year of publication, have traversed many publishing hurdles, and transformed ourselves often to keep this 501 (c) 3 non-profit, educational, literary organization available for all, because we are involved with a wonderful labor of love. Our enthusiastic and rowdy editors enjoy opening the mail to find submissions that ask readers to share the authors’ messages.

We fill four issues per year with writing from the heart, human interest stories, essays, and poems that make us want to fly. Well-crafted declarative sentences make the world a better place in which to live, no matter the academic status of the writers. A third grader who wrote a wonderful three line observation about winter and several poems from a ninety-four year old great-grandmother both earned our equal respect.

Our motto is “Write on,” and we do.

We are pleased to have you involved with our mission to change the world one page at a time. If you want to become more involved in our efforts to increase world literacy, let us know, and we will be happy to send you some “stuff” that you can share with writers in your community. Give us your mailing address, and Fine Lines will get it to you.

Answer our “Call for Submissions” before the end of this year.

Let the beauty of our language live on in your words.

– David Martin

How I Got Over the Fear of Publication

My Writing Journey

 *Guest Blog today by Lauren Narducci

Fine Lines LogoEver since I can remember, I have had a pen in my hand. I would write and write and write, until my hands cramped, and the room grew dark. I was always writing, and always imagining. Recently, I stumbled across the many notebooks I had filled when I was younger shoved in a box in my closet. Written in those crumpled notebooks were pages full of short stories that had gone unfinished.

After a while, I dropped that pen and did not pick it up again until senior year of high school. That school year, my creative writing class came soon after a favorite teacher of mine died. Writing was an outlet for me, a way to let go of the thoughts entangled in my brain; so I saw this class as a way to cope.  My writing was dark, and filled with death. Many of my classmates started worrying and began asking questions. I told them I had lost someone I loved, they nodded their heads and that was all that was said. The end of the semester approached and after editing and editing and editing, I turned in my final story to my portfolio. When grades came back, I was surprised at my teacher’s comments about the story.

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