We WantYour 300 Words--NOW!

June 22 is International Flash Fiction Day, and to celebrate all stories short and stupendous, a few of us are hosting FLASHMOB2013, a blog carnival and contest. What you need to do to do:


1) Write a story 300 words or less (send us something that pushes boundaries;

2) Then send the following to flashmobjune22@gmail.com:

--the link to your story
--the story in the Text of the email WITHOUT your name at the top
--a brief bio
--a funky pic

3) Send us your best by JUNE 10.

Of course, there's prizes. And the judges are spectacular writers from all over the world. Read more about it at the official website: FLASHMOB2013.

So get writing. The clock is ticking.

Peace...

Saving The Rainforest and Other Good Things You Can Do Now!

Tired of all the lousy news and the lousier weather? Got the post-party holiday blues? Already bombed your resolutions?

Three ideas to bust your blahs.

Save The Rainforest. You may not be able to turn around the economy, but you can help save an important ecosystem -- the Amazon rainforest. A new blog -- RECLAIMING THE RAINFOREST -- shows how making a few small changes in your lifestyle can make a difference. The blog's creator is a kid who cares -- my son, age 11. So check out his first blog, follow the links, and get edified on the rainforest.

Get Moving. Bet you didn't know sitting too much can kill you. Whether you are fit -- or not -- sitting too much increases your risk for life-threatening conditions, including heart attacks and diabetes. The good news? Getting up every hour and walking for 5 minutes reverses all the bad chemically stuff in your body. So Writers, Readers -- get up and shake your booty!

Write that Novel and Get It Published. Yep, think I'll crank out a novel tomorrow, in between breakfast and my golf game -- How about you? Writing the novel is a slow-going endeavor, but when it's done (really done), time to get an agent. JM Tohline, soon-to-be-pubbed author, went right to the source to find the biggest mistakes writers make when querying agents -- the agent. One hundred of them, in fact. Almost a dissertation, this blog post may be the most valuable piece you'll read all year if you're shopping your stories.

Win A Contest. After you've polished your novel to the point where it shines, enter this contest sponsored by Chuck Sambuchino, editor at WRITERS DIGEST and host of the blog Guide to Literary Agents. But this 'Dear Lucky Agent' contest is only for literary types -- no genre allowed! Send your logline and the first 150-200 words by January 23, midnight EST. Go HERE for details.

Breadcrumbs and geniuses up later this week. Peace, Linda

30 Days of Gratitude

Good things come in packets of threes. This week celebrates leftbrainwrite's 3rd Blogiversary!!!! And... today's verbage celebrates my 300th pontification!!! So, let's have a contest!!!

These days I am so grateful -- for many things -- but mostly for you. Dear readers, writers, friends, fellow journeyers... you give so much through your words and actions. I cannot imagine my life without your company, cyber or otherwise, and would find it infinitely less full.

To celebrate YOU I am launching 30 Days of Gratitude and I want YOU to join in the party. EVERY DAY for the next 30 days I will post one reason I am grateful. Add yours in the comments. From the total number of comments I will choose THREE gratitudes:
--The Most Heartfelt
--The Quirkiest
--The Most Random (hey, gotta let Lady Luck play, too)

What's in it for you? PRIZES!!!

Each winner will receive: 1/ A handful of books chosen FOR YOU from my collection, plus other custom tokens of my appreciation; 2/ Publication of the winning gratitude on my blog, accompanied by 3/ an interview of all things that make you grateful.

BUT... everyone is a winner. Because for every gratitude left in the comment section I will contribute a dollar to two do-gooder organizations -- HOSPICE and my local COMMUNITY CRISIS CENTER. Hospice because I have such deep gratitude for the humanity they granted my father and our family in his last days, the RCCC because they have an arrangement with the Maryland Food Bank where 7 cents will buy a pound of food. There's a lot of hungry folks in my neck of the foods. I'll also will add a buck for every new tribe member (I have 113 today). That's one smackeroo for every comment and/or new follower, up to $300 total. How can you NOT play?

THE RULES...
--Post as often as you wish, but only one gratitude per day.
--Each gratitude must be 300 characters or less, including spaces. I want short. I want pithy. Think two tweets worth.
--Get your gratitudes in by midnight Friday September 3.

Gratitude #1: For all the helpers in the world – nurses, teachers, ministers, counselors, volunteers – who listen and give a damn.

Peace, Linda

Beg, Borrow, Steal - And Win!

MY OLD MAN was like Zeus's father Cronos: he couldn't bear the idea that any of his children might surpass him. Life radiated from the central pulse of his scrap-metal yard; the world beyond it seemed to make him defensive and nervous. Self-conscious about his lack of formal education, he took my bookishness as a personal affront. "What do you think is worth more," he once asked me, "a commodity or some goddamn idea?"

So is the theme established in Beg, Borrow, Steal - A Writer's Life (Other Press), the second book out by Michael Greenberg, This small treasure of 45 small, tightly woven tales of living a writer's life in the literary Valhalla of New York City quietly astoundone of my favorite memoirists. Less stories than vignettes, these slices of life are sensuous and bittersweet, tied together by a ribbon of yearning: for pasts, for compromises, for paths not chosen.

Last January, I selected Greenberg's memoir Hurry Down Sunshine to kick-off my debut author/Indy press review series. As with that book, the atories enthrall. Each chapter transports the reader to the intricacies of a life observed, one lived to follow his inner calling -- writing -- and the strugggles, mishaps, joys, and humor in keeping the integrity of that calling.

As a reader, what I love about Beg, Borrow, Steal is the total immersion in the physical environment that is New York; even as an outsider, the clamor of the family scrap metal business, the view of the Hudson from a derelict writing studio window, suffering the plague of rats, the rumble of the subway plunging through the bowels of the city all feel familiar. This world pores through his words, makes it real and vivid as a photograph, all told with economy and elegance. Which is why I love this book as a writer -- the prose, so tight, so bare of uneccessary words, yet so evocative.

Most of all, Greenberg provides flashes of making a living and a life as a writer, from selling counterfeit cosmetics from a vending cart to ghost-writing to sabotaging his own screenplay after being screwed by the director. All for the love of words. Read this book if you love New York, if you love excellent writing, if you are a writer.

Want your own copy of Beg, Borrow, Steal? Here's how. In 100 words or less relate how you have begged, borrowed, or stolen to live your dream. Leave your comment here or send your response to me via drwasy (at) gmail (dot) com. Put Beg, Borrow, Steal in the subject line. I'll swirl all answers in my magic hat and draw a random winner on October 15. PLUS... I'll publish the best five answers in a separate blog post.

Peace, Linda

Horn tooting

is not something I'm particularly good at. But today deserves a little self-promotion: my first publication in THE SUN, a well-regarded print literary journal out of Chapel Hill, officially hits the newstands today.

And I won a writing contest.

I'd forgotten about the contest, actually. Back in May, I was deep in a flurry of submission activity: conferences, contests, agents, editors. I'm usually pretty organized about keeping track of what went where, so yesterday's email from Paula Berinstein of THE WRITING SHOW was kind of like finding a forgotten twenty tucked in last season's blazer pocket. But oh, so much better.

THE WRITING SHOW is a great resource for writers, lots of podcasts on the entire writing prociess, from idea formulation to editing to publication and marketing. They run several contests; I submitted the first chunk of BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT to the Best First Chapter of an Unpublished Novel contest.

Prizes galore: the glory, of course, perhaps the greatest reward of all in this oft discouraging business; mentoring/coaching from Joe Nassise, a well-regarded fantasy novelist; an upcoming interview; and CASH enough to qualify as a PW "nice deal."

Which leads me to another reason to toot horns... our beloved Moonrattie, editor extraordinaire, anonymous author of EDITORIAL ASSISTANT, and friend to writers everywhere, has a friend in need, someone with stage 4 lymphoma who needs financial help paying for PET scans and other diagnostics. With a father newly-diagnosed with stage 4 head/neck cancer, I have total sympathy for this woman; I cannot fathom how my family would deal with our devastation if we had to worry about money and insurance. I'm investing some of my winnings in a raffle for a chance at Moonie's editorial acumen.

Go HERE ==> MISCHIEF FIGHTS CANCER to find out more. Please, pay your blessings forward.

Peace, Linda