Writing on a Budget: Time Management

By Lisbeth Coiman

The first hard truth I learned as an emerging writer is that it will take years of dedication and hard work before I can live off my writing. Whether through my established career as a teacher, or through a series of small gigs, as an emerging writer I must make a living outside of writing, while seeking every opportunity to write and submit my work. Therefore, effective time management stands out in my writing tool box.

Continue reading “Writing on a Budget: Time Management”

A WWS Publication Roundup for September

A laptop computer with an article titled "Submissions Made Simple" on the screen and a stack of literary journals sits on top of the laptop base, titles facing out

The September roundup is one of the biggest yet for Women Who Submit members. Congratulations to all!

From Lisa Cheby‘s “War Lessons from Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Spoilage” at the Rising Phoenix Review:

He didn’t mean to suggest
the harvest would be easy.

We have to get all the skeletons out
of the graves.

From Soleil David‘s “Book of Transnational Feminist Prayer: On Barbara Jane Reyes’ Invocation to Daughter” at Post No Ills:

Barbara Jane Reyes’ fifth poetry collection Invocation to Daughters (City Lights, 2017) is a missal for Filipino women, one that uses Western poetic forms to utter an unapologetically transnational feminist poetics. In this collection, Reyes pushes against Spanish and American influences, the two patriarchs that have kept the Philippines abject for much of its history. The poems subvert Western tradition through the use of those same Western traditions, all while bringing in multiple languages, as well as ruminations on Filipino and Filipino-American culture.

From Arlene Schindler‘s “I Chose a Career Over Babies” at Living the Second Act:

I don’t have regrets about not bearing children. It was a conscious decision. Some parents may see my life as empty, unfruitful, or even immature.

From Désirée Zamorano‘s “Adelanto” at Cultural Weekly:

It starts with pain and outrage.

You’re out of the country when you hear about a Supreme Court Justice stepping down, and the caged children. You want to keen and wail, but you don’t. You want to never return to your country of origin, but you do. You return to daily life at home. Continue reading “A WWS Publication Roundup for September”

Breathe and Push: Moving in LA: Before and After

By Noriko Nakada

Before: Hyde Park Homework

UMFoC. Upwardly Mobile Family of Color: pronounced, “um, fuck.” This is what I kept saying to myself as my family and I prepared to move from one recently gentrified neighborhood and into another.

I moved to Los Angeles over two decades ago. It started with a studio apartment in Eagle Rock: pre-Colorado-Street-gentrification. Then, there was a Ladera Heights condo, after Magic opened his Starbucks. After that, it was a Highland Park casita where our front fence housed bullets from Avenues, before Mr. T died and his alley was restored. Next was a Mar Vista condo pre-Starbucks and road diet. Now, we would make Hyde Park our home: pre-stadium and Crenshaw line. Continue reading “Breathe and Push: Moving in LA: Before and After”

Reportback from the 5th Annual Submission Blitz

On Saturday, September 15th, WWS held our 5th Annual Submission Blitz!

The Blitz is a nationwide virtual celebration of Women Who Submit’s work. It’s a day when we invite women and non-binary writers to submit to at least one Tier 1 journal. The idea is to have a coordinated effort on one day in which the slush piles of Tier 1 journals get flooded with submission by underrepresented writers. Anyone can join from anywhere!

We also host a local Blitz meetup in Los Angeles, because what would Women Who Submit be without a party? Our first WWS Submission Blitz was in September 2014 at Hermosillo Bar in Highland Park. This year, we gathered at The Faculty Bar in East Hollywood at 12:30, with plenty of food and drinks to fuel our furious fingers as we typed away! (There was even a beer on tap called Submission.)Screen Shot 2018-09-18 at 9.35.30 PM

Continue reading “Reportback from the 5th Annual Submission Blitz”

A WWS Publication Roundup for August

A laptop computer with an article titled "Submissions Made Simple" on the screen and a stack of literary journals sits on top of the laptop base, titles facing out

As the summer wraps up, we are pleased to share good news from Women Who Submit members who had work published in August.

From Mia Nakaji Monnier‘s “Keiko Agena On Life After ‘Gilmore Girls,’ Her New Book, and How She Copes with Anxiety” at The Lily:

For anxious artists held back by perfectionism, “No Mistakes” provides 150 pages’ worth of interactive pep talks inspired by Agena’s experience doing improv, where there’s no such thing as a mistake, only creative choices for team members to build on collaboratively.

From Jay O’Shea‘s “Beyond Protection: Perceived Threat, Criminalization, and Self-Defense” at IMPACT Chicago:

As I approached the cash machine, another person walked up from the opposite side, a few paces before us. A slim, white woman whose expensive casual wear and designer sunglasses marked her as one of our Westside neighborhood’s more affluent residents, she turned and looked at me instead of giving her attention to the ATM. I offered a smile, acknowledging that she had reached the cash machine first and had dibs on it. When she returned my smile with a scowl, I expected the snappish disdain that well-off women in West LA so commonly project toward other women, but not the question she asked.

“Can you come back?” she said.

From Ava Homa‘s “Graduation” at apt:

I am counting the cracks on the ceiling. My lawyer is presenting some documents to the judge. It is hard to breathe here. This room stinks as if the walls were made of corpses. The judge leaves his seat and is walking to the door that convicts cannot use. It is only for him. The attached light-brown desks divide His Honor’s space from that of the non-honored ones.

Congratulations to Ava who also had her piece, “Nameless Stones,” published in Room!

From Melissa Chadburn‘s “This Wanting Business: On the Cost and Labor of Writing” at LitHub:

I often say that whenever I feel the urge to complain about the work of writing, I think about a woman who has to take five buses to work. The truth is I’m likely thinking of my younger self. She’s always at my heels. In college, I sold Herbalife, called people to refinance the mortgage on their homes, worked as a data entry clerk on campus, and telemarketed selling timeshares. Struggling to get by at school, I eventually dropped out, moved back to Los Angeles, and worked the switchboard at a large law firm in Century City.

From Tanya Ko Hong‘s “Mother Tongue” at First Literary Review-East:

Sophistication isn’t damn good to drink
So why don’t you untie my tongue
like you undress me in the dark, don’t
let my ego ruin our night, don’t scan betrayal
in your mind—life’s not so bad if you don’t pay attention.

Congratulations to Tanya who was the first winner of Run Doon-ju Korean American Literature Award and was interviewed in The Korea Daily!

From Marnie Goodfriend‘s “Finding My Unsolvable Mother in Her Left-Behind Crossword Puzzles” at Ravishly:

As a child, I remember Mom’s stack of crossword books with Velveeta-orange Bic pens holding her place on the current one she was trying to solve. A flimsy card table stood awkwardly in the middle of our living room where she sat in a folding chair carefully separating the edges from the middles of a “Mastermind Impossible to Solve” 1,000 piece puzzle. We often visited a stationery store on Main Street where I ran up and down the sticker aisle inhaling pizza and popcorn scratch and sniffs while she fingered large boxes with display photos of crayons, confetti, stars, and circles. Even at my age, I knew that she didn’t choose a puzzle for its pretty or interesting design but by which sequence of objects was more difficult to finish.

From Li Yun Alvarado‘s “Literatura, Música, y (Huracán) María: Reflections from the Diaspora” at VIDA:

My parents separated when I was twelve years old, and divorced when I was in college.

By some telenovela magic they reconciled two decades later, the summer before Hurricane María roared through their hometown, Salinas, Puerto Rico.

My one comfort during that week of silence was that they were together: through worrying about reaching my brother in New York and me in California; through negotiating with siblings and caring for their elderly parents with whom they each lived; through negotiating this post-Hurricane María world.

Li Yun also saw her poems “Momentos de Maria“and “Zika” published in Hinchas de Poesia and Acentos Review, respectively, and an essay, “Retro Row Helps New Yorker Adapt to Long Beach” published in L.A. Parent!

Congratulations to all!

Getting into the Top Tier

Illustration of a woman sitting in an orange floating tub in an overflowing bathtub.

by Désirée Zamorano

First off, you can’t get into a top-tier magazine unless you submit. You can’t submit unless you’ve got work, and you won’t have the work unless you sit down to write. Let’s talk about this.

My bookshelves are filled with texts, some popular, some academic, on how to be a better person, partner, parent, educator, writer. To help you close the gap, I’m not going to talk about all those writerly texts, as marvelous as they all can be. (Personal favorites: Making a Literary Life by Carolyn See, and Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass). I’m going to go old school here, and talk about The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Yes, I realize Stephen Covey turned into an industry himself. But I’m going to talk about the two habits that I have carried forward once I read this classic. The first habit involves a Venn diagram with one circle labeled “Area of concern” and the other circle labeled “Area of influence.”

Concerned about your writing? (You should be)

Do you have influence over your writing? (You are the only one).

Where those two circles overlap is where you have your most powerful impact. Continue reading “Getting into the Top Tier”

A WWS Publication Roundup for July

A laptop computer with an article titled "Submissions Made Simple" on the screen and a stack of literary journals sits on top of the laptop base, titles facing out

As the summer winds down, we are happy to share the great news from Women Who Submit members who were published in July.

From Melissa Chadburn‘s “Who Is Anna March?” at the Los Angeles Times:

…Anna March first appeared around 2011, when she started publishing online. Before that, she was known by different names in different cities. In researching this story, The Times found four: Anna March, Delaney Anderson, Nancy Kruse and Nancy Lott.

In three places — Los Angeles, San Diego and Rehoboth Beach, Del. — March became a part of the literary community. She won over new friends, even accomplished authors but especially writers trying to find a way into that world, with her generosity, her enthusiasm and apparent literary success — only to leave town abruptly.

From Désirée Zamorano‘s “The Upholsterer” at the Kenyon Review:

Enrique looked at his cousin and at the sofa that had just landed in his workshop.

The couch was a sodden mess covered in food stuffs, and Enrique really didn’t want to know about it, nor did he have any expectations of what he would find underneath the fabric. Probably a factory-assembled piece of cheap teakwood with low-grade stuffing and springs.

Also from Désirée , “Therapy Saved Me as a Writer,” at Read Her Like an Open Book:

I think therapists hold a particularly profound attraction for writers. So much content, from petty to profound: the stories of grief, menace, abuse and mourning. So many ways to lie, to yourself, to your therapist. So much fun with being an unreliable narrator, as we recreate our biography for an audience of one. So much rapt attention and focus, on our words.

From “Hechizo Para Congelar” by Li Yun Alvarado at UnMargin:

Ingredients:
1. Names
2. Pencil
3. Paper Bag
4. Freezer

Spell:
Pencil names onto
pieces of brown
paper bag.

Let’s say:

donald john trump

From Noriko Nakada‘s “Late Night Phone Calls” at SFWP:

When the phone rang, I knew it was either Laura (Yukiko), or my boyfriend (soon to be the ex-boyfriend) and his calls usually resulted in him coming over to spend the night and me not minding, because I was alone and lonely in this new city.

But when it was Yukiko (Kiko), those conversations jolted me wide awake, There was a frantic, frenetic, frequency in my sisters’ phone calls.

Also from Noriko, “Marbles” at The Rising Phoenix Review:

My father turns eleven just before
he’s told “take only what you can carry.”
He chooses marbles, polished glass spheres, smooth
and cold in his jacket pocket. Six in
all: a shooter, a cats eye, two aggies,
two comets, in swirls of yellow and blue.

Also from Noriko, “Gaps,” at The Rising Phoenix Review:

Your baby teeth
and the baby teeth of all ten
of your siblings were not
included in what
you could carry

when stripped down
to two bags each.

From Natalie Warther‘s “Vinegar” at Drunk Monkeys:

The child had a birthday. People came. They ate the cake. People went home. And once again Dolly was alone, staring at a single slice of cake. Of course, the child was there, precious, soft, aloof, which is company, but it’s different. The windows needed washing.

From Arlene Schindler‘s “The Stuff that Dreams Are Made Of” at Purple Clover:

Shortly after I got married in 1982, I learned that my husband had lied about everything. He disappeared for hours on end after making large cash withdrawals from our joint account and deceived me about many other things, including how many times he’d been married. I grew to hate him and myself.

Congratulations to Flint who read her poem “I Call Queer” at ACE/121’s art show, “QUEER!”

Breathe and Push: “This Will Give You Poetry”

This year, May was gloomier than usual. Aside from a couple of blue-sky days, our typically beautiful Southern California May was thick and heavy, day after day draped in gray.

In the news, our school board chose a hedge fund manager to lead the district, public school teachers in Puerto Rico were being tear-gassed in the streets, and Chief of Staff John Kelly continued the current administration’s daily attack on immigrants.

"This will give you poetry"In my eighth grade classroom, a distinct culture had developed. Students were challenging one another’s privilege and entitlement at every opportunity, which was important but exhausting, and I was begin to wonder if my students had learned anything in my class. My students were testing my nerves, and although we still had several weeks left, I was ready for the year to be over.

That was when I started to wade through the stacks of poetry collections each of my students submit for National Poetry Month. It took me a while to get started. Some kids cared very little about the project and that was clear in what they turned in, but every year I am also left in awe by the intimate experiences my students share and the exquisite hand-crafted publications they create. For several days, I poured over poems about families, and cats, and food. There were whole chapbooks about Fortnite, and depression, life and love. Some poems told serious stories or grappled with current events. Others assembled light collections of linked haiku or short, rhyming poems. But each group of poems spoke volumes about these particular young people at this precise moment in time and helped me see each of their unique and precious lives.  

As I finished reading, the US relocated it’s Israeli Embassy to Jerusalem and in protests in Gaza, over 60 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire. Our school community sits in Westwood, just south of UCLA in an area nicknamed Little Tehran because of the many Iranian families who made their homes here. Our racial, socioeconomic, and religious diversity make our campus unique. There are students who fast for Ramadan, prepare for bar and bat mitzvahs, and attend catechism classes. I read articles about the most recent developments in the complex conflict in Gaza alongside poems by my diverse students who sit on both sides of this conflict, and wished Israelis and Palestinians could read one another’s poetry. It could show them their enemy’s heart and humanity and make it much more difficult to fire across that border.

Poems can provide intimate glimpses into the lives of others, and thankfully, according to recently released NEA research, poetry reading is on the rise. Although the gray of May still hung thick in the air and the headlines shifted away from the Middle East and toward the humanitarian refugee crisis at our own border, I found myself seeking hope in poetry. One of those poems was Yrsa Daley-Ward’s “Poetry” in which she writes, “You will come away bruised./ You will come away bruised/ but this will give you poetry.”

May was a bruise turned gray and cold, but from within all of the gloom, poetry brought out the human story. Poetry made me love my students again and see possibilities is the most problematic conflicts. As we wade through each tragic news cycle, keep pressing those keys. Keep reading each other’s words and writing your own. Keep sharing your work with the world. The world needs all of our stories, more than ever, to be a beacon through this dense fog.

Noriko Nakada headshot in black and whiteNoriko Nakada edits the Breathe and Push column for Women Who Submit. She also writes, blogs, tweets, parents, and teaches middle school in Los Angeles. She is committed to writing thought-provoking creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry. Publications include two book-length memoirs: Through Eyes Like Mine and Overdue Apologies, and excerpts, essays, and poetry in Catapult, Meridian, Compose, Kartika, Hippocampus, The Rising Phoenix Review, and elsewhere.

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Hedgebrook and Other Residency Resources

Black and white photo of six women sitting around a rectangular table

by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

This article was first published in July 2017. The current deadline for Hedgebrook 2019 residencies is Tuesday, July 24th. 

Hedgebrook’s 2018 Writer in Residence is now open. The deadline for applying is July 25th. Though there is a $30 application fee, rumor is you can request a fee waiver based on need, and if you are accepted, the stay–which includes room and board–is free of any cost aside from travel costs to Whidbey Island an hour outside of Seattle, Washington.

Hedgebrook is an all-female and female-identifying writing retreat. Writers stay in their own little cabin in the woods equipped with a desk and fisherman’s fireplace, and are given three meals-a-day, which includes a community dinner each night. No more than seven writers are on the premises at one time. One aspect that makes this residency highly sought out is Hedgbrook’s belief in radical hospitality. Some highlights of this include: menus catered to each writer’s specific food needs (and even the occasional favorite comfort food), fresh baked cookies daily, a well-loved garden writers are encouraged to pick flowers from for their desks, and absolutely no pressure to write. As someone who has experienced Hedgebrook, you and your writing will rarely feel so nurtured. Continue reading “Hedgebrook and Other Residency Resources”

WWS statement against the Trump Administration’s racist immigration policy

Three signs above Highway 101 in Los Angeles, Union Station in the background. The signs read, "Separate Powers, Not Families," "We belong together, fam" and "Families belong together"

by the Women Who Submit Leadership Team

People in power always find a way to accuse the underserved of not being worthy of justice.

Women Who Submit was founded in response to male editors looking to justify the paucity of women authors in their publications. Those editors made excuses: women weren’t submitting enough, weren’t working hard enough, the submissions from women simply weren’t good enough. We were told it was our own fault that every Tier 1 journal in the nation disproportionately published more men.

We learned how to recognize the rhetorical acrobatics of the privileged.

Now, powerful white men (and women!) tell us that immigrants and refugees aren’t following the rules, aren’t working hard enough, aren’t “getting in line,” and aren’t worthy of citizenship (as if being born in this country means you are somehow better than). We are told they deserve to have their young children ripped from their arms and taken to detention centers several states away. We are told they deserve deportation. We are told that their families aren’t worth preserving. We have always heard this. Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, and all people of color have always been told by U.S. policies and institutions that their contributions mean less, that they are expendable. We are all told to fear Black and Brown voices, instead of respecting and amplifying them.

There can be no literary justice without immigration justice. There can be no gender parity in publishing without racial justice. Breaking down submission barriers is not enough if border walls still stand, if prison walls still stand. How many rapturous, beautiful, soul-searing poems is the world being deprived of, because of racism and xenophobia? How many refugee children have dreams of growing up to be novelists or journalists, and are told, by our national policies and our shameful cultural attitudes, “You aren’t worth our time”?

Continue reading “WWS statement against the Trump Administration’s racist immigration policy”