Tag: writing

Got Some Good News

Back in June of this year, I entered a chapbook contest. A chapbook is a very short work of prose or poetry, about 20-40 pages worth. I had put this chapbook together a while back, but when I saw this new contest, I revised my little five-story manuscript, retitled it, and sent it in.

Finally heard back last week–I’m not one of the finalists that was sent to the final judge, but I was in the group they selected the finalists from. That was encouraging!

So I think for the next little while I am going to make revising and submitting this chapbook around my next creative endeavor. I have a list of 12 outlets to send to, spaced out from now until September 2026. I can have something to work on while I try to sort out what I want to do next with my third book–do I want to continue to revise what I have, rewrite the whole thing from scratch, move on to another manuscript, or what. Give my overstimulated brain a little time to relax from creation.

Done with events this year, but I start right back up again in January 2026 with three speaking engagements. That’s good. Soon I’ll be getting cover designs for Looking for Home, and all of that excitement will be in motion. I feel good about this plan to submit while the planning for Looking for Home is going on.

Thanks to all of you for your continued support of my work and my stories!

Three Little Wins

I had a series of small votes of confidence the past two weeks, and I want to share them to show that sometimes it only takes a bit of encouragement to keep going.

I have been invited to speak at Mississippi State University on April 7, 2026, the school I got my BA and MA from. This invite was very exciting, but so was the information that came with it–I’m also going to meet with a creative writing class for a Q&A with graduate students. And they’re going to have read Hurricane Baby as part of the curriculum for the class.

My book will be a textbook for a writing class. I’ll be REQUIRED READING, y’all!

Second–my publisher put out a photo advertising the press’ books. It was labeled “Best of the Best” and captioned “Best Sellers”. And Hurricane Baby was in the shot! (I have no way of knowing if I’m really a best seller–but it looks good in my Facebook feed!)

Number three–I got an email congratulating me on my new book, and the writer said he looked forward to getting a copy and reading it so he could nominate it for the Mississippi Arts and Letters Fiction Award. I was stunned. I barely know this person–and he has this kind of belief in my work? AMAZING.

Like I said, small encouragements. And maybe I’m reading too much into them. But they helped me break through my imposter syndrome and actually write on my new work-in-progress. And that’s a big something for me.

Happy writing, y’all!

Literary Criticism

I was thinking a couple of days ago about my various experiences of writing, and my mind uncorked a long-buried memory from the back of my mind. I may not have all the details straight, but this is the gist of it:

I was in school (not sure what grade), and my class was given a homework assignment (or maybe extra credit)–to write a play about Paul Revere’s ride at the Battle of Lexington and Concord. This particular class was where I had fallen in love with history to the same degree that I was in love with writing, and now I had a chance to combine the two! I couldn’t pass this opportunity up.

I remember coming to the assignment with the utmost seriousness. I wanted it to be as accurate and honest as I could make it from the version of the story presented to me in my class history book–I populated the play with farmers, churchmen, soldiers, and Quakers. I had Paul Revere complaining to his horse about the weather and about being tired and about how he hoped he didn’t get saddle sore. I went all out.

So the due date came, and I turned in my play. I seem to remember only one other girl did a play as well. My teacher decided to have the class read both the plays and hold a vote for who the class thought had the best one. So she called on people to read mine aloud first, then the other girl’s.

The other girl had not taken the pains to be historically correct. The characters were all named after her friends in the class. The narrative didn’t have much to do with the American Revolution at all.

But the girl was popular. And she had name-checked most of the other people in the class. I had a sinking feeling as I heard the class talking among themselves how much they liked hers more then mine. I just sat in my desk and started at the floor. The teacher had us vote with a show of hands. I held up my hand for mine and didn’t even look up to see if anyone else did. The silly play won.

I was left with this takeaway: my play had lost because I was the one who wrote it.

Silly, yes. Naive, a bit. But anyone who has spent time in writing spaces has seen this happen before, even among grownups. Literary merit doesn’t always bring success to the creator.

However.

My mistake was to turn this incident into a flat statement about my abilities: That my work could never be “good enough” because I would never be “good enough” because I was too smart, too show-offish, too unattractive, too too too–whatever.

My work is as good as it needs to be. And the more I work, the better it will get with practice. And the more persistent I am, the more opportunity I can create for myself and my work. That’s the bottom line.

Candy-Store Problem

A candy-store problem is when you have a lot of choices, and all of them are good–or at least not bad.

I have four ideas for books–a paranormal novel, a double murder mystery with a twist, a father-son relationship novel, and a mother-daughters novel. I have been trying to work on the paranormal novel as it’s an old manuscript that would need to be rewritten, as is the double murder mystery. The other two are fully outlined from beginning to end.

The murder mystery feels the most like a conventional genre book and the most commercial. The paranormal one feels like another small press book with the twists and turns it takes. The other two feel more conventional as well.

When I set back out doing this, I decided I would rewrite the four older manuscripts first, querying indie and small presses for the first three (Hurricane Baby, Looking for Home, and the paranormal book) and query agents for the murder mystery to see if I could get a Big 5 deal. Then I’d write the other two from scratch and maybe be of age to retire if I wanted to or try to think up new ideas if I didn’t.

Now I am wondering whether that’s the proper path to take.

But at least my choices are all good because they all involve writing!

So please think about me in the next few weeks as I chew over my choices. Happy writing to you all!

Getting it Right

I’ve talked before about my mantra for writing, no matter what kind it is: get it right and tell the truth. Those can be slippery concepts for fiction. Nonfiction can be easier–depending on what it is you’re trying to tell the truth about, such as in memoir, where truth can often be an elusive concept.

I’ve not always been good at telling the truth in my life. But eventually I learned that lying burdens the brain because you’re always having to think harder to keep your story straight.

The other prong of it I got to thinking about recently as I did some neurological testing to see what might be causing my memory issues or if it was just normal aging. It turned out that I am functioning fine for someone my age. But the doctor did note some interesting findings–one of which was that during the testing, I emphasized doing a task correctly rather than doing it quickly.

Ah, here was a question with a clear answer from my life! I told him that was an easy one to solve; in school, I used to be the first one in class to finish tests, but I didn’t always make a perfect score. So my mom impressed on me that I only got credit for getting the right answers, not for turning the paper in quickly. So all my life, I’ve been oriented to getting right answers and doing something correctly rather than quickly.

Back in my day, some teachers would go over the answers to a test by calling on people who got the question incorrect to give their answer so the teacher could explain why their answer was wrong. The first time that happened to me, I wanted to sink down through the floor in shame. That experience stuck with me my whole life–so I try as much as possible to get the details right in whatever I’m writing.

All of this, of course, can stop creativity in its tracks. The trick I use is to write about what I know I can get right first–then fill in the blanks with research and expert opinion. At least that’s the goal.

How do you approach truth in writing? Let us know in the comments!

THE GOOD NEWS!

Last month, on September 23, the day after I had a very good birthday celebration, our home phone rang during dinner. We constantly get phone solicitor calls at our house, and I assumed this would be one of those. My husband Bob picked it up and said hello.

After a second, he said, “May I ask who’s calling?”

Another few seconds, and he handed the phone to me. “Amy Wilson from something press.”

I wondered what this was about. I took the phone. “Hello?”

The woman introduced herself to me as well and then said, “You know, some information I just think ought not be in an email—the phone can be more personal. I read your book, Looking for Home, and I love it! Would you like to publish it with me?”

I sat back in my chair, absolutely floored. It had taken a solid year to sell Hurricane Baby: Stories. I’d been querying Looking for Home for not quite two months—and here was an offer! Was she serious?!

So I started thinking aloud—I asked what the terms were, how was the contract set up, etc. She gave me some information about that. I asked if I could have the rest of the week to check with other publishers who still had the book to see if they wanted to counteroffer, and she agreed to that. She said she would get a hard-copy contract drawn up, sent to me, I could look over it, and then if it was satisfactory, I could sign it and send it back.

During the whole time we were talking, my mind was yammering away in the background, “You sold your second book. You sold your second book. YOU SOLD YOUR SECOND BOOK!”

After we finished talking, I looked over at Bob, who was looking at me with an expectant look on his face. I said, “Well, I just sold Looking for Home.”

I told him what she had said about the contract. So we waited.

She emailed me on Thursday, October 2, that she’d mailed the contract in a priority envelope. I received it the next Monday, looked it over, and then sent it back with my signature.

So we’ve been exchanging emails with questions and answers and details ever since.

Looking for Home is now under contract with Red Dirt Press of Oklahoma with a tentative release date of October 2026!

Thanks to all of you who have been so supportive of my work as I embark on this new author journey! Come on along for the ride!

Meeting the Moment

I’ve started wondering what exactly I need to be writing about.

I’ve got a novel idea that excited me for a while.

But the wackier this country is getting, the more I wonder if I need to be using my voice, small as it is, to do more than just fret about that.

I was schooled on the idea of journalists as objective observers of the actions of the body politic–good, bad, or indifferent. I tried to embody that in my writing, giving readers facts to let them make their own conclusions. This tack was pretty easy when I was doing features coverage: who, what, when, where, why, and how pretty much covered it.

Then I got into investigative reporting on mental health issues in my state–a topic very close to home given my diagnosis of bipolar disorder. I wrote and wrote and wrote–exposed, exposed, and exposed–and exactly nothing changed in practical terms. A few new laws got passed about training more people and setting up a new task force to replace the last task force, but that was all.

And I got burned out.

I could not see how someone involved in mental health matters could have read my work and not come away with a resolve to do what they could to change matters. But it seems they could.

I had been raising awareness for almost twenty years. I was tired of raising awareness. I wanted action. And it wasn’t forthcoming.

Now this country is on a collision course with history. I’m in the catbird seat to watch it–older, wiser, jaded, smart enough to able to see clearly through the smoke and mirrors, and seriously wondering where all my ideals went.

If we are no longer a free society, then what are we?

I’ve skated through life being comfortable with my political ideology as a moderate–suspicious of extremists of any flavor. I still feel that people can be trusted to make good decisions when given all the facts. But the very concept of what constitutes a fact is under attack from every conceivable direction these days.

What should we, as writers, do? It no longer seems to matter if we expose corruption as there’s no guarantee it will ever be prosecuted. No one seems to be interested in reading or hearing about government malfeasance unless the content already fits their own narrative.

I believe the answer is to write anyway. At least you can go to bed and sleep soundly, knowing you did your part.

I don’t know what this means for me yet. But I’m ready to find out.

Mississippi Book Festival 2025

I went again to this year’s book festival and had a wonderful time–I met MJ there and we walked around saying hello to everyone I knew. I also met several new people that I had not before, like the folks in charge of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, the University of Southern Mississippi Creative Writing program, the future Greenfield Residency program, and the Hancock County Library programs. Really neat organizations that I hope can continue on even as support for the arts is dwindling here.

I’m feeling at loose ends. My enthusiasm for my new manuscript suddenly disappeared last week. It was very disturbing. And I’m not quite able to figure out how to find it again. I may just have to do some for-my-eyes-only writing to figure out my why and what I actually want to do with the project. I may wait until I sell my current manuscript to start back on it in earnest since the energy is not there at this point. We will see.

But one of the sessions yesterday was very illuminating on what may have happened–the moderator, Steve Almond, said that you need to write what you’re obsessed about. When I first wrote the manuscript, I had an obsession–to explore the relationship between these two characters and see where it would go. But now I’m turning it into a very different book–about how the female lead overcomes when her life suddenly falls apart. I need to figure out why readers should care about this character. So I think that’s where I’m going to direct my efforts.

Happy writing, everybody!

First Nibble!

This morning, I got my first bite on my queries—a press sent me an email to submit my entire manuscript of Looking for Home. It’s a group in Oklahoma specializing in Southern literature. So mine may be right up their alley. Or not. We will have to see.

I sent three more queries around the first of the month–another press opens on September 15, and another one does on September 30. Then three more in October and four in November. The path just keeps rolling forward!

In other news, my last events went off without a hitch. Each one was fun and informative, and I tried to make the best case for the book I could in each interview. But the best marketing effort for the month was definitely me talking about networking helping my author journey on Jane Friedman’s site. Drove a lot of traffic to my blog and a lot of orders to my publisher. So that was amazing.

I’ve gone ahead and started my third book manuscript, with a working title of What Lies Ahead. I’m reworking yet another old manuscript from when I was writing back in the late 2000s. I’m moving very slowly writing the new first chapter that will hopefully set the tone for the entire rest of the book. I’m looking forward to feeling like I have a handle on the material. Because right now I don’t. 🙂

Oh well. We will see how it goes. Happy reading and writing everyone!