Essay Writing

Comment

Comment by LUCILLE JOYNER 16 hours ago

Meg, I'd like to send an essay to one of the contests that you list, but I wonder if it's too strong for the Real Simple Life Lessons contest. Can I run it past you somehow to get your take on it.

Comment by Meg Waite Clayton on August 30, 2010 at 6:55am

Writing Contests to Help You Break Out (including one for publication of an essay/memoir in Real Simple Magazine) - and another AWWP writing prompt

Hope it's all helpful!

And congrats, Lucille!

Comment by LUCILLE JOYNER on August 29, 2010 at 9:43am

My story "Don't Give Your Dog A Bad Name" was published this week in a newspaper that goes to every house in North West New Jersey. The editor added a picture of a black dog lying down with one menacing eye open. It was so perfect for the story, I couldn't stop laughing. It's the second time this Editor has given me over a half a page for a story. The last one was on Les Paul, the renown guitarist/inventor who launched the whole rock movement by inventing multi-track recording and the electric guitar. I have a feeling she will be in contact with me again.

Comment by LUCILLE JOYNER on August 27, 2010 at 8:38pm

Emily: No, Mary was not pissed. In fact, she and her husband moved back to Wisconsin, then Minnesota. They were farm people. And she calls me several times a year to tell me that she misses her old life in Waldwick, NJ. She and I got into a lot of mischief in NJ, adult vandals that we were, and she says life on the farm is quiet.
By the way, I finally have a cat of my own that I named Emily after one of the most beautiful songs in existence. You got a good name, there.

Comment by Meg Waite Clayton on August 27, 2010 at 7:44pm

Interesting, Lucille - women's rights and chocolate!

>one of Ellen Douglas' stories

Oh, I love Ellen Douglas's writing. I met her at the Sewanee Writers Conference many years ago, and she was just lovely, too.

Comment by Emily Kennedy on August 27, 2010 at 2:24pm

I'll bet your friend, Mary, was pissed! Ha! I've never had a friend I could describe with such largess language without getting in trouble. You have some moxy!

Comment by Emily Kennedy on August 27, 2010 at 2:19pm

I enjoyed your essay, Lucille. I have struggled with deciding between memoir, essay, and fiction for years. My yet-to-be published book is fiction, but it is based on real events. I did what Emma said earlier, hoping I was masking enough so that no one would recognize himself or herself. Then, I wrote an essay about life on my farm, and it was so refreshing to tell the truth! I am now working on my second book, and so far, the names and places are not changed. I wish I could just leave them and call it a memoir, structuring it around funny stories ala David Sedaris. But I don't want the whole town mad at me!

Comment by LUCILLE JOYNER on August 27, 2010 at 11:36am

Thank you so much, Emma, for your helpful comments. Every single story I have ever written is based on actual people and actual event, therefore they must be essays. I am relieved to know there is a name for what I am doing.

Comment by Joan Dempsey on August 27, 2010 at 11:31am

Hi folks - Just wrote a non-fiction e-book that might be of interest to some of you (it's free): The Power of Deliberate Thinking: 5 Strategies for Staying at the Writing Desk (Despite Your Self-Doubts). You can grab it at

Writing an e-book was so different from other creative non-fiction, each chapter kinds of essay-esque. Anyone else in this group done the e-book thing?

Comment by Emma French Connolly on August 27, 2010 at 11:10am

I believe it is, Lucille. Unless of course if you change names and insert fictional elements, then it becomes a story. I just last night finished reading one of Ellen Douglas' stories about a political event in 1960s Mississippi, "Maury's Story", included her book on writing called Witnessing. According to Douglas the event is based on a true event, but she added fictional details and changed the names of the people. In Witnessing, she has added back in the true names of the people, but left in some fictional details. Sometimes there is a fine line . . .

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