I've spent the last few days working on a marketing plan for my latest book, Walking Woman: Step-by-Step to a Healthier Heart. It's been hard, picky work. Each author has his or her idea of marketing and these ideas have to fit the market and the genre. Since my book is a health guide, the first step of my marketing plan was to identify health organizations that…

by Sherrie Wilkolaski

A marketing tool all authors need to utilize to market and promote their books is the author interview.  It’s quite simple to create and the investment of 30 minutes or less will go a long way to produce a tool that can be used time and again, both on and offline.  If you’re interested in treating yourself to one of the most valuable…

by Sherrie Wilkolaski

Original version of this article published in Ms. Wilkolaski’s monthly column “Author’s Guide to Publishing” in IFWTWA’s “Press Pass”.

The holidays are upon us and thoughts of sugarplums and holiday cocktails are much more fun to dream about than worrying about what you’ll be doing in the New Year…

Yesterday I read a great article in the Jan/Feb issue of Poets & Writers. It is the inspiration issue and it was phenomenal. I spent all day yesterday reading it. The article I want to focus on is “Inner Space: Clearing Some Room for Inspiration” by Frank Bures. In the article he talks about spending less time online in order to create room for inspiration. He cites a University of California study that showed “in 2008 Americans consumed thirty-four gigabytes of information per day, the…

Thought I would share my latest rejection letter.

Dear Brandi Ballard,

Thank you for entering “Title” in the 30 Below Contest. We were grateful for the opportunity to read and consider your work, and we regret that your entry was not one of our winners or finalists this time.

An announcement of the winning stories will soon go out to the magazine’s readership, and in January we will publish the winning stories. In…

Recently, I read a really terrible short story. I mean really bad. To be fair, everyone writes crap when they start out. It is called paying your dues. The trick is to know when your writing is terrible. I’ve been writing since I was twelve. I had years of writing absolute garbage. As a writer, you read more and you write more and you start to improve. That’s just how it works. Consequently, I think this is where most people get discouraged and give up writing.

Sometimes I still write…

Pikes Peak (Image by Beverly and Pack)

Yesterday, I returned home from the North Carolina Writers’ NetworkFall Conference. I have to say, I had a better time there than at AWP in Denver a few years…

As part of the Fall Literary Festival at USC, Junot Diaz did a public reading and a master class with the MFA students. He is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and…

On Thursday, I went down to Claflin University to present a panel and reading at their 10th annual Claflin University Conference on Contemporary English and Language Arts Pedagogy in Secondary and Post-secondary Institutions. Man that’s a long name. Anyhow, it was my first panel and I was fortunate to be presenting alongside some very talented students from USC. Like I do with all presentations, I write everything out I want to say. I ended up skipping a ton of it because it was just too…

I just sent off a submission to Narrative Magazines’ Thirty Below Story Contest. The entry fee was $20. This is the first time I have ever paid for a submission. I don’t mind though as it is a contest with cash prizes. Entrants also get three months of backstage access to Narrative Magazine. Very cool. I really like that they include something extra. My last few submissions have resulted in rejections so here is hoping this one goes…

At the beginning of the year, I submitted to the Norman Mailer 4-Year College Writing Award for Creative Nonfiction. Last week, I received this rejection from them. It’s a bit of a bummer because I will not be able to enter the contest again. The email came in on my cell-phone and I had to keep scrolling through trying to figure out if I won.

October 13, 2011

Dear Brandi Ballard,

Thank you for…

I should be updating my marketing plan.  Those galleys will be done before I know it, then the blurb final requests (any pub'd memoir writers out there who want to blurb my book?), then the ARCs, the publicist calls, radio interviews, etc. will happen.  It's dominoes, and I've been thinking on it so hard and taking notes, but it's floating in my head and on scraps of paper. 

I should be working on my marketing plan because on Saturday we're getting pumpkins, and Sunday is…

I am a huge Natalie Goldberg fan. I know I have posted on Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (Shambhala Library) and…

Here’s a rejection for a research paper I recently received. Thought I’d share. Changes are italicized. Figured it would be rude to put somebody’s name out there.

Dear Sigma Tau Delta Member:

Thank you for your submission to “The Sigma Tau Delta Review: Journal of Critical Writing.” As always, we had a high number of quality submissions, which made the editorial selection that much more difficult.

At this time we are unable to publish your work. We hope, though, that you…

As I have confessed here a number of times, I haven’t always been able to write.  Well, I’ve always been able to write, I just didn’t have any confidence in my writing abilities.  When I was working in the corporate world, if I was required to write a letter, I would procrastinate for days until I made myself sit down at my computer and write.

...…

In 1924, two men, Mr. Mallory and Mr. Irvine set out with a group on the second expedition of Mount Everest.  The Mount Everest.  The really tall mountain, 29, 029 feet tall to be exact.  It’s part of the Himalaya mountain range along the border of Nepal and Tibet, in case you wondered.  The goal of these men was to achieve the first ascent.  Seems like a rather lofty goal (pun totally intended), don’t you think?  They set out completely prepared, at least 1924 prepared.  All of their…

Today I had one of those come-to-insert-higher-power-of-choice moments. It started as a slight scolding from someone who is looking out for me in more than one way (which I deserved), twisted and turned into "I've been where you are" stories, and ended on a positive, action-oriented note.

"Help me help…

Reposted from the Writerly Habit

If you are like me, you have several novel ideas that ended up in a folder somewhere; lost and never written. When my sister suggested we write a genre novel together one of my old ideas came to mind. I got out the sample chapters and the two of us were able to use them and write an outline in a couple of hours. We are going to have to figure out how to co-author. Right now, we are going to…