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 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…

A Twitter post from my MFA program here at the University of South Carolina (@scmfa) was a reminder of the 12/15 application deadline. It is hard for me to believe that this time last year I had just decided that I could do a full-residency program and was starting the application process. It was a lot of work but I had three great teachers/mentors to help me through it. If you are applying for graduate school, I would suggest getting help. I had all three of them looking at my writing…

Reposted from the Writerly Habit

Nick and I arrived in Columbia on August 1st. After that, it was a lot of waiting around for our things. The movers did not show up until the 12th. Luckily, my sister was here to help us unpack…

Reposted from the Writerly Habit

I am leaving for South Carolina in sixteen days. I am excited but at the same time a little apprehensive. The program entails graduate classes (creative writing, lit, and theory), teaching classes, studying for a comprehensive exam, thesis and thesis defense, and a foreign language translation exam. It just seems like so much work (although that is the point right?). I know I…

Reposted from the Writerly Habit

I’ve been reading The Two Kinds of Decay: A Memoir by Sarah Manguso. In her memoir, she talks about the gaps in the narrative and not being able to account for all of her time. Now that I have had another back injury, I understand. Mind you, I…

One of the books I return to over and over again for writing inspiration is Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. One reason I like it is that it is composed of short sections. I don’t…

The movers came out on Monday and gave us an estimate to move out to South Carolina for my graduate program. They want just under $3,000 which is wonderful because PODS wanted $4,700 and I…

Reposted from the Writerly Habit

In preparation of my upcoming move, I donated about three years worth of The Writer, Poets & Writers, and Writer’s Digest to the local Army hospital. I always keep back issues thinking I will need to look something up but, to be honest, I’ve never once done that. I buy literary journals that I never seem to get around to reading. I don’t even read the issue of One Story that…

Reposted from the Writerly Habit

My dad bought a Kindle about a year ago and I thought it was awesome but when I bought my iPad I was so excited because I felt like it could do anything. My husband bought me a bluetooth keyboard for it for Christmas and I started using it for writing and taking notes in school. A couple of weeks after we got them, my…

Well, I survived finals. My last paper (on the use of literary allusions to Poe as a stepping stone to critiquing mass culture in Native Son) went better than I expected. I had to cut out a lot of what I wanted to include because I was limited to ten pages. I guess that is a sign that I am ready for grad school.

Anyway, I have been practicing my French translation for the exam I will need to pass at USC. That is good and all but I haven’t done any writing since the semester ended. I…