Happy 2012!

I always love the new year-- a blank calendar of fresh starts, new opportunities, and renewed motivation to live the life you dream of! The new year is the perfect time to reflect on the past year and also look ahead to the future.

The past year has been a great one! I'm into my second year at Purdue and am really loving teaching, and I was honored with an Excellence in Teaching Award based on the end-of-semester evaluations from my students. I've written every day and made substantial progress on two novel manuscripts as well as nearly a dozen short stories. My play "The Stars in Illinois" won the Brian Mexicott Playwriting Award and my short play "love (lower case)" was produced as part of the Quills & Keys play festival in Santa Paula, California. My story "Jared Sampson's Mom" was published in the Valparaiso Fiction Review and nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and my story "Woman, Running Late, in a Dress" won first place out of more than 600 entries in the Ninth Glass Woman Prize. I also had some flash fiction published this year: "Wednesday Afternoon" in Concisely; "Wedding Day" in Dr. Hurley's Snake-Oil Cure; and "Ten Reasons" in Women in REDzine.

It was also an exciting year with Write On! For Literacy. Dancing With The Pen: a collection of today's best youth writing was released in February and rose to a #2 ranking on Amazon in the "literature anthologies" category and has received rave reviews from kids, teenagers, parents and teachers. The Write On! Summer Writing Camp was a great success, so much so that for the first time ever I held a one-day Winter Writing Camp over the holiday break from school. I am also now doing Guided Mentorships for young writers, something I really enjoy as it allows me to work individually with them on their writing projects. And the Tenth Annual Holiday Book Drive collected and donated more than 500 books this year, bringing the grand total to 12,290 books!

In my personal life, I met a truly amazing guy when we both volunteered teaching writing workshops for senior citizens. I love him very much and we will be celebrating our one-year anniversary in February. This past summer I traveled to Ireland with my brother and researched our family history, and I also traveled to London and Paris and visited my friend Celine, who I hadn't seen since college. I went to the Taylor Swift concert with my friend Holly; my dad came out to visit me at Purdue for October break; my mom, aunts, and cousins met up with me in Chicago for a fun "girls weekend." My boyfriend and I went to nearly a dozen plays and concerts, including "War Horse" and "Phantom of the Opera." And I got to spend wonderful time with my grandparents when I was home for summer and winter breaks. I am one lucky, lucky girl!

Here's a sampling of my goals for 2012:

• Write! 400 words. Every day. No excuses. A great website I use to track my daily progress is Joe's Goals: http://www.joesgoals.com/
• Submit to a literary magazine every other week.
• Submit a query for a freelance article every month.
• Read a short story every day & 40 books by end of year.
• Send out a Write On! newsletter every month.
• Teach a summer & winter youth writing camp.
• Write a blog post twice a week.
• Exercise 3 days a week.
• Learn to cook 10 new healthy recipes. 
• Call my grandparents every weekend. 
• Volunteer at a nursing home or food bank.
• Do at least one act of kindness every day.
• Count my blessings every night.

What are your goals for the new year? Carpe diem -- seize the day!

Opportunity for young writers in Georgia

Pegasus, the literary magazine at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, Georgia, invites submissions of poetry, short fiction (flash fiction welcome), creative nonfiction, artwork and photography for the upcoming spring 2012 issue. The submission deadline is February 29, 2012.

Pegasus is an award-winning regional journal that publishes writers enrolled in Georgia high schools or Georgia colleges and universities. Submissions by other writers will be ignored.

Pegasus accepts electronic submissions only. Please see http://pegasusliterarymagazine.weebly.com/index.html for full submission guidelines.

Submissions not following stated guidelines will be ignored.

Nominations Open for the "Write to Done" Top 10 Blogs for Writers Contest

The website Write to Done is having their 6th Annual Top 10 Blogs for Writers Contest. If you like my blog, and have a moment to spare, it would mean a lot if you could pop on over to their site and nominate this blog! The deadline is fast approaching-- December 10th. I've pasted below the info from Write to Done:
 
How to Nominate Your Favorite Writing Blog:
→ Visit http://writetodone.com/2011/11/22/nominate-your-favorite-writing-blog-6th-annual-top-10-blogs-for-writers-contest/
→ Nominate your favorite blog in the comment section.
→ You have only one vote (only your first will be counted).
→ Please include the web address of the blog.
→ Explain why you think the blog is worthy of winning this year’s award.

To make the cut, a blog must be nominated more than once. (So it would be great if you could spread the word!)

Nominations must be received by 10 December 2011.

Story Published!

Exciting news! My short story "Ten Reasons" has been published in the latest issue of Women in REDzine, a multicultural literature and art magazine out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Here is the beginning of the story to (hopefully!) whet your appetite:

Ten Reasons

by Dallas Woodburn

1. The lacy red panties she discovers wedged between the back left and middle seats of the Jeep Grand Cherokee while reaching down to yank out the seatbelt that always disappears into the crack between the seats. Abe usually drives the Jeep, but this is LeAnn's week to drive Miles and his friends to soccer practice, so he took the Prius instead.

Her breath catches at the feel of the cheap silk lewdness between her fingers. What a silly, stupid cliché. She manages to ball up the panties inside her clenched fist and slip them into her purse without Miles or his friends seeing them.


2. When she buys a new dress on sale at Macy's, with a low-cut neckline and a flattering belt that cinches at the waist, and she puts it on and saunters up to her husband, stretched out across the couch reading the newspaper, and asks, “How do I look?” with a coy smile on her lips, Abe glances up for only a moment before muttering, “Fine,” and turning back to the newspaper.


3. “What's wrong?” she asks on a Tuesday night during dinner, noticing how he picks at his food like a child.

He sighs. “Nothing.”

“Don't lie to me.”

“Your mashed potatoes,” Abe says. “They're too lumpy.”

“I made them the same way I've always made them.”

“Maybe you should add more milk,” he says. “Next time.”

* * *

You can read the rest here: http://www.fictionaut.com/stories/dallas-woodburn/ten-reasons

This story stemmed from a writing exercise I was given in my undergraduate workshop with Aimee Bender to write a narrative using a list format. It's a fun prompt to try -- I challenge you to do so!

10th Annual Holiday Book Drive to benefit underprivileged children!

Last year Write On! For Literacy collected nearly 1,000 books (bringing our grand total to more than 12,000 books!) that were distributed to various schools and charities including the Boys & Girls Club, Casa Pacifica, and Project Understanding. Please do your part to help children have a better holiday season. Help beat illiteracy and give the gift that lasts forever: the gift of reading!

About Write On!

"Write On! For Literacy" is a volunteer-run organization founded by author Dallas Woodburn in 2001. The goal is to encourage kids to discover confidence, happiness, a means of self-expression, and connection to others through reading and writing. The Write On! website features writing contests, book reviews, author interviews, writing tips and ideas, and more.

Want to get involved?

• You can mail book donations to the Write On! chapter headquarters: 400 Roosevelt Court, Ventura, CA, 93003

• You can also mail monetary donations that will be used to purchase books to the above address. (Checks made out to Dallas Woodburn.)

• You can start a chapter in your area! Donate books to a local charity -- Boys & Girls Clubs are usually very grateful for donations -- and then e-mail Dallas the total number of books donated which will then be added to our grand-total.

Use Competition to Boost Your Writing

This Saturday is the big rivalry football game for my alma mater, USC, versus UCLA. Amidst the playful trash-talking and revelrous build-up to the big game, I have been thinking about how rivalry and competition are a part of our lives in many ways, not just in the realm of sports.

In writing, for example, contests are forms of competition. Perhaps there is a "big game" of a contest that you enter every year, hoping to win the big prize. Or perhaps there is a writer you admire and consider a rival of sorts. While the green-eyed monster of jealousy is never something to court-- it can be paralyzing to your creativity and toxic to your happiness-- there are ways to use rivalry and competition as good motivators to get your writing in gear and your butt in the writing chair. Here are some ideas:

• Pair up with a writing friend and use each other to make headway on your goals. Perhaps you want to finally hammer out an outline for your novel, or send out more queries, or simply get more words on the page. Pick a goal and turn it into a competition with your friend. Whoever writes more words, sends out more queries, etc., is the winner for the week; the loser buys the winner lunch or coffee at your next get-together.  

• What writers do you admire? Search out their work. Read it; study it; learn from it. What do they do to create such compelling characters? How do they build such intricate and gripping plots? How does their writing build from words to sentences to paragraphs on the line level? 

• Even better, look up the websites of writers you admire and find their contact information. Send them a direct email or an old-fashioned letter in care of their publisher. Tell them what you admire about their work. Strike up a conversation and build a relationship. Get involved in the writing community!

• Annual competitions are great ways to mark your own progress. Perhaps you enter the same big-prize writing competition every year and have not won (yet!) ... You don't need to depend on a panel of judges to get something out of the contest. Use it as a catalyst to reflect on your writing and how your work has grown and changed in the last year. Are you pushing yourself? Are you putting in the time you want to be putting in? What goals can you set for yourself to focus on until the next contest comes around?

Rivalry week is always fun, and you can use competition as a positive source of motivation in your writing life. But when it comes down to it, remember that the only person you should really be in competition with is yourself!

Happy writing -- and, this Saturday, FIGHT ON TROJANS! Beat the Bruins! :)

Winter Writing Camp -- You Are Invited!

Due to some very sweet emails from parents and young writers, I am excited to share with you that I will be holding a special one-day Winter Writing Camp when I am home for winter break this year!

• Who: Young writers ages 7-18.
• When: Saturday, December 17 from 10am to noon 
• Where: Jensen Design & Survey at 1672 Donlon Street in Ventura, California.

In the spirit of the season, the Special Holiday Rate for this session is $20, half the price of a day of writing camp during the summer. You can sign up on my website: http://writeonbooks.org/festivalofwriting.aspx or you can email me at dallaswoodburn@gmail.com and I will send you a PDF of the registration form.

Hope to see you then! Happy holidays!