General

Allison

For the Love of Writing

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I thought it would be fun to launch my Substack, “For the Love of Writing,” on Valentine’s Day because writing has been my longest and most enjoyable relationship. It has its highs and lows, of course, but it’s what I find comfort in, what I always come back to.

This monthly newsletter is for all things related to writing – including reading. Each will feature some musings on a theme (with a heavy dose of LiveJournal entries, I mean… personal essays?), a book recommendation, and a writing prompt.

This first one was a lot of fun to write, so I hope you’ll check it out and subscribe!

Allison

2025 Writing Goals

As I mentioned in my last post, I felt disconnected from the writing community during 2024. I want to change that because I’ve made many great writer friends and love having people who understand the fickle job of writing, with its highs and lows. Community will be key for me this year, even though the former gathering ground of Twitter is now a hellscape that leads me to doomscroll and roll my eyes for hours instead of connecting with anyone.

Many of those same writers are on Instagram, though, so I’m going to aim to be more active there. To comment and DM instead of just scroll and like. To foster connections and feel a sense of community. I’m also a member of Sisters in Crime, which has community forums and online webinars and goes out of its way to foster connections between members. I’ll lean heavily on them since one of my writing-specific goals is to finish my mystery novel.

About that novel… I ghostwrote 28 books last year but didn’t finish one of my own. (That’s great, considering my novel won’t pay as much as working for others.) Still, it’s a goal to publish a novel under my name, and I want to make progress toward that this year.

  • Step one: finish a draft.
  • Step two: revise the hell out of it.
  • Step three: let others read it – yikes!
  • Step four: revise some more.
  • Step five: query an agent? I’m not sure I’ll get there, but it’s nice to have a rough plan.

I also want to finish revising my Young Adult novel from 2010. I’ve been getting feedback on chapters from a writing group and it’s pushed me to think differently about this book that was so familiar to me at one time. The distance since I first decided to revise it in 2018 or so also helps. Not to toot my own horn, but I feel like it’s close to being ready, and I think it’s something that could find an audience, so I’m hoping to polish it up and see what I can do with it.

Beyond those big projects (if I can take on any more), I want to reconnect with the flash community. I haven’t even been writing short pieces lately; I’ve been so focused on paid work that I really miss how flash made me feel like a writer. I know any type of writing takes creativity and skill, but flash made me feel so in tune with myself and the world around me, like I was seeing secrets everywhere I looked, letting my imagination unearth the story average people and items hid. I want to get back to that. I don’t like going through every day just working and keeping myself and my kid alive… though some days that’s enough and is a struggle itself. But actively writing flash felt like little escapes out my own life and my own head, and not having that for almost a year has really made me feel like a brittle, boring person.

I specifically have about four novella-in-flash/collection ideas I want to work on, so that will be my focus – not that I’ll turn away any other ideas that come to me!

Basically, I want this year to be the year I focus on my ideas, foster my own writing, and see where it takes me. Here we go!

Allison

2024 Writing in Review

This has been a strange year for my writing… I’ve focused more on paid work, which is great for my bank account, but makes me feel really out of touch with the flash fiction community.

I still did some fun things, like writing during National Flash Fiction Day and taking part in the Ekphrastic Marathon. I wrote some books and outlines for major publishers, and that news will hopefully come out next year. I judged four contests for Flash Fiction Magazine and ghostwrote some books I’m really proud of, so I feel like I had a very creative year even if my submission spreadsheet isn’t reflecting that.

I only had 45 submissions this year, despite initially having a goal of submitting 5 pieces per month. I had 13 acceptances from those submissions. (I submitted 111 times in 2023, 134 in 2022, and 52 in 2021.)

I also only took one writing workshop (plus a few two-hour Zooms), while I used to take a lot more. I generate a lot of content during workshops because I thrive with the prompts and accountability, so I think that might be a big part of my lack of content this year.

I started writing reviews for MicroLit Almanac. Several were books I’d already read or wanted to read, but a few weren’t even on my radar, so I’m grateful I got the chance to read and review them, hopefully helping spread the word of these indie writers so they can get the attention they deserve.

In addition to the online stories and reviews you can read here, I had a flash fiction piece published in Stanchion’s Away from Home anthology and another in the Third Bullshit Lit Anthology.

I also launched my own writing services: Lightning Flash Writing

If you need help polishing your work (flash fiction, short stories, novels – I do it all!), getting your ideas on the page, or marketing yourself or your book, I’m here to help!

Related Posts:

2023 Writing in Review

2022 Writing in Review

2021 Writing in Review

Allison

Novel Writing Month

Well, it’s November 1st.

Ever since 2007, that means I’m starting to write 50,000 words of a novel (or story collection) as part of National Novel Writing Month. While the organization has crumbled over the past year or two, the sense of needing to write still strikes me, much like the whole “back to school” vibe of September (though school starts here at the beginning of August…).

The truth is, I kind of started a challenge at the beginning of October: Autocrit’s Novel 90 writing challenge. Writing a novel in ninety days seemed totally doable since I used to create an extremely rough draft in thirty. Except the idea I wanted to write just wasn’t coming together, and I spent most of the month trying to figure out whodunnit so I could complete the outline.

Whoops.

I pivoted though, and started writing a different idea that I’ve had in the back of my mind. Which means I’m writing without an outline, but that’s how November typically goes for me.

I’m also participating in the Sisters in Crime November Marathon. I’m a new member and want to make the most of the community, so I’m jumping right in with the hope of completing a draft of a cozy mystery this month.

Oh, and I can’t forget Nancy Stohlman’s FlashNano. Clearly this is just the month to kick myself in the pants!

Mostly, I wanted to share because I feel like I’ve been stagnant for much of this year. My flash writing has been on hold as I focus on longer works. Writing a novel feels satisfying, but I miss drafting a quick little piece and helping it find a home a few months later. With the exception of National Flash Fiction Day and the Ekphrastic Marathon, most of my publications this year were in the works since submitting last year, so my spreadsheet is looking empty.

It’s also nice to hold myself accountable, even if it’s only to the internet.

Allison

Honoring My Grandmother’s Legacy: Celebrating Her Birthday with a New Beginning

Today would have been my maternal grandmother’s 107th birthday! We were incredibly close, and I have countless memories of reading books with her, listening to her childhood stories, and being amazed at her gorgeous handwriting – all experiences that helped cultivate my love of reading and writing.

She also encouraged my imagination! She was always willing to have a tea party with me or be a passenger on the “plane” as I pretended to be a pilot. Once, when I wanted to open a restaurant in her kitchen, I asked for help creating the menu. 

“How do you spell it?” I asked. 

“M-E-N…” she started. 

“M-E-N…” I repeated. 

“U!” she said. 

I proudly showed her my MenYou.

She died in 2011, and I wrote about it on my blog at the time:

After rapidly declining for the past month, my grandmother passed away yesterday morning while her husband slept in the next room. Just two hours later, my grandfather died in his sleep. He never woke up; he was never told that his wife was gone, but I think he knew.

They would have been married sixty-eight years this June. Sixty-eight years. I can’t even imagine living 68 years, much less living with someone else for that long.

A few years ago, I interviewed them for a sociology paper on marriage and family; they said some mornings they wake up and just have to embrace before sharing breakfast. Last Monday, a week before they died, my grandfather steered his wheelchair in to my grandmother’s room and they held hands across the hospital bed rails, as they had been doing nightly for some time.

I can’t imagine that degree of devotion and dedication. Long marriages run in my family, with my paternal grandparents lasting 58 years before death did they part, my maternal grandparents almost 68, and my parents just celebrated 36. It’s inspiring (…and a little intimidating).

I’m incredibly thankful that both grandparents had such long, amazing lives before leaving together, and that I got to spend 25 years with them.

I think of her often, especially on her birthday. So, I’m excited to announce: today I’m launching my writing services: Lightning Flash Writing!

It may seem random to do that on my grandmother’s birthday, but she always encouraged me in everything I did, and I like to think she’d be proud of me for following my creative pursuits like she did.

Allison

Dead Girl Erased

I can’t believe that I forgot to log this submission on my spreadsheet, and therefore forgot to mention it in my 2023 Writing in Review post!

Last March, Gnashing Teeth Publishing posted on Twitter that they were tearing pages out of a book (Dead Girl Running by Christina Dodd) and sending them to anyone who requested one. Once you got a page, you’d create an erasure or blackout poem and send it back to be published in an anthology.

I love strange constraints and any type of project, so I requested a page. When it came in the mail, I think I was frozen for a week or two. I had no clue where to start. What if I blacked out a word I wanted back later??

I decided to take a photo of the pages and use the mark up feature on my phone to draft some poems. I’m really glad I took that approach, though I don’t remember changing a lot of the words. In fact, I kept taking away more. But it was nice to have the original page to look back on when I wanted. And once I completed my poem, I could carefully black out the right sections on the book page.

With that done, I mailed the page off and waited. And forgot about it, honestly! Then preorders were announced, so I preordered and forgot about it again! Which means I was pleasantly surprised by a book in my mailbox one day.

It was so cool to not only see my poem in this book, but to see how other people approached the erasure aspect of the project. There are some works of art in here! It’s also really interesting to see how many poems kind of fit together. Probably because the book is one cohesive work so it’s understandable there’d be some overlap in the poems, but it’s still fascinating!

You can grab a copy here.

Allison

2023 Writing in Review

This year felt like a slow one to me, but when I look at my submissions spreadsheet and publication track record, it was pretty great! I did take it a bit slower in terms of workshops. I love the prompts and feedback in workshops, but this year was a rollercoaster in terms of my paid writing work, so not having the pressure (or expense, yikes!) of many workshops was a necessary break. (That said, I took seven workshops total, though many were in the spring when my work life was still running smoothly!)

I like the goal of submitting to a certain number of places a month because I like marking accomplishments off my list. However, I don’t like the pressure of submitting just because. So for 2024, I’m going to take a small step back. I’m going to focus more on the ideas I have for collections and novellas-in-flash and strive to finish those instead of writing one-offs for submission. I think having a few bigger projects on my plate will be a nice change of pace from these past three years.

Anyway, my 2023 stats meet the goals I set for myself at the end of last year. I submitted 62 times, compared to 63 written in 2022 (I also submitted photography that year) and 44 in 2021. I had 16 acceptances, compared to 13 written acceptances in 2022 and 5 in 2021. Six stories are still out/under consideration.

I also wrote blurbs for two amazing collections: Winter Dance Party by Brett Biebel and Awakenings edited by Diane Gottlieb.

Two of my 2023 acceptances are for anthologies coming in the future from Reflex Press and Stanchion, but the rest are online and linked below:

Ladyfingers published by Visual Verse 9/2023

The Hand, The Remorse of Conscience in The Ekphrastic Review’s Lucky 8 Marathon 8/2023

Precarious Pile published by Visual Verse 8/2023

Nectar published by SoFloPoJo 8/2023

Waiting in the Rain published by Visual Verse 7/2023

Blue Monkey published by Ellipsis Zine 6/2023

Crosstown Traffic published by The Write-In 6/2023

Moving Day published by The Write-In 6/2023

Trick or Treat published by The Write-In 6/2023

She’s Where the Sky Meets the Water published by The Write-In 6/2023

Dreamless Reality published by The Write-In 6/2023

Close Your Eyes published by Visual Verse 5/2023

Midway shortlisted for the Brilliant Flash Fiction Contest 5/2023

Mother of Pearl published by Visual Verse 4/2023

501 published by Spartan 4/2023

Death of an Influencer published by Visual Verse 3/2023

Bank Balance published by Friday Flash Fiction 3/2023

“Shining Light” photograph in Rock and a Hard Place Issue 9 2/2023

Related Posts:

2022 Writing in Review

2021 Writing in Review

Allison

Interview with Intrepidus Ink

I’m an editor with Intrepidus Ink, a fantastic magazine that publishes stories featuring alarmingly individual and heroically-minded characters. Submissions include flash fiction (300 – 1,000 words) and short stories (1,500 – 2,500 words), so I bet you have a piece to send our way! Read our published stories to ensure you hit the mark in terms of a story that will keep the reader on the edge of their seat, rooting for your character to win it all.

Oh, did I mention it’s a PAYING magazine? And we promote your work like crazy, including interviews on publication day and nominations for all the literary awards.

If you want to submit, check out our published stories and interviews. Including mine with EIC Rhonda Schlumpberger.

Allison

Happy National Flash Fiction Day!

Yes, I’m posting this right before the day officially ends in the UK, but I’ve been writing since The Write-In started posting prompts yesterday evening (my time)! I always love writing from a prompt, as evidenced by so many of my recent publications having origin stories in workshops.

Anyway, this year NFFD is doing a badge system, and I love collecting little trinkets that show where I’ve been and what I’ve done, so here are the pieces I’ve written and submitted so far.

Since the deadline to submit is tomorrow at 5:59p my time, I’m going to keep writing because this concept of time in the prompts is perfect for how I’m trying to push myself to go speculative, so I’m going to continue writing. Anyone else participating today?