VS Grenier ~ Award-Winning Author, Speaker & Podcaster

I cannot tell you a better way to spend my day than writing and the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) along with Senate have dedicated a day for just that. Here is some information so you can join me and many other writers in celebrating what we love . . . writing! Choose any piece you have ever written, spoken, drawn, texted, or videoed and submit it to the NCTE Gallery. Ask your family and friends to publish to the National Gallery , too!  In this great mosaic representation of how people write today, every piece counts.  As long as it is significant to its author, the NCTE has a place for it in the national gallery. Talk to the classes you teach, community, service or church groups you belong to, or journalists/media personalities you know about publishing to the National Gallery. In the  National Gallery of Writing   the NCTE is collecting all kinds of writing from people from all walks of life—people just like you.  Submit stories, po...

Born and raised in New York City, Margaret Fieland has been around art and music all her life. Daughter of a painter, she is the mother of three grown sons and an accomplished flute and piccolo player. She is an avid science fiction fan, and selected Robert A. Heinlein's “Farmer in the Sky” for her tenth birthday, now long past. She lives in the suburbs west of Boston, MA with her partner and seven dogs. Her poems, articles and stories have appeared in journals and anthologies such as Main Channel Voices, Echolocation, and Twisted Tongue. In spite of making her living as a computer software engineer, she turned to one of her sons to format the initial version of her website, a clear illustration of the computer generation gap. You may visit her website, http://www.margaretfieland.com. VS: When did you first become interested in writing, and what was your inspiration? Margaret: I wrote (mostly bad) poetry as far back as I can remember. When my partner and I started dating, I s...

MARY E. MARTIN SPECIAL GUEST - Monday OCTOBER 18, at 8 pm Central, 9pm Eastern, 6pm Pacific. Join in on a lively conversation.-A GOOD STORY IS A GOOD STORY with Host Marsha Cook and Virginia S. Grenier. Fran Lewis will interview Mary E. Martin on her new book THE DRAWING LESSONS. Mary is an accomplished writer, editor and was a practicing Attorney for years. Her visit to Frankfort will be open for discussion as well as her publishing experiences and how she markets her books. As always we will have Writing Perspective by Virginia and Marsha will review a movie. Listen in and have some fun. Here's the link so you can listen in http://www.blogtalkradio.com/rrradio/2010/10/19/rr-tracks--a-good-story-is-a-good-story

Rie McGaha was born and raised in northern California along the shores of Humboldt County where her grandmother often took her to dig for clams and watch the whales migrate. Being raised with the mountains on one side and the ocean on the other, gave Rie a deep love for nature. She has resided in the Kiamichi Mountains of SE Oklahoma for more than ten years with her husband, Nathan, where they rescue animals, nurses them back to health and tries to find homes for them. She is the mother of 12 and Nana of 33. VS: Rie, I want to thank you for being my guest here on The Writing Mama today. As you know, being a parent is hard work and when you throw writing into the mix . . . well it seems almost impossible to get everything done. I find myself asking if I giving my three children enough attention throughout the day. Now you didn’t really start writing until your children were grown, however, you have your grandchildren running around from time to time, so to start here is the first qu...

Is it that time already? I cannot believe that in one month, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) will be here again! I have attempted NaNo two times and never finished my NaNo novel. Nevertheless, I am hoping for the first time I will do just that! I cannot think of a better way to get this novel swimming around in my head and only outlined on paper finally written. Can you? For those you do not know what NaNo is here is a brief synopsis: National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved. Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not...