#MashUpMondays

Mash up Mondays are back! Whatever is trending in the writing scene whether it be a writing competition, conference, tech ish or a celebrity new release I got you covered. If you know of anything delicious enough to dish about put them in the comments pleaz and thank you.

Well here we go!

Husband and Wife Duo Writes a Chikdren’s Book

Pop diva Mariah Carey and her black version of Ryan Seacrest husband Nick Cannon will be releasing a children’s novel this fall. It will be a remix to the old school version of 12 Days of Christmas with the main characters being their own children Roc and Roe. That’s all their giving out about it but I’m sure more info is around the block.

Writing Contest for Teens

Author Donna Labermeier is hosting a writing contest just for teens to encourage literacy. I love the whole concept of improving literacy. I also love that opportunities like this gives aspiring young writers a chance to perfect their craft early because not many things was available when I was younger. But anywho..

Fight for Teen Literacy will award 6 winners with prize money for themselves as well as their school library. Teenagers must read the author’s book then react to it by writing a song, making a film or any creative way. Go on The Healers Trilogy Facebook page by Feb. 16th to enter. Good luck.

Annual Competition Getting in High Gear

Another legendary contest is getting underway. It’s the Annual Competition from Writers Digest. Genres being accepted are: inspirational writing, memoirs, magazine feature article, genre short story, literacy short story, poetry, stage play, television/movie scripts and children’s/YA fiction.

Enter by either online or print the form out. The early bird deadline is May 5th. A grand prize winner will receive a lot of ish including: $3000, meeting with editors/agents, paid trip to WD conference, a year subscription to WD eBooks and a thirty minute consultation with Chuck Sambuchino.

Did I miss anything?

Peace and luv!

Posted from none other than your favorite writer’s favorite writer Ms Talia

Life Effecting How You Look At Your Writing

I hear numerous writers speak on finding the motivation from within to write everyday because lets face it there will be days where you don’t feel like writing a damn thang.

What I wanna talk about is deeper than just having a bad day and deciding not to write. Let me ask you this, does your life outside of writing (i.e. relationships, friendships, job or lack thereof one, etc) effect how you view your writing? Now I know some of you are putting on your holier than thou pants saying you’re not a real writer if you allow your life situations to effect how you view or approach your writing. To you who think that go sit down somewhere, this post will be for my real people. If you haven’t noticed I’ve slacked on writing especially on this blog. To be honest it’s been because of my current situation. I’m not going to go into descriptive detail about what’s been going on but just know it was bad enough in my eyes to make me not feel the joy of storytelling. Call it me being depressed because when a person is they don’t feel like doing those simple joys of life. My question is can life change how you view your writing? Yes it can. I wish I can tell you differently but I gotta keep it 100. When you can’t feed your family, it effects how you view your writing. When there is a close death you question it. You get what I’m saying?

Have my situation changed? Obviously, if I’m writing again I feel slightly bad for letting it get to that point but my best advice is sometimes you have to step back and re-evaluate your shit until that passion comes back in a full fledge hustlin’ mode. You will be doing your fans a favor. They can tell when you’re not passionate about yours.

Peace and luv!

Posted from none other than your favorite writer’s favorite writer Ms Talia

Toni Morrison Honors Dr Maya Angelou

There are some literary legends. One of them who are still living vivaciously, still inspiring the next generation of writers is Dr Maya Angelou. She was honored at the National Book Awards by her friend author Toni Morrison. She received the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. Deserving this woman is who have changed the peoples’ view of writing and inspired so many, especially black writers who were hidden underneath fear, doubt and criticism. I don’t think she set out to do that, she just wanted to write and tell the truth but she did and we’re thankful that she became a writer. Toni said before her friend accepted the award, “Dr Maya Angelou you improve our world by drawing from us, forcing from us, our better selves.”

Once Dr Angelou accepted the award from her long time friend she responded with, “God put a rainbow in the clouds. You are rainbows in my clouds.” She finished by thanking the literary world whether she deserved it or not.

Hats off to you!

Peace and luv!

Posted from none other than your favorite writer’s favorite writer Ms Talia

The National Book Award Winners

Keeping in theme with the National Book Awards lets announce the winners if you haven’t heard them yet.

James McBride won in the fiction category for The Good Lord Bird

George Packer won in the nonfiction category for The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America

Mary Snybist won in the poetry category for Incarnadine

Cynthia Badohata won the YA Literature Award for The Thing About Luck

Congratulations to all of the winners!

Peace and luv!

Posted from none other than your favorite writer’s favorite writer Ms Talia

Shonda Rhimes Lands a Book Deal

I wanna be this woman when I grow up I swear. She’s such an inspiration to writers and women in general. As if we can’t get enough of her Shonda Rhimes will be relasing a memoir sometime in the year 2015 (yes we will have to wait that long). It will touch on her life as a single mother wanting and creating a successful career in the media. If you don’t know about this brilliant lady she is the first African American woman to create and executive produce a top 10 network series. She’s won plenty of accolades for her career like a Golden Globe, several NAACP Image Awards, Television Producer of the Year from the Producers Guild of America, a Lucy Award for Excellence in Television and a GLAAD Golden Gate award. I am actually excited about this memoir. I normally don’t get down with memoirs and biographies but I’ll check this one out.

Peace and luv!

Posted from none other than your favorite writer’s favorite writer Ms Talia

Has Fan Fiction Gone Too Far?

I’m not a fan of fan fiction. The fact that anyone can make a little money off of the work an actual author has done drives me nuts. I mean all literary works are influenced by something in real life but fan fiction is going too far.

Now have this fan fiction idea gone too far? In my opinion hell yeah.

An unknown writer going by the name J. Lola has written a story called 50 Shades of Sin. This is the first to a series. A series about the destructive relationship of Chris Brown and Rihanna. The crazy thing is this fool didn’t change their names. Instead of Chris’ bad side being looked down upon the author hypes it up as being ‘desirable, even sexy’! At one point in the story Chris threatens a random person saying he would break his hand for attempting to come in between him and his boo thang Robyn. When he tries to warn her to leave him he says, “I’m fucked up. Really fucked up.” J. Lola has Robyn respond with, “I’m fucked up too. Lets be fucked up together!”

I have read a lot of b.s. in my 34 years and this is right up there with the worst. What popped up in this person’s head that made them think it was peachy to profit off of someone’s abusive relationship?! And aren’t they afraid of being sued? They wasn’t even trying to hide their true identity in the book. This is down right ridiculous. I may not care too much for Chris’ antics a.k.a. nine levels of foolishness but I don’t agree with profiting off it either! Thoughts? Sound off.

Peace and luv!

Posted from none other than your favorite writer’s favorite writer Ms Talia

Street Lit is Heating Up My Charts Again

To my new readers I started out writing street lit before it hit the stores and before I knew what it really was. It was what I saw in my own neighborhood. Then life happened and I stopped writing altogether. Once I started my passion again I began to read it again I had a huge wake up call. Street lit had become garbage. Bad repetition, cliches, terrible editing and so on laced these so called street lit books and I denounced street lit out of my life and challenged myself to write other genres which I enjoy by the way. I didn’t even want to touch a book. As a writer I didn’t understand how in the hell these books were coming out, it was making us real writers look bad as hell. Something changed. I started reading street lit again because I saw so many people talk about it and I was back hooked again. I have been even motivated enough to wanna write a street lit novel again. I’ve been having a concept in my head for the last two weeks and I am thinking about writing it during next month’s NaNoWriMo event. I have to first finish Dear Daddy. I will let you know the details later but a bish is geeked up about this. Have you read any street lit lately? Holla at me if you have so I can check it out. Peace and luv!

Posted from none other than your favorite writer’s favorite writer Ms Talia

A Different Surprise in the Kid’s Happy Meals

“Daddy where is the toy?” Giselle asked her daddy.

“That is the surprise,” her daddy responded enthusiastically.

“A book?”

“Yeah. That could be our bedtime story for tonight.”

“Cool.” Giselle puts the book next to her as she eats her Happy Meal.

That could have went a whole other direction such as the kid could have thrown a serious ass hissy fit because she did not get a toy. Why would there be a book in a happy meal anyway? November Mcdonalds will be replacing their ususual toys for books in a two week trial. The books will be about active play and nutrition. This comes after fast food chains getting flack for allowing athletes to promote eating at their restaurants.
My opinion?

I’m always down for kids and reading. Our literacy issue here is embarrassing. Think about this, kids in the inner city are more exposed to fast food joints because it is cheap also inner city kids are more likely to have lower test and reading scores in school. Get what I’m saying? Any opportunity to get a book into their hands is fine with me. Of course there will be some kids that will fuss their spoiled asses off because they want a toy not a book but they will be alright. I will say this though I don’t believe they are doing this because they care but more because of the bad complaints they are getting from parents. Your thoughts?

Peace and luv!

Posted from none other than your favorite writer’s favorite writer Ms Talia

Pacemaker

Let me tell you a little secret. Don’t tell anyone alright? Ok. I have a slight problem with deadlines. Take for instance this novel I am writing, I want so bad to have it finished and published by December. Well my ass haven’t finished the first draft yet. Now I’ve learned my lesson with my first novel that I published a few years ago not to rush a product just to say I am an official author so that is why I’m taking my time to give you a great product however it’s still taking me a minute to finish this great story. I read this website who is offering a free way to stay on your writing grind. It’s called Pacemaker and I checked it out and it is something you should check it yourself. It’s simple, just fill out your word count goal, when you want it done and you’re basically done. How hard is that? You will have something to motivate you to write daily. NaNoWriMo is coming up so you will need all the help you can get. Visit http://pacemaker.sewillia.com to get started.

Peace and luv! 

Posted from none other than your favorite writer’s favorite writer Ms Talia

Don’t Get Rusty at Writing

It’s easy to make an excuse not to write: my kids are working my nerves, too tired, too many other ish to do, no motivation, not good enough, I could go on but you get the idea.

Contrary to popular believe getting back into writing isn’t necessarily as easy as getting on a bike you haven’t rode in years and feeling like you never took a break. The ideas may not disappear but the technicality of it will. It’s frustrating when you are working on a novel and pause writing for a day, or two, or five then try to hop back up in it and you are not feeling it on any level. How can you prevent that from happening? Here are three suggestions that are the best to prevent a situation like this:

Always write no matter how silly it sounds. This means every day. Even if it’s for 5 minutes while you’re on the toilet, (ay you gotta do what you gotta do!) write. And don’t worry if it doesn’t sound perfect, it’s just a way to keep your juices flowing consistently. You never know what might come out of that crazy mind of yours.

Write when you don’t feel like it. I still have problems with this. Sometimes my kids work my last nerves so I don’t write. I regret it in the morning trust me. That’s a missed opportunity to finish whatever project I’m working on. As difficult as it sounds you need to write through those times. The my man just left me time, the my day was too hectic time, the I have no motivation time. Keep that pen always in your hand. Use my mantra, write the pain away.

Read. Read a lot! Reading keeps you motivated and interested in writing. It also prevents you from getting rusty in your writing. In order to get better in writing read other authors, it can improve your own skills and style. You can’t be a great writer without being a great reader.

Take these 3 suggestions and keep them around your work area so you don’t fall out of your passion. Someone once told me that it takes 21 days to make a habit. If you consistently write for 21 days writing will come as easy as brushing your teeth. Does this help?

Peace and luv!

Posted from none other than your favorite writer’s favorite writer Ms Talia