Holly Walrath's Blog, page 14
January 18, 2020
Instapoems from My New Chapbook

Read the full article here . . .
Published on January 18, 2020 22:00
January 15, 2020
On the Loss of Cursive

Read the full article at Coffeelicious . . .
Published on January 15, 2020 11:56
December 26, 2019
What I Published This Year

Most of my time was spent working on two novels-in-progress. But I did manage to send out some poems for publication too. I’m very honored by the editors who recognized and published my work. Here’s to 2020 and another year of writing.
Books
Glimmerglass Girl — Won the Elgin Award for best speculative chapbook
Numinous Stones — To be published in Italian in 2020 by Kipple Press
Poems
The 2019 Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association Contest, Winner: Short Form Category: The Fox and the Forest (Erasure of Ray Bradbury)
The 2019 Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association Contest, Winner: Long Form Category: The Mining Town
Apparition Lit #8 (October 2019) — Belly of the Beast
Mirror Dance Issue 44 (Spring 2019) — Farewell Dead Men
Not One of Us #61 (April 2019) — A Book Is a Tomb and Words Are Souls
The Avenue: Issue V: Music (April 2019) — Chopin Falls in Love with the Night (1827–1846)
The Knicknackery Issue 6 (February 2019) — Bayou Dream
Dreams & Nightmares Magazine (Issue #111, January 2019) — An Unknowing Breach of the Law
Kaleidotrope (Winter 2019) — “All the Glory of Her Earthly Shell”
On Writing:
Medium (12/18/19) — My NaNoWriMo Was a Mess
Writing Hacks (11/27/19) — Tricking Yourself into Writing
Bulletproof Writers (11/28/19) — The End of the Year Sometimes Sucks for Creatives
Storymaker (11/25/19) — Reluctantly Writing About Death
Interstellar Flight Press (11/15/19) — Defying Genre in The Dream House
Daily Muse Books (10/24/19) — NaNoWriMo Isn’t Just for Books
Medium (10/15/19) — Does Publishing Short Stories Matter?
Medium (9/4/19) — The Writing Life: An Infographic
Medium (8/28/19) — 40 Writing Milestones to Celebrate
Medium (8/21/19) — Queries, Contributors, and Common Terms: An A-Z glossary for submitting writing
Horror Writer’s Association Newsletter (7/1/19) — Darkness & Light
Medium (5/16/19) — Fighting Rejection & Imposter Syndrome
Medium (5/3/19) — Switching Genres
Medium (4/3/19) — Creating a Writer’s Mission Statement
Medium (3/27/19) — NaPoWriMo: A Poet’s Challenge
Dream Foundry (3/14/19) — The Cone of Silence
Medium (3/11/19) — These are a Few of My Favorite Rejections
Medium (1/31/19) — Forming a Critique Group 101
Published on December 26, 2019 12:09
December 18, 2019
New Medium post: My NaNoWriMo was a Mess

I’m trying to abolish this idea from my creative life. The idea of perfection.
Read the full article here . . .
Published on December 18, 2019 08:13
December 1, 2019
December NaNoWriMo Special

I'm offering $150 manuscript reviews in the month of December only for NaNoWriMo participants. Here's what you get: A 1-3 page letter with developmental feedback on your book focusing on big-picture stuff: characters arc, story/plot arc, general writing style, and pacing.Need help figuring out where to start in revision? I'll point to areas of the manuscript that need the most attention first. Want to submit your book to an agent in the future? I'll provide specific tips for how to gear the first three chapters of your book to an agent.
The normal cost for this kind of consultation is upwards of $500-1,000, so this is an utterly mad deal (and I sometimes feel utterly mad for offering it!)
Finishing NaNoWriMo can feel really like a letdown sometimes. It's like the day after Christmas. But getting a second set of eyes on your manuscript can help you approach revision.
How To Sign Up:
To sign up, send me an email to hlwalrath (at) gmail (dot) com in the month of December with the following: A copy of your manuscript, 50,000 words or lessYour Paypal email for payment (or Venmo/other payment system) Any specific issues or questions you have
About Me
I am a freelance editor with 5+ years of experience helping writers level up their words. I am based out of Houston, Texas. I am a member of the Editorial Freelancers Association, Codex, SFPA, and Writespace, a local literary non-profit where I regularly teach writing workshops. I love working with writers of all genres, experiences, and backgrounds, but I love new writers best. I have won NaNoWriMo once(!) but I always participate because it's my favorite writing event of the year.
Published on December 01, 2019 07:59
November 27, 2019
The End of the Year Sometimes Sucks for Creatives

A lot of writers use this time to celebrate the works they’ve published over the year and encourage others to nominate them for best of lists and prize consideration, like the Pushcart Prize or Hugo Awards. Journal editors on the literary side announce their nominations for the Pushcart around this time. 2019 is also the end of a decade, so now people are also posting encouraging writers to share what they accomplished in the last decade. We’re sharing pics of ourselves in 2009 and 2019 to show the passage of time.
But I know that a lot of creatives struggle with all this.
Read the whole post here . . .
Published on November 27, 2019 22:00
November 26, 2019
Tricking Yourself into Writing

John Hendrix, an artist, recently posted a quote from Tolkien’s diary while he was writing Lord of the Rings. It reads:
Friday 14 April: ‘I managed to get an hour or two’s writing, and have brought Frodo nearly to the gates of Mordor. Afternoon lawn-mowing. Term begins next week, and proofs of Wales papers have come. Still I am going to continue “Ring” in every salvable moment.’
Read more here . . .
Published on November 26, 2019 22:00
Reluctantly Writing About Death

A year and a few months ago, my father died. Today, I signed a contract for a small poetry book on grief and dealing with my father’s death that is going to be translated into Italian and published in Italy. The world spins in weird ways, I guess.
Before my father died, I always looked on books about the death of a loved one in, I’ll admit, a pretty messed up and slightly dismissive way. I hated cancer memoirs, books that dived headfirst into the nitty-gritty details of death: bodies and hospitals and medicine and the grotesque humanity of grief. Also, there was a connotation with these books. When they were written by women about caring for loved ones, they often got lumped into women’s fiction, whereas a man writing about grief was somehow reinventing the wheel.
Read the full article on Medium . . .
Published on November 26, 2019 17:18
November 14, 2019
New Poem Up at Space Cowboy Books Podcast: Confessions of a Supermassive Black Hole

You can’t escape my body.
I deform spacetime, invisible.
I collapse, even as everything surrounds me.
I am the center of you, of your galaxy.
I sieve particles, radiation, light,
searching for the ghost of my former self.
My gravity is also my weakness.
Published on November 14, 2019 22:00
October 31, 2019
New post for Curious Fiction Subscribers: Handmade Rebellion: Dispatches from Zine Fest Houston and Women’s Radicalism

Read the entire post here . . .
Published on October 31, 2019 10:26