Ksenia Anske's Blog, page 23

Submitting your writing to publications and GETTING PUBLISHED

Illustration by Mrzyk & Moriceau

"You should write a reportage," my writing mentor said. "When you go to Russia, talk to people. Ask them what they think about Trump. Everyone wants to know." So I did. And it resulted in my story getting published on Vox under the title of "My conversations with Russians about Donald Trump."

Many of you have asked me to write about the submission process: "How did you do it? How did you pitch this? How did you make it happen?"

First of all, I didn't make it...

The silence of immigrant women

Illustration by Haejung Lee

He said he was a cowboy. He assured me that he listened to what ladies told him, because ladies were smarter than him. Always. He looked about 58, and he sat on the table in the post office because his hip needed to be replaced and he could barely walk. He told the whole post office about it. He was in front of me in line. I told him to keep sitting there until it was his turn, and that I'd wait for him to get up and get to the clerk. He appreciated that. He sai...

How to develop a freelancing career with the power of the internet

Illustration by Mariana, a miserável

Maximilian wrote: "I've read many of your blog posts with great interest and do admire your discipline and passion for the craft. I especially am interested in how you find clients for various writing projects. It's clear to me that people who call themselves writers are as abundant as sand on a beach. It's hard to stand out. This year I really want to earn some coin with my writing, not necessarily with my as-yet unfinished novel, but with helping othe...

8 things I learned from reading The Silence of the Lambs

Art by CreativeSpark

Ken Wallo asked me to write a post on what I have learned from reading The Silence of the Lambs. There are a ton of things, and I'll try to summarize them all here, but I didn't just learn them from reading The Silence of the Lambs, but also from reading The Story Grid that dissects it in detail (I highly recommend you read it and see for yourself). Let's get this party started.  

1. Introduce all your main characters in the first chapter.

It's a good idea to cram them a...

Sleep Well, Papa. A TUBE realm story.

Illustration by Vanna Bowles

Remember I told you I wrote this short story but couldn't share it with you until it was published? Well, it was published a few days ago on Wattpad (as part of a Dreams contest thingy), so now I can post it here, as promised. It was the first short story I wrote that I plotted extensively, according to my own formula (it's now written out in my Scrivener template, very convenient), and it was a breeze to write it, knowing where I wanted it to end. I think plot...

Russian women and their stories. Part 2.

Illustration by Raquel Aparicio

Generations of women in Russia live in a much closer proximity as compared to women in America. Grandmothers share apartments with mothers and daughters, and often granddaughters. I grew up in a typical household where in a three-room apartment lived my great grandmother, my grandmother, my mother, my aunt, my sister, and later my cousin. There were also four dogs (the number varied), cats, rats, and cockroaches. Though cockroaches weren't pets. Rather, they...

Russian women and their stories. Part 1.

Image source

There are so many—so many women I've met, so many stories I've heard—and so many warnings I was given, warnings that came down to the same fear, "I don't want my family to know. I don't want my relatives to hear what I think. I don't want my friends to jeer at me, get disappointed in me, point fingers at me. I don't want any trouble." And yet all of them were talking to me, for hours, often stumbling over words, unable to stop. They all wanted to share. They wanted their stori...

ROSEHEAD will be translated into Russian! And other news.

Photo by Vera Golosova

It has happened. Magic. Because I have met wonderful Vera Golosova on Twitter, and because Vera offered to host me while I'm in Moscow, and because Vera has wonderful friends, and because one of her friends is wonderful Sasha Zhuravleva, and because Sasha has been translating from English into Russian for years, and so it happened that over sitting together on a couch and sharing stories we have agreed to jump into bed together and do this. Sasha will translate Roseh...

Today I went through hell. And I won.

Illustration by Charles Keeping

It started out innocent enough. I was on my way to visit my cousins, whom for easy identification I shall call sister Olga (she is like a sister to me) and brother Kirill (we spent a lot of time together as kids, growing up, and I always considered him a brother). I was excited. I haven't seen them for three years. And I was also worried. I dreaded the talk to turn to my father, and them avoiding it, as since I confronted my father about sexually abusing me...

I'm so tired of being afraid

Illustration by Mrzyk & Moriceau

I need to make a stand, but I don't know how. I have allowed one of my followers on Ello troll a woman, an amazing artist, whose post I have reposted to support her—a picture of her standing astride a motorcycle with a sign that read: IF YOU GRAB MY PUSSY, I WILL RIP OFF YOUR DICK. I have reposted it because I often told men face to face I will do exactly that if they tried putting their hands on me. I told it half-jokingly and half-seriously, that exact li...