Kern Carter's Blog, page 118
June 14, 2021
June 12, 2021
Relationships and Let Downs — What You’ve Missed on CRY
We call this newsletter SCREAM because sometimes you just need to let it out. That’s what writing and creating are all about and at CRY, we encourage you to let loose and share your emotions about the creative process.
This week, we’ve had some gems. Shirley Jones writes about her success journey and how that connects to the relationship she shares with her mother.
In his piece The Relationship Between Music and Writing, A.X. Bates compares one art to the next and shows the power in them both.
Speaking of power, in what is probably the most moving piece on CRY this month, Kandice Confer says, I’m Bisexual and Coming Out Has Made Me Feel Free. The levity in this piece is what stands out, as Kandice makes this moment feel liberating instead of challenging, even though she must’ve gone through a myriad of complex emotions.
What else is happeningThere’s a virtual event happening tomorrow (Sunday). It’s called Stories From Love & Literature and two authors will be in conversation about their recent short stories.
RSVP here for free.
The event goes from 3:00 pm — 4:00 pm EST.
Look out for more pieces this week. We have submissions in our inbox that we can’t wait to share.
Till next time.
Relationships and Let Downs — What You’ve Missed on CRY was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
June 8, 2021
Your Chance to Collaborate With Professional Authors
CRY has partnered with Toronto Writers Collective (TWC) to share this incredible opportunity for emerging writers. TWC’s mission is to inspire and empower the unheard through writing and they’ve done just that for a countless number of writers.
Please read below and apply if you’re interested. You DO NOT need to be from Toronto to participate.
Do you have a story to tell? The Toronto Writers Collective is offering the opportunity to celebrate and amplify powerful voices in collaboration with 8 professional authors. Your voice, your stories.
Between July and September, emerging authors will create new works that explore the themes of: Hope, Courage and Survival. Selected pieces will be published in a new Front Lines anthology. Through writing together and listening to others, writers discover and cultivate their voices, inspire others with their stories, and celebrate the diversity within their communities.
The deadline to apply is June 15 at 5 p.m.
More about the Write On! Program
The Toronto Writers Collective has published three anthologies in its Front Lines series. Over 50 emerging authors have been given the opportunity to work with professional authors to develop craft and have their voices heard.
As a Community Arts Development program, Write On! III encourages the artistic development and personal growth of the writer/participants. By working with professional artists, the emerging authors will learn new skills, improve literacy, explore different genres, and have their work published and presented. By creating a community inclusive of race, ethnicity, class, age, gender, sexual orientation, neurodiversity and physical ability, the TWC’s Write On! III Program celebrates creativity, expression, and voice.
The 2021 Write On! III Program will use the TWC method to create new material. The 10-week mentorship will give 6–8 writers in each group the opportunity to develop and hone their writing skills and submit edited material for publication. Applicants will be selected based on their submitted material and included in a group based on their availability to work with the mentors.
Each workshop will be one and a half hours long with additional consultation possible by mutual agreement. The day and time of the workshops may be adjusted based on the mentor’s and participant writers’ availability. Poetry, fiction, biography, memoir and lyrics are genres that have been previously published.
Result of the writing: What to expect
Each emerging author can submit up to six pages of edited material: 1,750 words for fiction, biography, or memoir. A 50-word biography will accompany the finished material. Final editing and assembly will occur during the months of September and October.
Your Chance to Collaborate With Professional Authors was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Success is a Journey
Image by Andrae RickettsMy definition of success is a home without roaches. My children haven’t had to grow up finding roaches in their cereal, crawling across a wall, or invading their beds while they slept. Success is having a refrigerator full of food and not a single roach on the shelves. Success is being able to provide my children with as little insect trauma as possible.
I grew up in a home where trauma was a roommate. Besides the roaches and occasional mice, there were the mean neighbors, the creepy landlords, and the daily abuse from my father. I’d rather deal with the roaches and mice. A quiet home was a blessing. Father was a monster of a man that demanded absolute obedience. My family and I cherished the days, weeks, and sometimes months when he wasn't around.
My mother’s definition of success was being able to get through the day with as little drama as possible. Mother worked for the Boston Public Schools as a cafeteria worker. It was a great job for her because she was able to feed the neighborhood children and bring home leftovers for my brother and me. It was a good day when you came home from school and found a refrigerator full of plastic-wrapped food trays.
Mother’s other definition of success was ensuring that her children did well in school. That meant my brother and I were at school every day and had to be at death’s door in order to stay home. Not only did we attend school on a regular basis, but we needed to do well in our classes. I excelled in school, bringing home A’s and B’s. My brother was more of a C-average student.
Since I was the oldest, our mother placed the most pressure on me to do well academically. The future of our family was on my shoulders. Since I liked school, I didn’t mind meeting my mother’s high expectations. My brother was a different story. As he grew older, he would often get into fights, skip school, and argue with our mother about his grades. My mother loved us dearly, but it soon became apparent that I was her definition of success.
And I didn’t let my mother down. I was the first in our family to leave our roach-infested home and go off to college. Eventually, I received my undergraduate degree from Suffolk University. With the help of tuition reimbursement from my first job, I was able to go on and receive a Master's degree from Emerson College. Years later, I’m at the last stop on my academic journey, exploring schools to pursue a doctorate.
My mother passed away from cancer on June 6, 2017. She was 71 years old. Before cancer, my mother had one of those faces where you couldn’t tell her age. She had smooth brown skin, brown eyes, and specks of gray in her black hair. By the time cancer claimed her life, my mother had aged overnight, losing weight, filling her now ashen face with wrinkles, and covering her entire head with gray hair.
But my mother left this world on her terms, she lived long enough to see my brother and I celebrate our birthdays (I was June 4th and my brother was June 5th). Refusing the doctor’s suggestions for hospice care, our mother passed away in her sleep in the evening. She left this world knowing that she had raised her children to adulthood, cared for her grandson, and left her legacy for us to carry on. That was my mother’s definition of success.
My definition of success is to be the woman my mother wanted me to be. Before she had died, she told me that I would be okay. I was too caught up in my grief to believe her. All I wanted was for her to fight cancer that was killing her. But after her passing, in the years that followed, my mother was right.
As a poet and writer, I have experienced an increasing amount of success. I've attended conferences and workshops. I’ve won awards and have been published in numerous journals. My reputation as a poet has grown in Boston. Recently, I received word that I had been given a poetry fellowship by the Writer’s Room of Boston, a well-known writing organization.
My success will be a tribute to my mother. She believed in my writing ever since I was a young girl. Mother always supported me by buying writing supplies, taking me to the library, and posting my awards from school in our living room. She was always talking to her friends about my writing. I was her success and my definition of success is to continue to make her proud.
Success is a Journey was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
June 7, 2021
Call For Submissions — How Are You Defining Success?
Our theme this month is freedom and we loved all the submissions from our previous writing prompt. It’s incredible how creative you can get and how widely you interpret our requests.
For this week, we want to talk about success. More specifically, how do you define success as a writer?
It’s so easy to scroll through any number of your feeds and see posts about people winning. New book deals, viral posts, new editor positions, newsletters with 10,000+ subscribers—all of that can really mess with your psyche and impact how you view your own journey.
That’s why it’s important to ground yourself with your own goals. So we’re asking, in this era where it’s so easy to compare yourself to others, how are you defining success as a writer? Even if you’re not a writer, how are you defining success in your own life?
Same rules as always:If you’re already a writer for CRY, go ahead and submit.If you’re not a writer for CRY but would like to submit to this request, let us know and we’ll add you ASAP.Be as creative as you want in your submissions. As long as you stick to the topic, we’ll consider it.Just because you submit doesn’t mean we’ll post. If you haven’t heard back from us in three days, consider that a pass.The deadline to submit is Monday, June 14, 2021.Please reach out if you have any questions at all. If you are new to Medium, here’s how you submit a draft to a publication.
Call For Submissions — How Are You Defining Success? was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
June 6, 2021
The Relationship Between Music and Writing
Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash
Music is powerful
— and it is for many reasons.Music can express the massive array of emotions that we experience: happiness, sadness, anger, love, confusion, grief, excitement, numbness…
Music can explore and expand the boundaries of art, conveying different messages: through the use of different compositional techniques, manipulation of musical elements, and even disregarding musical conventions.
Music can accompany and help us through different stages in life: by being motivating and encouraging, or simply by being understanding.
Music can save lives: it can push people through their hardest times, and it can resonate with those who feel most broken inside.
Writing is powerful — and it is for many reasons.Writing can express the massive array of emotions that we experience: happiness, sadness, anger, love, confusion, grief, excitement, numbness…
Writing can explore and expand the boundaries of art, conveying different messages: through the use of different literary techniques, manipulation of language, and even disregarding writing conventions.
Writing can accompany and help us through different stages in life: by giving useful advice that one can apply to their own lives, or by simply sharing the stories of others, fictional or non-fictional, that people can relate to.
Writing can saves lives: it can push people through their hardest times, and it can resonate with those who feel most broken inside.
To the writers out there:I listen to the music I want to listen to, musicians make the music they want to make. I read what I want to read — and writers should write what they want to write.
The pop-singers find their audience by making pop music, the rock bands find their audience by making rock music, the jazz musicians find their audience by making jazz music…
You find your audience by writing what you want to write. If you don’t want to write what is popular, then don’t.
As the safety announcements on airplanes always say, wear your own oxygen mask before you help put it on for others. Write for yourself before you think of writing for others.
You listen to the music you want to listen to, and those who want to read your work will come to you.
The Relationship Between Music and Writing was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
June 4, 2021
Check Out This New Short Story Platform
As CRY continues to find ways to connect and support the creation of powerful stories, we’ve recently started a new platform.
It’s called Love & Literature and our mission is to highlight the real-life stories from voices around the world and connect them to readers who want to be inspired, educated, and entertained.
Love & Literature shares one short story a month, broken down into weekly chapters, from authors we hand-pick. We partner with groups and individuals from every continent to ensure we find writers who are representative of unique cultural, emotional, and lived experiences.
Working this way also allows us to publish experiences that reflect a global narrative and give a voice to those who may feel marginalized.
The stories we’ve currently published are filled with shame, love, hidden truths and joy, and they’re all 100% real.
Subscribing to Love & Literature is free. Each chapter of a story will be delivered to your inbox every Sunday.
Check it out and let us know which stories you connect with the most.
Check Out This New Short Story Platform was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
June 3, 2021
I’m Bisexual, and Coming Out Has Made Me Feel Free
After over a decade of hiding who I am, I’m happy to say I’m bisexual. That’s freeing to me.
I used to want to feel invisible. I’ve always been the weirdo, the outcast, and the shy, quiet one. I’m completely okay with this now. But a lot of myself has felt trapped, and I don’t want to hide who I am anymore.
After over a decade of hiding who I am, I’m happy to say I’m bisexual. Most of me was ashamed and afraid of feeling this way, but now I’m happy to come out. I’m still married and most likely always will be. I’m not interested in pursuing another romantic relationship, just wanting to feel free to be myself authentically.
Thank you to my husband for always loving me and always being the one I want to share my life with as a family. To the girl I kissed senior year of high school, I thank you. And thank you to one of my great friends for being open to first come out to you, and thank you for the courage to help me come out to those I love.
People have said you can’t be bi and be married to a man. Well, that’s a myth, and by hearing other bisexual women’s stories, I’m relieved to be both bisexual and married to a man. Even more so, I’m happy to be with a man who fully accepts my sexuality and one who I couldn’t imagine living this life without.
It’s okay to be black and bisexual. It’s okay to be married to a straight man and be bisexual. Bisexuality is valid, and I’m finally happy to be free to be me. I don’t know why I hesitated and pushed this part of me so far down for so long. Maybe it’s because I was raised in a Christian household and was afraid to be “banished to hell.” Maybe I felt wrong and in turmoil for being attracted to multiple genders. Maybe I wasn’t secure enough to be myself. Now I’m free to let all of that go.
I’m happy to have come out this Pride Month and even happier to have people I love to support and accept me for who I am. I’m a bisexual woman, I’m out, and now I’m truly free.
I’m Bisexual, and Coming Out Has Made Me Feel Free was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
June 1, 2021
May 31, 2021
Call For Submissions — When Do You Feel Your Most Free?
There’s something about summer. Even if you don’t live in a region where the weather symbolizes the shift in season, summer feels like a newfound freedom.
Living in Toronto, Canada, summer is when I’m most active. It’s when the breeze whispers ideas and the sun’s rays seep into my creative soul. I was born in the summer, so my connection to this time of year feels uncanny.
I feel free.
But that’s me and this prompt is all about you. When do you feel your most free? Is there a time of day? A season like me? A space in your home or a place you retreat to?
Let us know.
Same rules as always:If you’re already a writer for CRY, go ahead and submit.If you’re not a writer for CRY but would like to submit to this request, let us know and we’ll add you ASAP.Be as creative as you want in your submissions. As long as you stick to the topic, we’ll consider it.Just because you submit doesn’t mean we’ll post. If you haven’t heard back from us in three days, consider that a pass.The deadline to submit is Monday, June 7, 2021.Please reach out if you have any questions at all. If you are new to Medium, here’s how you submit a draft to a publication.
Call For Submissions — When Do You Feel Your Most Free? was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
