Category: writing
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Amplifying the Power of Your Personal Stories: Developing Your Sociological Imagination
Every story is a chance to connect the personal and the public. While our writing often serves personal needs it can also speak to a public agenda. Every story offers an opportunity to move people, to help them empathize with others, and to solve problems.
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Looking Ahead, Looking Behind
I’m not a spiritual person and I don’t know anything about mystical synchronicities. Regardless, knowing my family connections to August 13, and knowing that it’s the date of the birth of three unconventional women, I feel even better about launching my book, a story about a complicated and unconventional woman,…
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What Does Writing A Book Have to do with Hating My Body?
The other day I tweeted about something intensely personal: the feelings of body dysmorphia I’ve been struggling with over the last year or so. For me what this means is that frequently if I catch a glance at my body in the mirror while getting dressed (I generally try not…
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Can you help me support indie bookstores?
If you’ve been thinking about preordering Bound but haven’t done so yet, let me ask you two questions: Do you have an indie bookstore in your area? If so, please consider asking them to order the book for you instead of ordering it through Amazon*. If you don’t have an…
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The sweet smell of success?
It was the middle of workshop selection weekend for Woodhull’s Sexual Freedom Summit and we were all a little punchy when one of us suggested that a sure sign of success as a writer is when your book is on the top of the bathroom stack. Here’s proof that I’ve…
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3 Things That Make Self-Promotion Hard and 5 Things You Can Do About Them
The thing that makes it hard for me to promote my work is the same thing that makes it hard for me to ask for what I need or want in other situations: a combination of fear, shame, and self-doubt. Specifically, shame around the need itself, fear that it won’t…
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An Introvert Ponders Self-Promotion
One of the first books I read about unconventional sexuality as a young adult was called Exhibitionism for the Shy, by Carol Queen. It was exactly what the title would lead you to expect: an instructional guide to an exciting kind of sexual expression for exactly the kinds of readers…
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Praise and Gratitude
Thomas Mann is credited with saying “a writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people,” and I think there’s truth in that. I think that writers are also people who feel compelled to write, whether it’s difficult or not. We are also people…
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Comedy of Errors
Yesterday I finished writing, proofreading, and scheduling my first newsletter of the new year. I was pretty happy with it, and one of the things that excited me most about it was that I was going to share the first chapter of my memoir with readers. That first chapter has…
Elizabeth Anne Wood, Ph.D. 