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April 26, 2013 | Blog |  No comments

Literary Mama Rewind: Finding One’s Voice

By Amanda Jaros

Welcome to Literary Mama Rewind!  Every few weeks we’ll round up some of our favorite essays, stories, poems, columns, and reviews from the Literary Mama Archives relating to a particular theme.  This week we’re remembering how to find our voice. All you have to do is click and read….

  • Out of the Woods: Or How I Found My Muse at Walden Pond by Lizbeth Finn-Arnold in Literary Reflections

Once upon a time, I imagined myself staying at home with my babies and writing in my spare time. However, I quickly discovered that motherhood is not conducive to the solitary life of a writer. Babies and small children pretty much eradicate any possibility of solitude.

  • Voice: A Study in the Writer’s Art by Hilary Meyerson in Literary Reflections

The night before my daughter started kindergarten, I had a nightmare, not about playground bullies, unsympathetic teachers, or empty nest syndrome. It was the day before her first day of school, and I had just discovered that I was nine months pregnant with a third child. Not just pregnant, but in labor. In typical dream-reality, I had missed the pregnancy signs until labor was imminent.

  • Emerging from the Pages by Christina Marie Speed in Literary Reflections

With the exception of the reading test in front of me, years of plots and stories and characters exist in my brain as textured landscapes, lush with nuance and detail. But up to this point, my reading comprehension has only been tested on exams. In Mrs. Ridgley’s icy shadow, however, I stammer and paw for answers that won’t come.

  • Mamas Writing Motherhood: A Conversation on New and Best Books on Craft by Katherine J. Barrett in Reviews

So many of our avid readers at Literary Mama are also creative, inspired writers. But how, exactly, do busy mother-writers maintain focus when life spins from school concerts to composing exquisite prose? How do you define productivity when the kids, the dinner and the editor need you now? How do you enjoy and cherish both nursing and copyediting — at the same time?

Books on craft can help.

  • Finding Yourselves: A Review of Black Milk by Jessica Devoe Riley in Reviews

Remember your childhood dreams? Imagine achieving them. You dreamed of traveling, now you travel. You dreamed of being an artist, you’ve found success. You have the life you want, and then… it happens. A feeling grows, a desire, a longing. You ignore it at first, but the feeling demands your attention. It won’t go away. In fact, it’s been residing inside you all along, waiting to whisper those magic words: “I want a baby.”

  • My Word by John Vanderslice in Fiction

“I’m going to take this now,” the man said, standing in front of his refrigerator, door open, one hand inside.

“All right,” the boy said, “but if you do that, I will remember It 25 years from now, and in a white-blonde classroom littered with molded plastic desks and ten tired students I will write it down to be exposed and thought about.”

  • Attic City and Points South by Joan Pedzich in Fiction

My mother sent me an envelope with her picture in it, so I’d recognize her at the Port Authority bus terminal. On the back of the photograph she wrote, “Dear Karlee, this is me, but I’ll be blond by then, Your Mom, Kimmie Kirkland.” That was no lie. Like a headlight.

  • More Thursdays by Ona Gritz from the Column “Doing it Differently”

Eight hours a day to give to my writing. Before long I was addicted and then it was over. “I need to reshape my writing life,” I told Dan on the way home.

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