“We knew what we had to do. We had planned it out at home. We had set our alarm and woken up earlier than I usually did for school. We arrived at the store before their doors were open, when the streets of Los Angeles weren’t yet busy with cars. We reviewed our game plan while waiting in line, noticing that with every minute, more shoppers joined the line. As soon as the doors opened, we planned to split up (I was faster back then) and would meet in the men’s department.”
The paragraph above is an excerpt from my recently published personal essay, “A Couple of Girls on a Mission.”
The essay tells a story I have never written about; it’s a tender memory from many years ago. And I’m so pleased to share that it has been included in the November issue of Sasee Magazine. You can click here to read the article in its entirety.
Dear readers, do you have any Black Friday stories to share? Feel free to share in the comments. I always read my comments and reply to each one.
My blog readers know that each week I write about one of three Bs in my life — Books, Boys, and Bodies.
Books because a writer is also a reader, and I love having the opportunity to highlight an author and their book.
Boys because I’m the mother of a son. (I’m also a former teacher and sometimes write about my students.)
Bodies because I am chronically ill and live with an invisible disability.
This week, the topic of my blog post is publication news. But not just any publication news. Publication news about something I don’t write about much — my religion.
However, I’m proud to share that my personal essay, “Family, Faith, Fear: Navigating the world as a mixed family,” has recently been published on the On Being Jewish Now Substack.
I’m proud of this piece. And I’m proud of being brave enough to write about a different aspect of my life and my family’s life. You can read the essay in its entirety by clicking here.
As always my dear readers, I thank you for your support each week.
My reusable coffee tumbler is decorated with stickers designed by Katherine Center.
I am in the middle of a three-month online program called The Creative Shift Mastermind with Dan Blank. (I have taken several webinars with Dan and always come away having learned something new to apply to my writing and how I share my writing.)
Each week throughout The Mastermind, we focus on a different aspect of our creative life. Recently, our activities centered on our “Creative Identity.”
Taken from our syllabus:
“Define Your Creative Identity. Have confidence in your creative identity, and know how to talk about what you create and why. The result of this is your ability to share more frequently and authentically, and greater ability to engage others.”
During one of my daily five-minute writing exercises, I wrote a series of “I believe…” statements that all had something to do with what I write, why I write, and why I share what I write.
My dear readers, you are an important part of my writing. Therefore, for this week’s blog post, I would like to share my “I believe” statements with you. Thank you for your support and being with me on my writing journey.
I believe… (as it pertains to my writing):
I believe everyone is walking around with pain of some sort.
I believe everyone has scars, whether we can see them or not.
I believe writing is another way of teaching.
I believe writing is one way to help make the invisible visible.
I believe chronic illness can be lonely and isolating.
I believe writing is one way to find connection with others who “get it.”
I believe writing is a way to share our stories and our hearts and realize that we’re not alone.
I believe my story is worthy of sharing.
I believe I continue to teach through my writing.
I believe I have much to learn and writing helps me make sense of things.
I believe one way I sort things out, one way I figure out how I feel about things is by writing about it.
I believe my book is a book I would have loved to read when I first became ill.
I believe I don’t talk about my writing enough.
I believe kindness and compassion and patience are so very important.
My husband and I have shared a lot in our almost twenty-six years of marriage.
Music has always been a part of our life together — whether in the car, or in the kitchen, or in the form of a family “Thriller” dance in our living room. We’ve seen Sade at the Hollywood Bowl and Prince at the arena formerly known as the Staples Center.
But we’ve never had just one song that was ours.
Though, there is one song that served as writing inspiration.
The title of my essay was inspired by Neil Diamond’s “Forever in Blue Jeans.”
My husband and I have never been super fancy people; mainly because for years, we couldn’t afford to be super fancy. Like we tell our son, the “what” you eat or the “where” you eat should never matter as much as the “who” you are eating with.
And with Valentine’s Day just a few days away, it felt like the perfect time to highlight this charming little book. (It’s a short book, just under 60 pages.)
Wishing you all a sweet Valentine’s Day!
Please note: I am including a link to buy the book that I’m highlighting this week. If you use my link, I do make a small commission on your purchase at no additional cost to you. I am working with Bookshop.org which also sends a portion of the profit to support local, independent bookstores.
Twenty years ago this month, I earned my first byline.
And not just any byline, but a byline in the Los Angeles Times.
It all felt so easy. I wrote a personal essay. I submitted it to the Times. They published it soon after.
The publication happened not too long after I had taken a weekend course about writing the personal essay through the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.
That class was the first of many I would take in the Writers’ Program. I got incredibly lucky, because Barbara Abercrombie was the instructor for that class. (If you’ve read my blog for a while, you know I have written about Barbara and credit her with helping me find my way as a writer. You can click here to read the tribute post I wrote after learning of Barbara’s death.)
Since that first publication, I have learned that writing and publishing aren’t often that easy. In reality, I may have to submit a piece to several different websites and/or print journals, before it finds a home. Sometimes I don’t find a home for a particular essay, and I have to put it away for a bit and move on with writing something new.
Now twenty years later, I am having a whole new writing experience. While I continue to write for MomsLA.com, and write these weekly blog posts, and write personal essays to answer a variety of submission calls for both print and online publications, I am also querying literary agents.
Querying requires a whole different type of focus and time commitment. After all, I am searching for the person who will not only be an advocate for my memoir, but also an advocate and supporter for my writing career.
So far, I have queried 58 agents.
So far, I have received 15 rejections — which does not include those agents who state on their website something along the lines of, “If you haven’t heard from us in 10-12 weeks, consider it a pass.”
It’s just a part of the process. Because it really doesn’t matter how many no’s I receive.
“I am no longer an educator, and haven’t been a kindergarten teacher in many years. For the last seven years of my career I taught fourth and fifth graders. I no longer think of perseverance in quite the same way as I once did. However, more than ever, I feel like my daily life requires a lot of perseverance. I’m not relying on perseverance because I’m learning a new skill or am faced with one specific event that requires more ‘stick-to-it-ness.’ It is not at all like the period of time when my eighteen-year-old self was learning to drive a stick shift — without popping the clutch or grinding the gears or stalling and having the line of cars behind me start honking when I didn’t immediately get going on a green light. Back then, each practice session ended with me in tears. I remember looking over at my mom in the passenger seat, telling her it was hopeless and we should just stop now, because I would never master driving a stick shift. I was convinced there was something fundamentally wrong with me, since my parents could drive a manual transmission, and I obviously couldn’t. My mom patiently reminded me that driving a stick shift wasn’t easy, and I would definitely learn how, if I kept at it. It was a skill which required time and patience and lots of practice. Perseverance. She was right, as moms tend to be. “But that was then.”
This excerpt was taken from my recently published personal essay, Stick-To-It-Ness, which has to do with daily perseverance as it pertains to living with a chronic illness. However, a high level of stick-to-it-ness is also required when you’re writing for publication. This personal essay was rejected by two other online literary journals before finding a home at Wishbone Words, Issue 13.
You can click here to find out more information about Wishbone Words.
I am pleased to share more publication news with you!
My personal essay, Flowering, has been included in the Gardening Zine produced by Coin-Operated Press.
Here’s a snippet:
“Gardening is a part of who I am. The person who will always save the slices of avocado in a salad to eat after the rest of the salad, believing the best part has been saved for last. The person who will always describe a body lotion in terms of a “flavor” rather than a “scent.” The person who will yell at Rosemary Clooney’s Betty in White Christmas, urging her to talk to Bob, before she leaves Vermont for New York. “I don’t know where my love of plants and flowers came from. Growing up, flowers were only in our house when my dad bought them for my mom on special occasions. Small houseplants died off, one-by-one, and were replaced with artificial flowers. Maybe this love I have for gardens is a result of the years I spent working in a high-end flower shop during my last year of high school and first few years of college. Or maybe there is no explaining it, and I can enjoy gardening without figuring out how it all started.”
Click here to be re-directed to Coin-Operated Press where you can purchase a copy of the Zine.
Back in January, I wrote about my word for 2024: Share.
(If you missed it, you can click here to read the post.)
And so far, I have done quite a lot of sharing — here on this weekly blog, on Instagram where I mostly share about books and my writing-related life, and in the personal essays which have been published in anthologies and journals, both in print and online.
This week, I am pleased to share my personal essay, There is No Magic Wand, has been published by Yoocan Do Anything.
Here is a snippet:
“I would stop by CVS on my way home and pick up the prescriptions my doctor had called in. I felt confident these new pills would fix the problem because that’s what medication had always done up until that point in my life. “I could not have known that when it comes to a chronic illness, such as my autoimmune disease, there is no such thing as ‘fixing the problem.’ There was no pretend magic wand I could wave and make things all better, like I did with my then-three-year-old son when he bumped into a corner of the coffee table. No one could kiss my left calf and make the hurt be ‘all-gone,’ like a Mommy’s kisses often do for their little ones.”
“In the beginning, it was easier to describe the pain. Because the pain was new. Because the pain was concentrated in my left calf. And, most importantly, because I truly believed the pain was temporary.”
The paragraph above is taken from my personal essay, “It Feels Like…” And I am so proud to share that my essay has been published in The Mersey Review, Issue 2.
I have never had so many personal essays published one-after-the-other, like I have recently. (Five of my personal essays have been published between January 2024 and March 2024! My Published Work page has a complete listing.)
And you can click here to be taken directly to my essay.
Also, be sure to read all the way to the bottom. After my bio, you’ll come to a statement that says: “You can read Wendy Kennar’s Few Words here.” Click on the link and you’ll be taken to another page which includes my answers to a few questions the editor asked me about the writing process. Plus, I answer that “eternal question” — hardback or paperback?
Dear Readers, feel free to share your preference in the comments: hardcover or paperback?
Photo credit: Shanti Arts, Still Point Arts Quarterly
My dear readers,
Something has happened that I don’t think has ever happened to me before. For the third consecutive week, I have publication news to share! (In case you missed it, you can read about week one here and last week’s news here.)
This week I’m proud to share my personal essay, “Mochas and Me,” has been included in the Spring 2024 issue of Still Point Arts Quarterly. The issue’s theme is “Coffee, Tea, Cocoa.” You can click here to access the entire issue online or click here to be taken directly to my essay.
By the way, do you have a favorite coffee, tea, or cocoa beverage? Let me know in the comments!
WendyKennar.com 