writing

Vive Les Conteurs

Photo by Amy Dobelstein

“Qualified.” Megan Beam is not a fan of this word, especially when it’s used to ask questions such as: “What qualifies me to write what I’m writing?” or “What qualifies you to tell anyone else how to write what they’re writing?” or “How does my work qualify for publishing?” When Beam started her Birmingham–based writing workshop series Vive Les Conteurs in January one of her goals was to strip this word of its value.

“I think that there is this sort of romance around creativity that you can’t really approach it unless you’ve been born with some sort of sparkle,” Beam says. “And I’m not saying that that doesn’t exist but I think that creativity in whatever form it is can save people’s lives and give them a reason to get up in the morning and make sense of the chaos.”

Beam says her primary goal with Vive Les Conteurs is simply to give people a safe space to write so they can finally feel like writers.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Beam for my latest column for B-Metro magazine. Read the complete story here.

 

She Who Writes Teaches

I have a coffee mug that reads “Teacher by day, Blogger by night” and that’s a pretty accurate description of who I am and what I do. By day I teach English at a local school for kids gifted in the arts and sciences.  By night I blog about writing, wellness, and women’s empowerment, I run See Jane Write, and I freelance for a number of local and national media outlets.

For years I worked to keep these two worlds of mine — writer and teacher — separate. I never talked about my blog at work and since I often shared my blog posts via social media, I never accepted Facebook friend requests from students and I kept my Twitter account locked so I could control who followed me. But then one day a student came up to my desk and said to me the words I never wanted to hear: “Mrs. Bowser, you know I read your blog.”

I wanted to hide under my desk.

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Write Like a Boss Series: Find Your Tribe and Love Them Hard

I have a confession: I started See Jane Write for selfish reasons.

In 2009 I left my job as a newspaper reporter in Louisville, Kentucky and returned to my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama to teach English at a local high school for kids gifted in the fine arts and math and science. Though I was fond of my new colleagues I missed the group of female writers I was surrounded by in my newsroom.

I searched for a women’s writing group that would welcome poets, authors, journalists, and bloggers – all hats I’d worn at one point in my writing life – but I couldn’t find one. So I decided to start an organization of my own.

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Write Like a Boss Series: 7 Ways to Make Money as a Writer

I think I was in the 5th grade when I first declared I was going to be a writer when I grew up. I had been writing really bad poetry since I was about 7 or 8 and in 5th grade I started reading the work of Maya Angelou. And so I decided I would one day be a famous poet like her.

This little girl always knew she’d grow up to be a writer.

As I got older the type of writing I did changed, but my love for writing never did. And as I got older I started asking myself a question that 5th grade Javacia didn’t think much about — How will I make money as a writer? This is probably a question you’ve been asking yourself, too. And this is a question I want to help you answer in part four of the Write Like a Boss series. (Be sure to read part 1, part 2, and part 3, if you haven’t already.)

Let’s discuss seven different ways you can make money with your writing skills.

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