Mothers Always Write

A very quick blog update from me to share a piece that I’ve had published this week.

Mothers Always Write is one of my favourite sites to visit for beautiful poetry and non-fiction about parenting. I did an essay writing bootcamp with them a few years back which was hugely valuable in terms of the resources they provided for background reading and the one-on-one feedback on a piece of work from one of their editors. It was very reasonably priced too – I’d highly recommend it if they run another in future.

The essay of mine that they have published this week – Almost Ready – is about my son’s anticipation of moving from a small school to a bigger one. It’s a gentle little piece, and I hope you enjoy it.

The site is not one that I pitch to regularly, but the editors are always a delight to work with and this essay that I wrote last year felt like a good fit. They don’t pay for all submissions – they choose four ‘feature essays’ each month that receive $25 each – but all other posts and poems are unpaid. I submitted mine not knowing whether it would be a paid essay or not.

Even though I make my living from writing, there are a couple of websites that I love enough to work with for free. I know some writers are very disapproving of that, but I believe it’s an individual choice. It’s usually pretty clear whether a website or publication is a labour of love where the founders and editors are also volunteering their time and energy to keep it running or whether it’s a commercial enterprise that’s making a shedload of money through advertising but not passing that on to writers. Personally I’m okay with the first but not with the second.

(Incidentally the other non-paying site that I love is The Island Review and I received an email from them last week to let me know that they’ve accepted a poem of mine (!!) for publication. I don’t really write a lot of poetry – this particular one was just a bit of fun – but I’ll be excited to share it when it goes up.)

Other than that, I’ve spent the last two months absolutely buried in a major copywriting project. I’m writing about STEM subjects – not my usual area of expertise at all – so I’m learning a lot as I go along and really enjoying it.

There’s at least another two months to go until that project wraps up, so I’m going to remain busy until then and this blog probably won’t get quite as much attention as I’d like to give it. Bear with me – I’ve got a notebook full of ideas for things to share with you when I get the chance!