Celebrating a Publication

Today we are celebrating a publication–Lauren from the Writing Gym! In Lauren’s words: the Writing Gym is a “community” that offers writing salons once a week online to writers. During these sessions, I offer them writing prompts in which they only have 20 minutes to write. 

“It sounds insanely short but it’s surprisingly effective,” Lauren shares with us. “The goal is to just write for those twenty minutes and try not to let the inner critic or whatever else is going on in your head get in the way.”  

I have had the pleasure of witnessing Lauren’s growth as a writer through the Writing Gym. However, she also admits that she’s “one of those writers who get stuck in [her] own head way too much.” A year ago, she would have freaked out if someone told her she had to write something with just 20 minutes on the clock. 

But now, she states that salons are one of the things she looks forward to every time.

“By following the salon rules and just writing,” Lauren continues, “I’ve been able to crack through that part of my brain that always gets in my way and that more than anything else is what’s made this huge difference for me in my writing the last few months.” 

My last salon with Lauren with other writers was only recently and I presented them with a pretty interesting prompt, which was Valentine’s Day themed. They all brainstormed and agreed upon writing about the perspective of a chocolatier on Valentine’s Day. 

Lauren’s story that she put together was this: the chocolatier has a chocolate who can talk. She’s used this talking chocolate to put couples together all the while leaving her own romantic relationship in the back burner. 

At the end of the salon, I revealed a surprise–there is a writing contest with basically the same prompt! This was particularly exciting to me because I had met this editor who was so interested in getting submissions from some of the Writing Gym members. Lauren was one of those writers who submitted her piece. 

The result? She’s officially published and her story placed in the top three of the contest! 

Her short story, Tricky Truffle Surprise, is available through Alexa devices. Simply tell Alexa: “I’d like to open my box of chocolates.” From there, you can pick a specific collection of chocolate that you want to listen to. 

This was Lauren’s second publication. Her first publication also came from a writing salon. It wasn’t necessarily a story that she’s written during salon but a story that came from the creative flow she had during salon. 

“It’s just the way [salon] opens up your brain and gets you thinking,” Lauren states, “so a lot of times I have really productive writing sessions after salon… We had a salon that really intrigued me and it had brought up this old story idea that I had totally shelved ages ago. I’ve been like ‘I don’t know how to write that’ ‘I don’t know what to do with it.’ But after that particular writing salon I kind of just sat down and wrote it and it came out really quickly. I was like ‘This is what I was trying to write ages ago.’”

Later, she submitted her story to an anthology’s call for submission and now it’s published in Beneath Strange Stars, where you can find her story at page 107. 

I am so proud of Lauren. She has published twice and we at the Writing Gym are so happy that we got to be a part of that process. 

“The Writing Gym,” Lauren states, “takes writing professionally and successfully from being this big nebulous, mysterious thing into something that you can actually understand and then implement.”

Do you want to shush your inner critic and just write? Have creative flow for days, even weeks or months? Do you want to know the feeling of being published–not once, but twice or more? Book a call with me now. 

Until then, happy writing.