March didn’t turn out to be my best month for online presence–most because I was doing stuff! Theatre-wise, our production of Frozen runs later this month, so we’ll see if I do any better in April.
News
I will soon have more workshops to add to my events page! After a wonderful conversation with the local Adult Ed program, it looks like I’ll be teaching a series of six connected, one-session Writer’s Toolbox workshops in the fall. These are currently in-person, but I would love to develop an online version at some point. Please let me know if you’d be interested in that! Knowing others are interested will give me incentive to develop that faster.
Another soon-to-be addition to the events page: I have officially reserved a room for ReaderCon! Though I’ll be a regular attendee, not a guest, I’m hoping to snag a reading slot. This will be my first con since 2018, when I attended ReaderCon with a nine-month-old in tow, and I’m psyched to go back.
And this might seem like such a small thing, but I made bookmarks:
I’ve always like the idea of using a bookmark instead of a business card, so I’ve spent years thinking about what I want it to do and how I want it to look. It was always something for the future when I had books to market. Then with the workshops, I realized I needed an easy way to let people find me, so I made the bookmarks anyway. I’m super proud of them of how they came out. They make me feel all official.
Blog
Only one post in March, about how weird it felt to be called a playwright. The play reading went well! It was a great evening with theatre folks, and hearing other actors read my play gave me a different (and needed!) perspective.
Writing stats
I sent out one query to an agent, who sent me the best rejection! (Rejections are just proof I’m doing the work, and the ones with feedback tell me I’m doing something right.) It confirmed with me something I’d begun to suspect, so now I’m doing another revision pass before I send it back out in the world.
I’m still aiming for the eight hours of writing work each week that I mentioned in my first newsletter. Whether or not I’m reaching that is hard to tell because I frequently forget to keep track of my time even when I’m not writing in the cracks outside of school days. At least it still feels reasonable and sustainable, and I think I make it more weeks than not. Still a work in progress!
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Currently (re)reading: The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger* because of this revision. Non-fiction, it’s a gorgeously written look at plants, including why they can be so hard to classify. I read it last year, loved it, and it made me want to enrich all my imagined plant life in the novella’s garden. So here we are.
Just read: Kalynn Bayron’s This Poison Heart* for much the same reason, though this is YA contemporary fantasy with generational magic and many deadly plants. I feel like it gives me permission to up the bar on on the dangers of the poison garden in my story. It’s also just so damn good.
*Bookshop.org affiliate links
Melissa Burkart 
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