A Tasty Announcement --Guest Post from Emily Chang

Years ago, when I was interning for Memoirs Ink, I learned a lot about running a business, but I also learned how to cook lemongrass. You see, the biggest perk of working out of Felice's home office was that we could take breaks to satisfy our crazy cravings in the kitchen. Whether it was sushi, xao xa ot ga (chicken with lemongrass and chilies), or vegan shepherd's pie, our cravings knew no cultural bounds. The longer I worked at Memoirs Ink, the more I came to understand the connection between food and memoirs; in a lot of ways, Felice and I are an example of a relationship founded on a shared love for both. Food, at its most basic, exists to nourish us, but it often does so much more -- it can open doors to the most wonderful relationships and experiences.

After graduating from college, I moved to New York, thousands of miles away from Memoirs Ink and Felice’s kitchen. Now I order xao xa ot ga from Cafe Asean in Greenwich Village instead of wrestling with lemongrass in my tiny studio kitchen. But Felice and I are still cooking up ideas – this time, metaphorically rather than literally. Memoirs Ink’s new pet project, is called  Nourishing Narrativess: Memoirs that Get to the Heart of the Platter. It is a blog that celebrates the perennial connection between food and the beautiful stories it evokes (and vice versa). Our ultimate end goal is to publish a collection of stories and recipes that nourish the heart, mind and stomach.

I know a lot of people are much more comfortable with sharing a recipe than a story; I would love for my father to reveal as much about his younger days, as he reveals about his cooking secrets. But recipes also have a power of their own: they can serve as a gateway to old memories, while creating new ones. Proust’s madeleine is the classic example of how a taste can transport people back to the experiences that shaped them as individuals. Digesting and recording those memories into memoirs is a challenge, but one well worth taking. We want to taste your “madeleine,” read your stories and make your food. Indulge our minds and stomachs – submit your story (750 words or less) and recipe to nourishingnarratives at gmail dot com.

You can visit the blog at www.heartoftheplatter.com.
Also, feel free to become a fan on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. We will be having lots of yummy giveaways for our fans.

How You Can Write and Finish Your Book - For Real

Memoirs Ink has been cooking up a solution to some common struggles that creative non-fiction writers face when trying to write or finish a book. Some of these problems include isolation, lack of structure or momentum, lack of support, lack of financial resources, and often times, lack of fun in the process.

So we have combined the answers to all of these problems into a simple, fun, affordable solution. Our bi-monthly webinar series will inspire, instruct, structure and forwardly move you toward a finished book. The best part is that you can participate from anywhere (no driving), at any time that is convenient for you-- all for only $67/month.  (Newsletter subscribers who register in May or June 2011 pay only $57/month.)

A webinar is like a seminar in that there is a speaker and a chance to interact and ask questions. This webinar also has some extra features, including a chance to make book promises and be held accountable at the next webinar. We also have a 2-minute dance party, a forum for subscribers to interact and support each other between webinars, and a few other surprises.

Memoirs Ink has helped hundred of people write and finish their memoirs. Please join us for a completely awesome new way to finish your book. Register Here.

You can also watch our fabulous trailer here:

Transparency About 3rd Place

Since some people want to know more about what happened with third place and why we chose not to award it to anyone, we will tell you what we can without slandering anyone.

After choosing the winners and having them all sign agreements that their work was original and previously unpublished, we discovered that 3^rd place had already won a contest and published elsewhere more than a year ago. This is a violation of our guidelines and because it was not disclosed to us, but rather discovered by us, we were especially unhappy. Occasionally, because we allow simultaneous submissions, people get good news calls simultaneously, and if they disclose it to us, we are usually cool about a story being published in a non-competing avenue simultaneously. This has happened 2 or 3 times in 8 years. However, in this case we were either lied to or there was a grave misunderstanding on the writer’s part about what “published” means. So we had to disqualify the entry.

I thought this was good news, since the woman who came in 4^th place was my personal favorite, but she declined the honor of 3^rd place, because she had already submitted elsewhere and was hoping to get a better offer. There was a tie for 5^th place, however, both stories had significant problems, and we decided that they weren’t publishable as they are. Because this is a writing contest, we can’t edit the stories to make them winners, no matter how much we want to. We realize that there may have been other stories that were winner material that may have fallen through the judges’ notice for whatever reason. Judging is a highly individual process and some people have wildly different likes and dislikes. In the end, we had to stick with the top stories that were chosen.

So that brings us up to date. We are committed to helping writers tell their stories and supporting them in that journey. We realize how not awarding 3^rd place looks—that we are depriving some other author of a prize, but this actually gives us the opportunity to do more with the prize money that is sort of hanging out in space waiting to be used. We aren't sure what to do with it, but we'd like to use it to forward our mission of helping writers and promoting storytelling. We have several ideas and would like readers to vote in the comments.

• Give away more money in the next contest.
  
• Give each of the remaining 6 of the top 10 finalists free feedback/formal critique (normally $40).
• Give it the most disgruntled entrants to make them happy
• Give it to Write Girls, a charity that helps teen girls through writing mentorship. OR Ask readers to submit nominations for a teen girl or boy who could use it.
• Start a scholarship fund for writers with merit who can't afford classes.
  

Other ideas? Vote or leave your comments in the blog.

Annoucning the Winners - 2011 Half Yearly Contest

Okay there was a little bit of scandal, but we are over it. Here are the winners.

First Place: Hockey Night in Canada by Ariadne Hawkins

Second Place: Tasty by Lauren Leatherman

Third Place: In an unprecedented incident, we have disqualified the 3rd place winner for violation of the guidelines. The judges and staff at Memoirs Ink, annoyed and disheartened, have decided not to award it to anyone else.

We will be adding like buttons to our winner archives soon, so make sure you "like" them if you like them. Thumbs up. Smiley Face. Yay! Lots of exclamation points.

Random Scraps of Paper

Do you ever open your notebook and wonder what the heck you were thinking? Just now, I was trying to find a file on my computer and realized that it was probably not in there yet, since I only just transferred it from my brain to paper. I looked through a small stack of stuff on my desk. In it were different sized papers, a colored drawing from my daughter, several blue post-its, a few receipts and $10 off card to Victoria's Secret. The stack is starting to sound large. I promise it is only medium-ish. Anyway, in the sorting I came to a piece of paper with a list in thick sharpie and this is what it said at the bottom of the list--(the part that was sticking out):

Salmon Rushdie (underlined)
Aaron Smith
Katie

I have no idea why Salmon Rushdie's name is on a list with a friend I haven't spoken to in ages and another friend I talk to every other day. It is definitely not a jihad list.

I don't even dare tell you what I sometimes find in my notebook. Instead, I'll tell you about someone else. The other day a friend brought me her husband's scratch pad the other day and this is a list I found in it:

Pedro?
Pontiacs are blue.
Gold is a precious metal.
Bob is a nice guy.
I don't like swordfish.
Latin America?

Classic stuff. He works in finance. Not even a writer.

Last Day of Class

This week was our sixth and final week of The Writer's Mind workshop. It feels almost too sacred to talk about. But this is what we did after class. We are planning on uploading some of the portraits to JR's global art project.

The next class will begin in April. I pushed it back from the 6th to the 13th. Six Wednesday nights in Culver City. Online class coming in June. If you want to be on the waiting list, please let me know. It is already half full.

Inside Out

A student in The Writer's Mind Class sent this to me. If you haven't heard about Project Inside Out, it's inspiring. We are going to submit an image as a class.

Here's a video. There is a long and short version. I recommend the long one.




The website for the project is here. Short video here too.