June 7 - 21, 2010 Airing Dirty Laundry – Use Family Stories, Eavesdropping and Cable TV to Create Writing Income Instructor: Marilyn Puett CLASS DESCRIPTION: Airing Dirty Laundry offers information and tips on how to create a source of outside income by writing short stories for the confessions and romance magazines. This two-week workshop is geared for writers who want extra income while waiting to sell their first book, are between royalty checks or simply want an extra income stream. This course takes students step by step through writing a confession. It begins with learning the market, developing hooks and compelling story lines and structuring a story properly. By the end of the course, students should have a story ready for submission. Additionally, participants will be given the opportunity to submit the first few pages of a story they start during the class and have the pages critiqued by published writers. Two stories will be selected toward the end of the class to receive a full critique. INSTRUCTOR BIO: Marilyn Puett has sold over thirty stories and a half-dozen short feature articles to the confessions and romance magazines. She has also sold to an e-zine called Chick Lit Review and an anthology titled, appropriately enough, I Confess. She appears in both the 2008 and 2009 Bylines Writers’ Desk Calendar and her article “Short Shorts – Not Just a Fashion Statement” was featured on the Writing for Dollars website. In November 2008 she took the NaNoWriMo challenge and wrote 50,000 words on a book she started way too many years ago. When Silhouette Special Edition announced an online pitch contest several months later, she hunkered down, finished the book and submitted a synopsis to the contest. One of eleven finalists, she received a request for her full manuscript, putting her a tiny step closer to the dream of being published in novel format. The book was ultimately rejected but is awaiting revision and submission to a different line. Marilyn is a member of Heart of Dixie RWA and serves RWA on both the local and national levels. A founding member of The Writing Playground, a website for aspiring writers (www.writingplayground.com), she lives in her empty nest in north Alabama and dotes on her granddaughter.
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