Categorized as: Writing

Would You Like to Guest Blog for Her Next Chapter?

Do you have a piece of writing you’d like to contribute to Her Next Chapter? I’m looking for guest bloggers to appear from time to time on the Her Next Chapter blog. All accepted posts will be shared on Facebook and tweeted. I’m excited about opening up this opportunity for members of this community to share their voices with each other!

Please read below for submission guidelines:

  • Preferred Topics: Her Next Chapter promotes girl empowerment in many ways. For example, we commonly discuss and share articles about healthy girlhood, female leadership, reading, media literacy, and strong mother-daughter relationships, and the important role of fathers in daughters’ lives. We also discuss various topics in parenting, education, child development, and pop culture, all with a special focus on girls. If you are unsure if your idea is a fit for the mission of Her Next Chapter, you can always run it by me first. Crowdsourced fundraisers and other self-promotional posts may occasionally be allowed when deemed an exceptional fit for our mission, but if I get too many of those, I may have to say no to all of them.

 

  • Length: Attention spans are short, so 500-800 words is best, but longer pieces will be considered.

 

  • Content Requirements/ Republishing Policies: Articles must be your original work, copyright-free, and not previously published elsewhere on the web. However, if your piece is run as a guest post on Her Next Chapter, you may repurpose it after three or more days, with a link back to the original. Plagiarism is obviously not permitted.

 

  • Citing Sources: When quoting others or referring to work that is not your own, please cite your sources accordingly, or use hotlinks.

 

  • Link Requirements: Links are allowed within your post if they are relevant and not excessive or spammy. I reserve the right to strip out links that I deem inappropriate or manipulative. I also reserve the right to add links in places where they will improve the post.

 

  • Image Requirements: If you use any photos or videos within your guest post, they must be credited properly.

 

  • Lead Image for Social Media: I will choose something that is license-free from Creative Commons, but in some cases may request or accept your own photo for that purpose.

 

  • Formatting Preferences: I’ll be pasting your content into the Her Next Chapter blog post template, which you see here. I prefer to receive it by email as a Word doc with any images both embedded in the document where you want them to go, and also attached separately to the email. No need to pitch me—just send the completed post unless you are concerned your idea may not be a fit, in which case, do run it by me before spending time writing it.

 

  • Byline & Head Shot: Please include a short bio of two to three sentences and a recent, high-resolution head shot. You may include links to your website and/or social media. Your byline and head shot will appear at the end of your post, but you will also be introduced as the guest author at the beginning of the post.

 

  • Editorial Policies: I reserve the right to edit for grammar, spelling, formatting, content and other factors. I will run edits by you for your approval before publishing. If, upon publication, either of us sees a typo or other necessary minor change, I can edit after the post has gone up.

 

  • How to Submit: Please send your submissions to Lori Day at lori@motherdaughterbookclubs.com.

 

  • Review Process: I will read your submission as soon as possible and get back to you with an answer, as well as any edits I’d like if the piece is to be published. I do not expect professional-level writing, but the writing needs to be readable. If your submission is inappropriate for Her Next Chapter I will explain why. If it needs improvement, I will try to offer suggestions that might allow future publication, or at least not leave you wondering why it was turned down. If the reason I turned it down is that it is too rough and would require too much of my time for revisions, you can always find other editorial support and resubmit when the piece is in better shape.

 

  • Are Guest Bloggers Paid?: I’m afraid not. My site is not monetized. I make no money on it myself. Guest blogging for Her Next Chapter will give you an audience of 7000+ people, and I will promote you, but it’s really just an opportunity to write and be heard. None of us can eat exposure, I know. 🙂 If I ever figure out a way to monetize HNC, I will pay for guest posts, but unfortunately, at this time it is not possible for me.

 

  • Expectations for Accepted Posts: When your post is live, I will send you the link by email, and I will share the post on Facebook and Twitter. You are expected to share it on your own social media platforms, whatever they are. Please remain attentive to your post on Her Next Chapter’s Facebook page for a couple of days, or as long as it seems active. Participate in comment threads on Facebook and directly on the post itself; like and retweet people’s tweets; acknowledge shares, and so forth. If you have a website that allows you to archive the guest post, please do so.

 

  • Disclaimers: I reserve the right to refuse publication, remove blog content after publication, shut down comments, or in any other way maintain control over Her Next Chapter’s content and reputation. These guidelines can change at any time.

 

Thank you for considering sharing your voice with the Her Next Chapter community. Our village is going to be even better!

xoxo,

Lori

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Blogging It Forward

 

When Lisa Kaplin invited me to participate in a blog hop a few weeks ago, I had no idea what that was, but soon understood how it worked and was game to give it a try. Everyone, I’m pleased to introduce you to Lisa! Here’s her entry in the blog hop: http://smartwomeninspiredlives.com/writing-well/

Here are my thoughts on why I write and the process I use to write:

A lot of my writer friends talk about how they’ve wanted to write professionally since they were children, but that isn’t exactly true for me. I did win some writing awards and was a student that teachers encouraged to pursue writing, but I frankly never took it seriously because I did not think I could make a go of it and support myself with writing. It’s not that I didn’t believe in myself—I actually did. I just never thought of writing as a career goal.

Writing for me was the road not taken, until recently. I love it, and while it’s not my day job, it has turned into a very fulfilling avocation on the side. I freelance when I can, and do plenty of unpaid blogging when my muse pays a visit, which is often. This past May, my first book came out, published by Chicago Review Press and titled Her Next Chapter: How Mother-Daughter Book Clubs Can Help Girls Navigate Malicious Media, Risky relationships, Girl Gossip, and So Much More. My daughter Charlotte, who is now 22, was a contributing author to the book. Charlotte has always wanted to be an author, and I knew I’d one day be buying her books, but I never imagined her first book would also be mine.

What am I working on/writing?

Because I’m just about to start speaking publicly about my book, I’m working on various author talks, presentations and workshops. That’s my main focus at the moment, but I’m still blogging every couple of weeks for HuffPo, my own site, and guest posts for other people.

How does my work/writing differ from others of its genre?

I don’t think my blogging always stands out as tremendously different, but my book does—at least, in my opinion! While there are a lot of books about girl empowerment, and even more books about sexism and the many challenges facing women, there are not a lot of books that connect the dots between the two. In Her Next Chapter I make the case that if we want more female politicians, CEOs, movie protagonists, and so on, it must start in childhood. Waiting until girls are women to cheer them on towards political office or other visible and meaningful forms of female leadership doesn’t work. We have to take seriously the many ways our marketing and media culture deliberately disempower girls, and we have to give parents and teachers practical media literacy tools so they can help girls deconstruct and subvert the toxic messages they are bombarded with every day.

I wrote a book that is not just about the issues, but about solutions, and one that lays out very clearly why princess culture and the pink ghetto have far-reaching negative effects on girls as they become women. Today’s hyper-feminine girl culture must be dismantled if we are to raise girls to believe they have more to offer the world than their physical appearance or ability to support the ambitions and adventures of men, and that they have greater value than their faces and bodies. My writing—whether it be my book, or my blogging on the topic of girlhood—consistently shows the ways in which the obstacles women face as they seek equality are rooted in the way our culture limits girls.

Why do I write what I do?

I’m going to deliberately keep this very short, so that my answer to this question has impact: because the world will be a better place when girls and women are viewed as equal to boys and men, and when females hold half of the positions of power, proportional to their existence as half of the human population. I write about this in order to help bring about change.

How does my writing process work?

I don’t impose much structure upon myself. I am fortunate to rarely encounter writer’s block, and to write very quickly in an unlabored way. I actually feel that I write more fluently than I speak. Writing is an incredibly enjoyable activity for me. I absolutely love it when I’m “in the zone.” Most of my blog posts take me about the same amount of time as it would take to read a chapter or two of a novel, so I often write posts at night to relax. Even when the topic is heavy, I feel good when I’m writing. Sometimes I am in the mood to write but can’t think of a good topic, yet when I do finally get an idea, I can generally crank out thousands of words almost immediately, often in the middle of the night. The hardest thing for me is titles and headings! I have been told they are weak in comparison to the writing itself, so sometimes I ask other people to help me come up with good titles. I think that if I were better at writing “click-baity” titles, my posts would perform better. I’m working on it!

Let me introduce you to four other fabulous writers:

Michele's headshot

Michele Yulo is the founder of Princess Free Zone—a website and blog she started in 2009 that offers an alternative to princess for little girls. She was initially inspired by her daughter, who at three years old refused to wear “girl” clothing, and who instead preferred the bolder colors and designs typically offered in boys’ sections of stores.

Frustrated by the limited options for her daughter, and girls in general, she decided to do something about it. Unemployed at the time, she sold her wedding ring to get the project started which included producing some new tees of her own with fun and unique designs that offered things like dinosaurs, tools, soccer balls and bugs while writing a blog that addressed the effects of gender stereotyping on young children.

In addition, Michele created and wrote a children’s book about a young female, tool-wielding phenom named Super TooLula.  TooLula is a role model for little girls who aims to teach kids that being kind is cool while being a new kind of role model

Michele is currently working on launching a brand new company called Be Free Zone, Inc., which will introduce “gender equal” product. She has come to understand that both girls and boys need to be free to explore their individual identities without being judged. The website and product line will launch by the end of the summer.

Originally from upstate New York, Michele grew up in sunny Miami and now resides in Atlanta, GA. She has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English and in her spare time enjoys writing, playing guitar and cooking. She lives with her very supportive husband Steve, nine-year-old daughter Gabi and four dogs—Hendrix, Sula, Scarlett and Chewie.

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Crystal Smith is a writer of many things. In her day job, she works as a marketing writer for small businesses. In her downtime, she blogs about boys and gender stereotypes, a subject she explored in her self-published book The Achilles Effect: What Pop Culture is Teaching Young Boys about Masculinity. She is currently working on her second book, which will examine the impact of sexualized culture on adolescent boys.

 

 

Pia

Pia Guerrero is a writer, youth development expert, and media literacy pioneer. She is the executive director of SheHeroes, a project that creates positive role models for girls by interviewing exceptional career women who have overcome obstacles to achieve success. With over 20 years in non-profit leadership experience, Pia is also a seasoned grant writer. She is also the founder and editor of Adios Barbie, the first body image website to expand the conversation beyond size to include race, age, ability, sexual orientation, and sexuality. Her work with Adios Barbie has been mentioned in MSNBC, BBC 4, The New York Times, Forbes, Al-Jazeera, Seventeen, Fitness, Glamour, among others. Pia has also appeared numerous times as an expert on CNN’s Headline News (HLN) and Huffington Post Live.  Pia primarily writes pieces that expand perspectives and challenge assumptions. Her work has appeared in magazines, blogs, books, and journals

 

 

Lisa

Lisa Kaplin is a psychologist, life coach, professional speaker, and blogger.  She is the owner of Smart Women Inspired Lives where she hears women’s stories, helps them understand why they are stuck, and helps them rewrite their futures into joyful lives that they hadn’t thought possible.  Lisa’s unique education and life experiences allow her to really understand the stress, overwhelm, and struggles that many women face.  She uses humor, empowerment, acceptance, and a healthy dose of pushing to guide her clients into life long changes.  Lisa is married and the mother of three teen-aged children.  In her free time she’s cuddled on the couch with her dog and a book.

 

 

 

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And a quick summary about me:

Lori Day headshot

Lori Day is an educational psychologist and consultant with Lori Day Consulting in Newburyport, MA. Previously Lori worked as a psychologist, teacher and school administrator for over 25 years in public schools, private schools, and at the college level. She is a co-founder and member of the advisory board of the Brave Girls Alliance, a global think tank of girl empowerment experts who advocate for healthier media and products for girls. Lori is also a freelance writer, as well as a blogger for the Huffington Post and various other sites, writing about parenting, education, child development, gender, media, and pop culture. Her first book, titled Her Next Chapter: How Mother-Daughter Book Clubs Can Help Girls Navigate Malicious Media, Risky Relationships, Girl Gossip, and So Much More, came out in May of 2014.

 

 

Publishers Weekly 2014 Best Parenting Books

How to Parent? Hard Science, Light Humor: Parenting Books 2014

By Kathryn E. Livingston

Mar 07, 2014

Today’s parents have science savvy—they demand evidence-based information, but want it delivered with cleverness and wit (who has time to read a dry scientific treatise when baby’s diapers are wet?). To wit, the spring/summer lists include a number of meticulously researched but reader-friendly and entertaining titles parents can pick up and put down at their leisure (or rather, when junior’s schedule allows a break).

The publishing company’s lead parenting titles are indeed parent-friendly, but solidly science-based. Says Karp, “Linda Geddes brings the breezy voice of a newly pregnant science journalist to Bumpology [Mar.], in which she sorts out conflicting data and theories. In Parentology [Mar.], sociologist Dalton Conley describes the scientific experiments he performed on his own two children, and the results are likely to surprise and entertain a lot of parents.”

Psychologist David Elkind’s new release is Parenting on the Go (Da Capo, July). By the venerable author of The Hurried Child, the book is in keeping with the trend of being direct and to the point, notes Ambrosio, with practical tips for “birth to 6, A to Z” from a “credentialed source.”

Parenting Beyond Pink and Blue by Christia Spears Brown (Ten Speed Press, Apr.) probes the research on gender and child development, aiming to help parents overcome gender stereotypes and raise their kids according to each child’s individual strengths. Says Ten Speed Press assistant editor Kaitlin Ketchum, “The author uses science-based hard research, but she’s also a parent so she includes anecdotes as well as examples from her own life. She offers really doable parenting tips and ways readers can integrate the research into their own lives.”

On the topic of gender, educational psychologist Lori Day examines mother-daughter bonds and the challenges girls face growing up today. Her Next Chapter: How Mother-Daughter Book Clubs Can Help Girls Navigate Malicious Media, Risky Relationships, Girl Gossip and So Much More (Chicago Review Press, May) also combines research with personal experience. Strong Mothers, Strong Sons by pediatrician Meg Meeker (Ballantine, Apr.), on the other hand, probes the particular problems of boys, focusing on how moms can provide the support boys need to thrive.

This sampling of upcoming titles and trends points to the fact that the parenting literature continues to widen its scope, inspiring contemporary parents not only to learn more, but to relax and laugh while expanding their knowledge and expertise. And it just may be that parent/readers are buying into the same lesson they often teach their kids: “Science can and should be fun!”

Excerpts from Publishers Weekly http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/new-titles/adult-announcements/article/61336-how-to-parent-hard-science-light-humor-parenting-books-2014.html

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