[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Welcome to who’s on fourth where we interview one member of the yeah write community and the interview will publish the fourth Monday of each month. Next in the series features Arden Ruth interviewing Cindy of Reedster Speaks.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][vc_column_text]

yeah write on yeah write: Arden interviews Cindy

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]A few years ago, when yeah write was still recuperating from its first birthday (#yw54), Cindy Reed stumbled upon yeah write and never looked back. She had only started blogging a few months before, but it was easy to tell her writing had been worked on and polished for years, and it was exactly the type of writer yeah write was looking for. Cindy’s first post on the yeah write grid was a funny look at infertility treatment. If you’ve read any of Cindy’s writing, this shouldn’t surprise you. She has a gift for inserting humor into topics where it’s not normally found, and she does it with such ease that you’ll find yourself laughing through the tears as you read it over and over again. For this particular post, Erica awarded Cindy her first editor’s pick and Cindy was hooked to yeah write for life, but it wasn’t just the awards that made her stick around. Like most of us, the camaraderie of yeah write kept her coming back week after week. A safe writing space on the internet can be tough to find, but she found it in yeah write. Erica noticed something special in Cindy as well, and it didn’t take long for her to bring her on to our editorial board.

That summer I participated in yeah write’s summer series, week after week of amazing challenges accompanied by spot-on creative nonfiction writing advice. When Erica asked me to join as contributing editor, I was thrilled. It was my first real writing credit and curating the winner’s post each Friday was like having a front row seat in a master class on personal storytelling.

As you can probably tell, Cindy spends her time at yeah write on the nonfiction grid and she kills it every time she shows up. If you’re interested in learning how she does it and how you can improve your own nonfiction writing, Cindy offers an online class starting June 20th. Learn to write a kickass true story in just 30 days! You can find all the details here.

As always, I asked Cindy what advice she would give to any yeah write virgins and lurkers out there waiting for the perfect opportunity to dive onto our grids:

Let’s see if I can do this in alliterative form: You need story, structure, showing versus telling, and spellcheck. Essentially, your story is your conflict, what we at yeah write call your “so what” – it’s your reason for writing, a narrow enough focus with some literary tension that makes readers relate to and care about what happens in your post. Your structure is the structure that has worked for centuries – a narrative structure with a killer beginning, a middle that flows seamlessly, and an ending that ties up your core conflict in a moment of equilibrium. “Show, don’t tell,” well, every writing teacher including yours truly is going to hammer that home to new writers. Whenever you feel like shorthanding the emotions in a story – “I was sad” or “It made me frustrated” – SHOW your readers instead through dialogue, action, reaction, imagery, and scenery how and why you felt that way. And spellcheck? You need to proof your work. Read it out loud.

Not sure where to start? Read winners posts from weeks and years gone by for some of the best storytelling examples on the internet or, better yet, visit yeah write’s “Best of” grid for a round-up of great blog posts that follow my four “S’s”. A great place to start is these two posts I wrote for the 2014 summer series: What story isn’t and What story is.

As writers, constructive criticism can be hard to stomach, but in order to improve our craft, we have to learn how to take it.

When taking any criticism, always consider the source. Is this a writer whose work you respect? If so, listen and learn. I teach writing and I try to balance positive feedback with tips to strengthen a writer’s work. I know how hard it is to put yourself out there. But sometimes we’re blind to our own writing tics, or we get married to a sentence or storyline that just isn’t working, and that’s where having another pair of eyes can help you solve the puzzles or knots in your work.

Like most of us I presume, Cindy has been writing for quite a while:

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, ever since an awful series of earnest poems and stories in elementary school and junior high, usually ending with a bloodbath in Act IV, like Shakespeare’s tragedies. I had an amazing English teacher in high school who was the newspaper advisor and I was the editor-in-chief of the paper – that’s probably when the writing bug hit for real.

However, Cindy would navigate through law school and make a career of it before making her way back to writing. Recently, she hit her two year anniversary of taking the plunge as a full-time freelance writer. As I mentioned above, she also teaches creative nonfiction through online courses and speaks often on the subject of nonfiction storytelling.

I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to finally take the leap. I probably wouldn’t have had the guts to make that career change without my experiences at yeah write and the support of the friends and colleagues I’ve met here. Yeah write gave me the confidence to finally call myself a writer for real.

As for her blog, Cindy misses being more active on the yeah write grids (the feeling is mutual!), but we love watching Cindy’s freelance career flourish so we don’t hold it against her!

Yeah write was the best blog scheduler I had, keeping me on a weekly posting schedule. I would love to get back to posting more regularly, but I’m more focused right now on pitching articles to outside publications and sketching out some long form projects I hope to start over the summer – a middle-aged coming of age novel and a nonfiction book/memoir on the state of mental health care for women in America, something I am, unfortunately, intimately familiar with.

[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]Thank you Cindy for letting our readers and writers get to know you a little better. We don’t know what we would do without you! Make sure you follow Cindy’s blog, Reedster Speaks, as well as her professional page, Cindy Reed. You can also follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

Don’t forget! Make sure you don’t miss out on Cindy’s nonfiction boot camp starting June 20th! Learn to write a kickass true story in 30 days. Details here![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”26372″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”right”][/vc_column][vc_column][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Oh, you want more? Well here are five things you never knew about Cindy:

1. She’s an INTJ, which she thinks is known as “The Introvert’s Introvert.”
2. Like all good Minnesotans, she cast her first presidential ballot for Walter Mondale.
3. Some days she wishes she had 2/3 fewer dogs.
4. She hates picnics. SO MUCH BALANCING OF FOOD ON ONE’S LAP.
5. She types almost everything because she can’t read her own handwriting.

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Are you ready for the yeah write #267 weekly writing challenges opening this week? We hope so! Your badges await in the sidebar. Grab the code, paste into the text or HTML view of your post, then submit your post to the grids for a little friendly competition. We’re glad you’re here.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]