A wonderful New Review of My Book "The Rejected Writers' Bookclub" - Portobello Book Blogs

http://portobellobookblog.com/2016/02/26/the-rejected-writers-book-club-by-suzanne-kelman/

Buy The Book Here

http://www.amazon.com/Rejected-Writers-Book-Club-Southlea-ebook/dp/B016A31ZX6/?tag=geolinker-20

WildWritingLife: Book review: The Rejected Writers Book Club

A Great review of my book thank you!

WildWritingLife: Book review: The Rejected Writers Book Club: Before I started this book , I was about to think at least twice: Oh, just one of those books about book clubs, where - predominantly - ...

Blondie and the Brit

Blondie and the Brit: Join us each week for a fun and informative chat an our podcast. Writing, Publishing and beyond is a show to help writers learn about about writing habits, social media strategies, publishing tips, book marketing advice and more.  It's a show for writers, hosted by writers. Find us at www.blondieandbrit.com....Or listen to our podcasts on:
http://blondieandbrit.podbean.com

Very Exciting News! We made through nearly 8'000 scripts into The Academy Nicholls Fellowship Final

POSTED ON THE ACADEMY WEBSITE:  www.oscars.org 

Posted: 

Tuesday, September 8, 2015 - 17:45

SHARETWITTERFACEBOOK

Congratulations to our new Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting finalists! See the full list below. Keep checking back to Oscars.org to find out the winners and get more information about the upcoming awards ceremony.

Ghazi Albuliwi, "Arafat"

Jennifer Bailey and Max Lance, "Best Funeral Ever"

Elizabeth Chomko, "What They Had"

Ryan Covington,  "The Secrets We Keep"

Andrew Friedhof, "Great Falls" 

Lynn Esta Goldman, "Angel on the Wall"

Anthony Grieco, "Best Sellers"

Murat Izmirli, "Grimwood"

Suzanne Kelman and Susannah Rose Woods, "Held"

Samuel Regnier, "Free Agent"

Augustus Rose, "Far From Cool"

Amy Tofte, "Addis Abeka"

So excited to be one of them, it's huge honor! 

Here is an article written by Katie Woodzick for Whidbey Life Magazine

We’d Like to Thank the Academy: Susannah Rose Woods and Suzanne Kelman Advance to the Final Round of the Nicholl Fellowships

Posted in Feature, Literary, Spotlight

BY KATIE WOODZICKWhidbey Life Magazine contributor
Sept. 9, 2015

Susannah Rose Woods and Suzanne Kelman first met through creative endeavors at Whidbey Children’s Theater. Kelman had just finished work on Thoroughly Modern Millie, and Woods was about to begin directing productions of Into the Woods.

Kelman asked Woods to read some of her screenplays. Soon after, the pair started writing screenplays together, co-founding Goody 2 Productions.

Suzanne and Susannah at the CA Film awards 2013.

They’ve developed a unique routine for writing together: Woods will type while Kelman suggests ideas. If they ever hit a creative wall, they’ll play Harry Belafonte’s Jump in the Line and dance around Kelman’s writing studio. In conversation, the two writers seem to share a brain, often finishing each other’s sentences.

“I’ve been a writing partner with other people, but nothing like this,” Woods said.

“We have a really unique way of writing together,” Kelman explained. “We have this ability to not only pick up the other person’s thought but add on to it.”

(You can read the rest of this article in the Whidbey Life Magazine at http://www.whidbeylifemagazine.org

Memoirs from the Ledge of ‘How in the Heck Did I Get Here’

Many of us who are 'creatives' know the challenge it can be to make a living art "habit." I take on mulitple writing and film producing assignments in the hope that one of my ship will come happily home.  

Let.me repeat that…in the HOPE that ONE of my ships would come sailing home. And. after working at this writing habit for five years, often doing 12 hour days, what happened this summer was the arrival of the equivalent of a writing Armada.

Read the rest of this blog post at Whidbey Life Magazine (link below)

http://www.whidbeylifemagazine.org/sue-the-screenwriter-memoirs-from-the-ledge-of-oh-how-in-the-heck-did-i-get-here/

Had a Great Interview with Andrea Hurst & Associates

AUTHORNOMICS Interview with screenwriter Suzanne Kelman

 Cherise HensleyAugust 6, 2015Uncategorized

With a publishing industry that is ever in flux, it can be hard for an aspiring author to figure out what information is relevant and what she needs to do to be successful. Recognizing this, literary agent Andrea Hurst and writer/blogger Cherise Hensley present a series of weekly interviews with publishing industry specialists. The AUTHORNOMICS Series features literary agents, editors, authors, marketing experts and more talking about their opinions on the publishing industry, writing, and what a writer needs to know.

AUTHORNOMICS Interview with Suzanne Kelman

Suzanne Kelman is a screenwriter and author of The Rejected Writers Book Club. Her writing voice has been described as a perfect blend of Janet Evanovich and Debbie Macomber. Some of her accolades include best comedy feature screenplay at the 2011 LA International Film Festival, a Gold Award at the 2012 CA Film Awards and a Van Gogh Award at the 2012 Amsterdam Film Festival. She can also sing Puff the Magic Dragon backwards! To learn more about Suzanne, visit her website at www.suzannekelmanauthor.com.

How did you first get into writing? What does your process look like when you’re working on a project?

Firstly, thank you for your interest in my work. I have been writing on and off most of my adult life; my background is in theatre and there was often a need to write short plays or edit a script, but I feel I really became serious about it as a craft in my 40’s. That is when I wrote my first full-length screenplay “Maggie the Brave.”

As far as my process goes, I always work on more than one project at a time. This keeps me from getting writer’s block and also keeps everything I’m doing fresh. If I am struggling on a project the very act of letting it go and thinking about another one is often the key I need to find the answers. I’m also pretty disciplined about my schedule and try to spend at least 4 hours a day actually “writing” and even more when I have deadlines. I tend to write first draft work in the morning when I’m at my most creative.

Read the rest of this interview on Andrea Hurst's Blog page 

http://www.andreahurst.com/authornomics-interview-with-screenwriter-suzanne-kelman/

It's not everyday you get an email From The Academy...

It's not everyday that you get an email from the Academy, but I did yesterday. This is what it said:

For any of you unaware what this is, it means our script HELD is doing AWESOME!!!  This would be a grand event in itself if we hadn't just recieved word from another very prestigious screenwriting competition, PAGE Internationl Screening Awards, just the day before.

This is just unbelievable, It has made its way through nearly 8'000 scripts to make it to the quarter-finals of this one, too. Our "little script that could" has just beat out 16'000 other scripts to fight its way up this creative ladder. I couldn't be more excited and it makes me so happy, not because I am patting myself on the back, but out of all the movies I've written this is the one the world needs to see. 

Here is the backstory to how it became a screenplay.

This script has a journey of it's own that started 15 years ago. 

My writing partner on this project, Susannah, found the seed of this story on a tiny card on the wall of a Holocaust survivors museum 15 years ago. She wrote it down on the back of an envelope (which she eventually lost) but never forgot the story. She relayed it to me one evening in 2010, and I couldn't sleep that night I was so stirred by it. I called her the next day and said,

"We have to write this; this story needs to be out in the world."

We then sat down and outlined the whole thing, creating a bigger, more compelling story around that seed idea and wrote the whole thing in ONE week. I know people say this, but it is true, this story wrote itself. It is one of those stories that has a magic of its own, another worldliness, that makes you sit back and say, "I don't think we wrote that on our own." 

I have written seven screenplays but this is the one that always tugs at my heartstrings. 

And even though it has been on a five-year journey so far, we know, without a shadow of a doubt, IT WILL GET MADE ONE DAY because it needs to be in the world to inspire us. It is just a matter of time, when.