2023 In Review

2023 in Review

ID: Jessica Renslow holds a camera as she gets B-Roll in the snow.

That old saying about making God laugh when you make a plan held true for me this past year. So, 2023 was a very transitional and productive 12 months for myself as an writer/filmmaker. I was blessed to be awarded several writing/artist grants and a fellowship. These came at truly the right time as I was also laid off from my day job. (Yeah 2023 was a tough year for those of us working in the tech sector.) 

ID: Jessica Renslow Stands in front of a pink Christmas tree displaying he 6 months along baby bump.

Even in the bad times there are moments for reflection and learning. Something I picked along the way was learning to not underbid myself. I was required to really pursue and negotiate hard for my freelance gigs which ended up being a skill I know will come in handy in the long run. Also, I had to figure out my family’s insurance situation which eventually ended up not only saving me some money, but really opened my eyes when it comes to determining if a full time job’s benefits are actually worth the hourly pay cut one takes by going the salary route. I think a lot of writers hold back from taking the freelance route because of fear of losing benefits. From my experience, I recommend to anyone considering becoming a full time working artist do the research on how the change could impact you and your family. The results may surprise you. 

ID: Jessica Renslow National Humanities Conference Workshop Speaker Profile.

Financial ups and downs aside, I was able to stick to my writing schedule, garner some great new clients and spend more time with my guys. Shoutout to my supportive hubby for walking the tightrope of life with a working artist. What an eventful first year of marriage it has been!

ID: Best Documentary Short Award from the Madonie Sicilian Film Festival  in Palermo.

So here is how 2023 played out for me. I do this practice each year to give myself perspective. Writing is a such a solo pursuit it is easy to get bogged down by all the rejections and easy not to accentuate the wins. This is a reminder to myself and anyone else out there pecking way at a project that tenacity does eventually pay off. I did not reach all of my original goals, but I grabbed a few brass rings I did not even knew existed at the end of 2022 when I drafted my intentions for 2023. So here it is, the good the bad and the ugly. 

ID: Jessica Renslow speaking at the National Humanities Conference where 300+ government, nonprofits and scholars came to discuss the field.

My Original 2023 Goals Were:

• Finish converting my second chap book into a middle grade contemporary.-Finished
• Complete my adult paranormal thriller.  -Almost (17,000 more words to go)
• Finalize postproduction on Take Bike the Streets (A documentary short film)-Finished
• Enter TBTS into some festivals-Finished and Premiered in Sicily!
• Finish the quirky romcom script I have been brewing on for a few years. (Not done)
• Get an agent (Got closer)
• Enjoy living life to the fullest with my guys! (Yep and we are adding another little                               boy to the pack in April of 2024.)

ID: Take Bike the Streets Trailer

My Actual Stats for 2023 Were:

• 122.227 New Words Written 
• 111,750 Words Reviewed/Edited
• 8  Pitch Events Entered/ 7 Agent ♥️/ 3 Publisher ♥️
• 44 Agents Queried /5 Partials Requests /3 Full Requests 
• 3 Grants & 1 Fellowship Awarded 
• 15 Articles Pitched
• 1 Speaking Engagement (National Humanities Conference)
• 2 Films Shown at Festivals 2 Awards Received 
• 1 New Nonfiction Client 
• Participated in Camp Nanowrimo in March
• Completed all 31 Inktober Prompts
• Participated in Camp Nanowrimo in November
• Applied to 614 day jobs (Got ideal job offer and accepted it on 1/4/24 )

ID: Jessica Renslow Writing/Creative Project Stats for 2023 listed on white cards tacked to a light turquoise board.

My 2024 Goals Are:

• Complete my adult paranormal thriller and workshop it
• Finalize postproduction on Unearthed Documentary
• Enter Unearthed Documentary into some festivals
• Finish Cozy Mystery rough draft
• Finish holiday romcom
• Finish 2 nonfiction children’s books
• Query contemporary middle grade fish out of water comedy 
• Get an agent
• Have a safe birth and lots of fun adventures with my guys!

ID: Green Card with red letters that read "Joy." Inside the "O" a 3 year old boy smiles surrounded by Christmas decorations.

Hope your 2024 rocks and head over to jessicarenslow.com for more info/ to follow me on my social media platforms. 

ID: Green Card with red letters that read "Expecting even more joy in 2024!" Jessica Renslow and her family are surrounded by Christmas decorations as they announce their second baby.

Springing into 2022: Cover Story, NPR/PBS, and School Visits

Since coming home from New Orleans, where our Almost Fairytales Films latest short, METHOD: A Voice Actor Prepares, premiered at the Lysistrata Future is Female Film Festival, life has been a bit of a whirlwind. (If you want to read more about our fabulous experience at Lysistrata you can read my previous blog here.)

Word spread of our premiere and the NWI Times ran a cover story about our creative process and our crew’s postproduction experience during the time of Covid-19 (full story here). Then Chris Nolte from Regionally Speaking contacted me for an interview on NPR about living as a working creative in Chicagoland, Lysistrata and the other festivals/ awards our comedic short is up for this year (full interview here). 

After my Regionally Speaking interview, Eye on the Arts got a hold of me to be one of their featured artist’s interviews for NPR/PBS. John Caine and I chatted about the challenges of filmmaking during the pandemic and the tenacity it takes to complete a project (full interview here). It was a lot of fun discussing our little project with like-minded artists supporters. Love all the local support for working creatives!

The spring has also been one for school visits. I participated in a collaboration between the Family Folklore Foundation, NorthernLights Eco Adventures, The Hammond Academy of Science and Technology and ThePaul H. Douglas Center for Environmental Education.

In celebration of Earth Day, these community partners assembled to hike the portion of the Indiana Dunes National Park located in Gary, Indiana. Participants wrote out their observations of Miller Woods, then interpreted them as creative nonfiction. They also performed a radio play about the history of the dunes 100+ year battle to get recognized as a National Park. My little wild thing even played a skunk in this historical reenactment. The Chicago Post Tribune ran a nice article on the celebration (full article here). 

 

I had a wonderful time helping the participants draft their pieces and presenting about my experience writing natural science articles for Cricket Media’s Muse Magazine.

This past week has been filled with activity as well. I started by submitting my partial requests to the literary agents that liked my #PitDark tweets. (#PitDark is a one-day-long Twitter contest for writers seeking representation. It is open to all writing age groups the stories just need to have a spooky theme.) Now I wait, but it is exciting. I hope THE SECRET OF THE GHOST SHIP’S COMPASS finds a home. Some of you may remember from my past blog, about the awesome yet challenging (due to the lockdown) year I had as an Indiana Arts Commission Individual Artist Advancement Grant Fellow. 

This middle grade paranormal mystery is set in the dunes and features a fun cast of nature-loving characters. It would be amazing to find the right agent to help it get to the shelves. So, if you are the good vibe-sending type, please throw a few my way. It has been an excellent learning experience and doing #PitDark also helped me connect with more members of the writing community too.

I also got asked to do a school visit at the Area Career Center. Located in Hammond, Indiana, they serve high school students seeking vocational education from across Chicagoland. It is an amazing facility. I would have loved to attend this program as a high schooler. 

 

I cannot believe the amount of equipment they have access to, that they graduate with 12 college credits and that they also get certified in Adobe Premiere Suite. Just wonderful all around and their teacher, Stephanie Reiser is doing a great job. These young leaders have made it to the national championships several times. We discussed my zigzagging career path, what it is like to be a working creative/small business owner and deciding what type of life they wanted to shape for themselves. 

 

I shared my experiences working in the Hollywood Studio System and for a boutique sound studio in Burbank, as well as when/why I went out on my own. Speaking to some of the future broadcasters and filmmakers of tomorrow was a great honor. My “production assistant” and I also enjoyed the full studio tour and view down of the students’ award-winning projects. I am hoping to help become one of their internship sponsors and have these talented young people work on the postproduction of Almost Fairytales’ latest documentary, Take Bike the Streets (film info here).

I cannot wait to see what this summer brings. I will keep hammering away at my writing and filming a few passion projects, as well as doing wedding planning with my Fiancé for our October nuptials. My guys and I are also looking to savor these soon to be summer days, as winter will be here again in a blink. Hope all of you dear readers enjoy this warm weather and the seasonal festivities.

2021 In Review

 Happy New Year everyone! 2021 was one of those strange years that was both slow and fast. Well, I'm ready to see what 2022 will bring. On the personal side it was eventful with Shawn and I navigating parenthood in the second wave of the pandemic and getting engaged in October. My day gig had me commuting to downtown Chicago on the train every day for 3 months. That meant at least 2 hours of commute time. I decided to make that my writing time, which ended up working well, as anyone with a 15th month old knows, it's hard to steal quiet time.

Here are my stats:

• 2 articles published in 2021 in Cricket Media's Muse Magazine (One was a feature!)
• Joined Storyteller Academy (Totally worth the monthly subscription, especially if you're someone who can't travel to in-person workshops. They do remote learning both live and recorded they also set you up with a critique group.)
• Joined a wonderful critique group
• Joined the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators 
• 16 article pitches submitted for various children's magazines for 2022
• Workshopped my completed middle grade mystery/ fantasy and currently querying it.
• Completed and workshopped first chap book. 
• Did my first Inktober
• Did my second Nanowrimo
• Got first full request from an agent. (Waiting to hear back post holidays. Even if I don't get signed, I see this as step in the right direction. So far, I've queried this book to six agents. I've gotten 4 polite declines, 1 no response and 1 full request. The query journey is interesting.)

                                         

My 2022 Goals:

• Complete my first upper middle grade fantasy 
• Finalize the video for the comedic short film I wrote and directed with my crew a few years ago.
• Get our short film into some festivals.
• Finish the quirky romcom script I've been brewing on for a few years.
• Get an agent.
• Plan our fun fabulous getaway wedding for October with my love.

CHEERS TO A HAPPY HEALTHY 2022!

Falling Out of 2021

“I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”

― L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

 

My favorite middle grade heroine said it best, and I really do love October. Maybe it's because I'm a fall baby, or maybe it's because Halloween is one of my absolute favorite holidays. The tenth month of 2021 proved to be very eventful for my little family. The really big news is that my long-time fella, Shawn, proposed. 

On the publishing front my first feature article for Cricket Media's Muse Magazine dropped this month! I'm really stoked about this as I grew up reading many of Cricket's magazine and love that they remain to be an ad-free space for kids. You can purchase this edition, or get an annual subscription here. 

This year I tried Inktober for the first time and really enjoyed it. It took a while for me to get my sketching muscles back. I loved drawing as a kid. I drew before I wrote. I was the kid who’s mom had to teach her to write early because she was tired of dictating all the toddler stories I told her so she could keep up with the illustrations I sped through. I was the kid that got every art award at all the schools I went to until I graduated 8th grade. Art was easy for me, it came naturally and then for some reason I can’t really figure out, I put my art aside. Coming back to it over a quarter century later is humbling. I’m so out of practice. My sketch skills aren’t close to what they were, but that’s what I like about Inktober. The stakes are low and it’s all about creating a drawing practice. I’ve gotten better at sticking to my writing practice now I’m getting this pursuit started. I’d love to eventually illustrate my #ChapBook. This has been such a great way to start a real drawing practice. Next I’m gearing up for #NanNoWriMo project which starts Monday.

✍️🎨🖌