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If you want to hone your skills in an intimate and lovely setting, try the Southeastern Writers Workshop. Steve Berry will be teaching a couple sessions on Advanced Fiction. Agent Holly McClure will speak on how to survive the current publishing crisis, and Molly Glick, agent in residence, will speak on how to write a proposal and she will listen to author pitches for their books. Other classes include Jimmy Carl Harris teaching Short Fiction, Jo Kittinger teaching Writing for Young Readers, and Tag-Team Sheila Hudson and Amy Munnell with Chocolate for the Writers soul. Find out more here at http://www.southeasternwriters.com/
In addition, you will get a chance to meet other writers in different parts of their careers to find out what they are doing, what works for them, and what they struggle with. It’s so great to finally find folks who know the lure of the blank page and the need to express an opinion.
It’s not to late to sign up, even though the manuscript deadline for contests and such is ast.
Gival Press Short Story Award
Deadline: August 8, 2009 (postmarked)
Our dates never change, if the date falls on a Sunday, then Monday becomes the default postmarked date.
Guidelines:
Submissions of a previously unpublished original (not a translation) short story in English must be approximately 5,000 to 15,000 words of high literary quality, typed, double-spaced on one side of the paper only, with word count in the upper left hand side of the first page, along with the title. The author’s name should not appear on the numbered pages of the ms which should be clipped together. Author should keep a copy of the submission as it will not be returned.
Author Identification:
Submit name, address, telephone number, email address on a separate page, along with the title of the short story submitted. A short bio should also be included.
If the short story wins, the author must make the manuscript available to Gival Press on an IBM-compatible disk or CD in Rich Text Format (RTF)—this refers to how one saves the document on one’s computer disk.
Reading fee:
$25.00 (USD) by check or money order drawn on an American bank for each short story submitted. Payable to: Gival Press, LLC.
International entrants must send a check drawn on a USA bank routed through a USA address, such as Bank of America; no international money orders are acceptable. Please note that Gival Press can also accept the entry free by major credit card; however, we only take credit card information by phone (703.351.0079).
Mail to:
Robert L. Giron, Editor
Gival Press Short Story Award
Gival Press, LLC
PO Box 3812
Arlington, VA 22203.
Notification of the Winner:
Include a self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE) for notification of the winner or visit our website (http://www.givalpress.com), where the winner and finalists will be announced.
The David Nathan Meyerson Fiction Prize
Southwest Review is pleased to announce a new prize for fiction writers who have not published a first book. Named for the late David Nathan Meyerson (1967-1998), a therapist and talented writer who died before he was able to show to the greater world the full fruits of his literary potential, the prize consists of $1,000 and publication in SWR. With the generous support of Marlene, Marti, and Morton Meyerson, the award will continue to honor David Meyerson’s memory by encouraging and taking notice of other writers of great promise.
RULES: The prize is open to writers who have not yet published a novel. Submissions must be no longer than 8,000 words. A $25.00 reading fee must accompany each submission. Work should be printed without the author’s name (if work is submitted online, please omit the author’s name from the final “submission content text area” . Name and address should appear only on the cover letter or at the top of the online form. Submissions will not be returned. No simultaneous or previously published work. For notification, include a SASE. Postmarked deadline for receipt of the work is May 1, 2009. Winner will be announced in August. Entries should be addressed to: The Meyerson Fiction Prize, Southwest Review, P.O. Box 750374, Dallas, TX 75275-0374.
Southern Methodist University
PO Box 750374 . Dallas TX 75275-0374
214-768-1037 . Fax 214-768-1408
Email: swr@smu.edu
Copyright Southwest Review 2009
SharperIron Writing Contest Deadline May 20th
Sharper Iron is always looking for good writers, especially right now so they’rr launching a writing contest.
Participants write articles from a conservative, biblical, fundamental point of view and send them to us via submissions@sharperiron.org.
The articles should be 1,200 to 1,600 words long (multi-part series are welcome) and address one of the following questions.
1. Is the idea that “all truth is God’s truth” true?
2. Why are you a dispensationalist after taking a long hard look at the alternatives?
3. Why do you prefer an alternative after taking a long, hard look at dispensationalism?
4. What are the biggest challenges facing Christian parents today?
5. What social or cultural trend do you believe Christians are especially in need of thinking about biblically?
Contestants may submit multiple articles.
Two winners will be announced sometime after May 20, and each will receive the prestigious “SharperIron Prize for excellence in fundamentalist writing” and $100 in addition to being published at SI. (The prestige may be imaginary, but the $100 is real!). Runners-up will be published at SI in subsequent months. Some contest articles may be published during the contest period, but judges will not choose the contest winners until after the May 20 deadline.
Qualifications
Writers may be of any age or gender but must be believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, agree with SI’s doctrinal statement, and believe in the principle of separation from apostasy.
More details on the website: http://sharperiron.org/2009/04/14/sharperiron-writing-contest/
Southeastern Writers Workshop is held every June at St. Simons Island in Georgia. It’s a small, intimate conference where people make lifelong friendships and get a real push for their writing careers. With at least three days tuition ($350), you get 3, 15-minute manuscript evaluations face-to-face with the instructors. The deadline for the submission of manuscripts for evaluation has been extended to April 15th. You can submit 3 manuscripts for evaluation, and you can enter up to 14 contests, including one especially for first time attendees. The 3 evaluation manuscripts can be entered into one contest each at no extra charge. Contests cover fiction, poetry, non-fiction, limericks, inspirational writing, science fiction, and romance genres.
Including these manuscript evaluations in the regular tuition is unusual to say the least. The instructors and agent-in-residence generally eat all meals on campus at Epworth by the Sea, so you can get to know them as people. in the publishing world, it IS who knows you as well as how well you write.
Steve Berry teaches a two-hour seminar on advanced fiction technique. There are two seminars on the business side of writing and how to survive the current publishing economic crisis. I am teaching a blogging and social marketing class. Mollie Glick is the agent-in-residence, and she will be teaching how to write a successful proposal. Dana Wildsmith teaches poetry, and Jo Kittinger teaches writing for young readers. Amy Munnell of 3questionsandanswers.com blog and Sheila Hudson will be teaching writing for inspirational anthologies, such as chicken soup. It’s a four day vacation in the sea islands of Georgia, a beautiful area, and lodging at Epworth provides all meals–a wonderful writers vacation in a family friendly setting. Check it out: http://southeasternwriters.com
When I was much younger, aspiring to be an artist, a met Becky Lee, a woman who was a successful artist and freelance writer. She asked me about my work habits with my artwork, “How long have you been painting seriously.” I had to ask what she meant by “seriously.” She said a serious painter painted every day, or at least did something to support the painting–sketching, stretching canvas, making studies, and actually painting and finishing pieces. Even painters who had full time jobs must find ways and time to do art if they were serious.
I had to admit to her that I was not behaving as a serious artist, even though I was running a small studio, and doing a little framing and teaching on the side. It says a lot about a person who does not make time for this reflection and analysis–it says that person is not an artist but a person who likes to imagine being an artist. Still, the dream begins with imagination. But it also takes the doing of the thing, the arrangment of time and the choice of this action over that one.
According to Elizabeth George:
Lots of people want to have written; they don’t want to write. In other words, they want to see their name on the front cover of a book and their grinning picture on the back. But this is what comes at the end of a job, not at the beginning.
The work of writing involves reaching into my own life experience for material that will resonate with you out there, to find the commonality, the shared moment, the chord of your heart string vibrating in harmony with mine–or in discord, for that too is writing. Writing is about finding the thread of the story, and then telling that story with the thousand words that build the picture in the reader. That is the fun of writing. It helps to imagine a reader, to wonder what the reader needs or wants, and to work to give it openly and with feeling.
Making art is not time off from the real world. If it is, the artist has a hobby. Serious writers write every day, make time to write, and actually finish projects, send them out naked into the big world and start on the next thing. It helps to think of the reader, to know what you can offer in the way of shared experience, insight and information. As much as I get caught up in the daily-ness of my job and my other projects, writing is the real part of my life, the part where I interface with my mind and find out the truth about what I have observed in the outer world. Sometimes I even share it with the world. Seriously.
A twitterista asked how many of us were tired of writing headlines that start with numbers: 7 Ways to Cook Hamburger, 10 Steps to a Higher Plane, 5 Best Tips for Cow Tipping. Numbered headlines are popular for two reasons: They promise a quickly scanned chunk of information, and they are at the top of the list.
Here’s one way to check this out for yourself. Do an EzineArticles.com search on any topic for which you’d like more information. What shows up first? If the articles are sorted alphabetically, the numbers are at the top.
In the instant information age, the person on top is must more likely to be read than the third or fourth person on the list. If you have a number as the first word in your headline, you are more likely to be at the top, if the list is alphabetical. Oddly enough, alphabetical listings do not follow numerical order: 10 is likely to be higher in the list than 2. So a top ten list might be chosen more quickly. Even “ten” is alphabetically higher than “two.” But “four,” “five,” and “eight” are higher still. Scan the results you get and see for yourself.
Here’s another idea. Try posting the same general article to the same source(with enough rewording to avoid duplicate content slaps) and try different headlines. Which one gets picked up more often? Of course, given the plethora of articles in some subject areas, this might take a while to test.
The third idea? It’s easier to write to a list. It’s easier to write down 1., 2., 3., and fill up the blank lines with some kind of content, even if you can’t brainstorm it and have to surf to your favorite content patch to do some foraging. And writing more often gives you more content, no matter what kind of headlines you put on them.
If you aren’t writing, then it doesn’t matter what you do with your headlines. But remember that your readers aren’t scanning for great headlines. They want information now, served hot and to go. give them that, and they’ll come back.
One of the best things I learned during the 30-day Challenge was to use Google Alerts and Google Reader to collect my content every day. While it is sometimes like picking the beans before you cook them, it gives you an overview of what the web is saying on a given day about your keywords.
A Google Alert is simply a search on a given key word or phrase that Google sends to you every day. The default is to send it to your gmail account, but using Google reader is a better solution. Start by making a Google account, which is easily done with a free gmail address. Once you have a Google account, you have access to all of Google’s toys–adsense, alerts, reader, iGoogle, etc etc etc.
For now, go to your iGoogle.com page and log in with your new gmail address. You don’t have to give the address to anyone, just use it for Google services. At the top of your iGoogle page, you’ll see a series of links–news, maps, images…More. Click More, and in the middle of that dropdown menu, click Reader. Sign up for an account. Free and easy.
Now you have a place to store all your RSS feeds and alerts. There is a button in the top left where you can do a search or paste a link for a feed. Once you set up a feed, you can make folders to organize and store your information.
Across the top of Google Reader, the same services menu appears, so click More, and at the bottom of the dropdown, click even more to go to the list of all services. Alerts is the first listing on the top left. Click it, and on the right you will see a search box.
If you have done you keyword research, that would be the place to start, but for beginners, use your own name. It is gratifying to see that your own blog posts are picked up, if nothing else. Type in your name or your keyword phrase in the top box. Choose Comprehensive int he second box, although you could choose only News or only Blogs or only Video if you prefer. Skip the third box and set the last box to Feed. This is why you set up Google reader first.
When you click on Create Feed, a new page appears that lists your new alert, and a link to view in Google Reader. Click the Google Reader link. Your new feed will be at the top of the page with three buttons: Mark All as Read, Refresh, and Feed Settings. Click Feed Settings, and click the last entry in the dropdown: New Folder. Name the folder the same as your keyword phrase. This allows you to sort a lot of alerts into manageable clumps for quick scanning.
You can also add any RSS feed (such as the one for this blog!) to Googe Reader. On another page or tab, surf to a blog or page you want to follow. Click on the RSS badge to get the link URL, and copy it. Then go back to Google Reader and paste the URL into the Add Subscription box at the top left of Google Reader. Then you can add that feed to any of your folders or make a new folder just for it. The folders can also be dragged and dropped into each other for better organization.
As you check your alerts, you can find items for comment, links of interest for blogging or twittering, or just information. You can just scan the alert, or you can click on the title of each listing and go to that page for more information. Now that you know how, Be A Lert! This world needs more lerts.
Though I have been silent here, I have been writing every day in a spiral notebook first thing in the morning, dumping out the fuzz and brain lint of sleep and only occasionally finding a bit of something to say. Perhaps it’s my way of avoiding blogging, but I don’t want to put brain lint out here, as much as this might sound like it.
I have a few writing projects that have been languishing behind my teaching projects. I don’t know how Stephen King managed to write while he was teaching high school–maybe it is his wife who doesn’t take any crap from him. Maybe he just knows how to work harder than I do.
I’ve been discovering twitter and facebook, both on my own account (follow me at http://twitter.com/charlottebabb ) and for my job as “social networks manager” a new sort of title if ever there were one. It’s a different world to have specific philosophical issues to be wary of when I don’t know the content well enough even to revise what someone else writes. I’m always hounding my student bloggers while searching my Google alerts for subject matter. It’s ironic.
But other people manage. It’s up to me to suck it in–in a good way–and channel it through the keyboard.
Maybe if I could learn to read my own cold handwriting…
How can you find people to talk to who are experts in what you are researching? Who has been there and done that?
Peter Shankman knows, and he’s willing to tell you free!
Post a request at http://helpareporter.com/press/ to find people who have the knowledge or experience you need. Shankman sends out one to three emails a day to his massive list posting the query, the contact information for the writer and the deadline information. You can also keep your anonymnity, but the reply takes longer as it is forwarded to Peter first.
If you have a really short deadline (less than 4 hours) you can fill out the form on his website, and then forward the autoreply you get to him at urgent [at] shankman.com so that he can post to twitter for an immediate response.
You can also sign up for the HARO newsletter at http://helpareporter.com to get the requests and see what pepole are writing about. And you can be one of the experts by answering a query.
Just don’t waste the reporter’s time by answering a query just because you want to push your latest book.
On the other hand, you are an expert in your subject matter, so it helps the reporter’s credibility if you are published in that subject.
Shankman’s Help A Reporter Out (HARO) is supported by advertising, which might be a good venue for you if your target market is reporters and journalists. Or if you wish to pay, he suggests donating to an animal shelter and keep the good karma flowing.
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