Every Day Fiction is paying $1 for stories under 1000 words.
http://www.everydayfiction.com/submit-story/
They make you sign up for their forum, which is new and strange but nothing to worry about. I believe the purpose of this is so that it will remember your name, contact info and bio each time you sign in to submit another story. Do not worry about that.
I have been rejected by them a few times, and what stands out for me is that they give a thoughtful inventory of what works for them and doesn't in the submission. These are neither cruel nor kind since I infer that these are actually internal memorandum, one editor writing to another, which makes their curt review of the submission very informational.
I don't submit to them meaning to be rejected so that I can get an editorial insight. Do not do that. I submit stories with a certain commitment that I know I have done good, polished work, and even given that this is all subjective, sometimes I get seriously confused. Sometimes it helps to get some professional insight, and sometimes I need to be told the obvious.
They accept only unpublished work, and since they are an online publisher that includes your story sharing website or blog. There is a lesson here. Throw your work past your friends and acquaintances until something strikes a note, even go ahead and throw shit at publishers until something sticks, but please don't just throw a few chunks online for free expecting fame or even feedback. If you want help you have to give something, even if that something is just trust. If you trust a few people to judge your work they will take it seriously and help you (maybe.) But showing work to just anybody is a lot like showing it to nobody at all. Now, giving stories away is the entire driving force within webcomics, which I love and respect with the occasional strong exception. However, giving it away is something that works when you make it work, not something that runs by itself.
They are a website, but also a mailing list. Sometimes I do like to know what business model the publisher is using even though it doesn't change the color of their money. This may be a part of my web 2.0 "participating in something" delusion. The nature/business model of the publication is this: they email the stories to their list, allowing people to read short fiction without navigating to short fiction websites which are more obviously not work. This is not how Every Day Fiction explains their venture, but it's how I prefer to see it. Maybe the model is just meant to give people small amounts of prose at regular intervals, because only using a website which would archive large amounts might intimidate people who don't feel they have time to be big readers. But it's also true that a downside to a website or an RSS feed is that when you check those at work, it is obvious you are not working, and if you read an email at work, it appears that you are.
So they pay you a dollar for first serial rights. I cannot explain the world of publishing, it is not my expertise. My understanding of it is this: writers give away the first serial rights to their stories for nothing or next to nothing, but later the rights revert back to the author, who can make a book of short stories and sell them, including versions of stories that were rejected from those places. This is what I infer from reading collections of short stories--often every third story has a note saying that this or that journal originally ran that story.
A veteran (by which I mean old person) writer told me that no news is good news, by which he means the longer it takes to hear back from a publisher, the less they hate what you sent them. This has less to do with EDF and more to do with everything else on this blog, but I've had to start a spreadsheet of creative work, how long it is, and what publishers have seen it. This has less to do with how prolific I am and more to do with how forgetful I am. Generally I will hear back from a publisher around the time I completely forget what they publish and what I sent them. If the idea that no news is good news is true, I wonder, are my stories getting that much better or is this blog just getting harder to do?
Friday, March 28, 2008
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Write about retaliation in a specific type of setting, and other offers
The exciting part:
I actually found a working listing of opportunities for writers that clears expired deadlines and has rags that are on the up and up--AND it separates contests from calls for submissions for those of us interested in becoming published writers first before becoming award-winning writers and those of us that don't have money to just mail away.
This (like every functional tool for artists I've seen on the internet) was created for Canadians.
Oh, Canada. Here it is.
http://www.placesforwriters.com/calls/
Luckily many of these aren't regionally restrictive.
A paying call for submissions:
http://www.edgeofpropinquity.net/library.asp?id=61
This website wants 2-6000 word short stories (more on what kind, later.)
Submissions are selected monthly and will be accepted on this theme throughout this year.
Payment is $50 per story regardless of length.
There are a few things I'm getting tired of in this aimless search of mine. Why do so many of these rags have no specific guideline for the type of writing they're looking for? Isn't a cohesive issue like a mix tape? Can't there be some connective tissue? Well, this offer has some connective tissue, so much that there actually isn't a single half finished story idea in my warehouse of notebooks that I can jam into their framework, which is fantastic, in a way.
The framework is this: the theme for this year is retaliation, but the stories in this magazine must take place in a modern day setting and also a fantasy setting hidden in the modern day one. What's lovely is that they don't want any specific kind of fantasy, they just want something abnormal and exciting lurking behind an ordinary modern backdrop. In this restriction there is much freedom--as long as you stay in this decade and this planet, you can have mole men Mafiosos or soccer mom international spies or Jesus himself, and some retaliation, of course. None of those are recommended by the website in specific, but they aren't discouraged either.
And of course these guidelines are not so specific that they would have you create something you couldn't use in another publication or your eventual collection of short stories, just in case it takes you over a year to write or your story gets rejected but you remain convinced it's good for something.
The Secret Challenge
In this entry I have made the writing opportunity function of this blog nearly obsolete, so I will step things up a little tiny bit, by having my first Secret Challenge. It's only a secret because it has nothing directly to do with the publisher and they will never know anything about it.
The first secret challenge is simple.
You probably have a few people who will critique your work for you.
Our challenge is, find one more, show someone else your work and expand your pool of volunteer editors, assuming your new volunteer has some constructive comment. For some people this is a pretty tough thing to do, but no less necessary for being difficult.
I used to think that posting on a website was a good way to get critiqued, but showing work to just anybody is a lot like showing it to nobody at all. People give you critiques because you trusted them with your work--besides, creative websites are horribly cliquish, and people are more likely to complain that your work doesn't fit that websites' particular brand of sickness than to critique your work for what it is. Giving your work away online is a strong self promotional tool that many have used to great success, but it's not how you get critiqued
In the future I will try out different methods of getting critiqued, but I like to keep it at no more than one secret challenge per week, perhaps making this the first Weekly Secret Challenge.
I actually found a working listing of opportunities for writers that clears expired deadlines and has rags that are on the up and up--AND it separates contests from calls for submissions for those of us interested in becoming published writers first before becoming award-winning writers and those of us that don't have money to just mail away.
This (like every functional tool for artists I've seen on the internet) was created for Canadians.
Oh, Canada. Here it is.
http://www.placesforwriters.com/calls/
Luckily many of these aren't regionally restrictive.
A paying call for submissions:
http://www.edgeofpropinquity.net/library.asp?id=61
This website wants 2-6000 word short stories (more on what kind, later.)
Submissions are selected monthly and will be accepted on this theme throughout this year.
Payment is $50 per story regardless of length.
There are a few things I'm getting tired of in this aimless search of mine. Why do so many of these rags have no specific guideline for the type of writing they're looking for? Isn't a cohesive issue like a mix tape? Can't there be some connective tissue? Well, this offer has some connective tissue, so much that there actually isn't a single half finished story idea in my warehouse of notebooks that I can jam into their framework, which is fantastic, in a way.
The framework is this: the theme for this year is retaliation, but the stories in this magazine must take place in a modern day setting and also a fantasy setting hidden in the modern day one. What's lovely is that they don't want any specific kind of fantasy, they just want something abnormal and exciting lurking behind an ordinary modern backdrop. In this restriction there is much freedom--as long as you stay in this decade and this planet, you can have mole men Mafiosos or soccer mom international spies or Jesus himself, and some retaliation, of course. None of those are recommended by the website in specific, but they aren't discouraged either.
And of course these guidelines are not so specific that they would have you create something you couldn't use in another publication or your eventual collection of short stories, just in case it takes you over a year to write or your story gets rejected but you remain convinced it's good for something.
The Secret Challenge
In this entry I have made the writing opportunity function of this blog nearly obsolete, so I will step things up a little tiny bit, by having my first Secret Challenge. It's only a secret because it has nothing directly to do with the publisher and they will never know anything about it.
The first secret challenge is simple.
You probably have a few people who will critique your work for you.
Our challenge is, find one more, show someone else your work and expand your pool of volunteer editors, assuming your new volunteer has some constructive comment. For some people this is a pretty tough thing to do, but no less necessary for being difficult.
I used to think that posting on a website was a good way to get critiqued, but showing work to just anybody is a lot like showing it to nobody at all. People give you critiques because you trusted them with your work--besides, creative websites are horribly cliquish, and people are more likely to complain that your work doesn't fit that websites' particular brand of sickness than to critique your work for what it is. Giving your work away online is a strong self promotional tool that many have used to great success, but it's not how you get critiqued
In the future I will try out different methods of getting critiqued, but I like to keep it at no more than one secret challenge per week, perhaps making this the first Weekly Secret Challenge.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Stories That Lift call for submissions, paid
http://www.storiesthatlift.com/STL-routines/submitstories.htm
Stories that lift is paying $5 or more (but less than 20$) for stories between 50 and 7,500 words that are acceptable for adults and children, but more on that later.
Submissions are always being accepted.
Most of the publishers I talk about here are people I think of as kind of cool, and this is no exception. They are accepting stories to post on their website with the intention of making them into audio books, authors are paid an additional $5 when their story is turned into an audio story that can be streamed for free--they appear to pay for the site through their Google text ads.
The audio book thing is very appealing to me, and initially, the idea of a site for family friendly stories put me off--so much that is supposed to be family friendly is really just neutered or neurotic--afraid of saying anything and yet brazen in the disregard for the intelligence of the reader. When I saw the title An Atheist's View I thought I had a chance after all, and I sent in a very short memoir on the irrelevance of identity--perhaps I was thinking of the children's and family entertainment of COSMOS, Carl Sagan frightening children with his elongated consonants and his unrelenting "billions and billions and billions."
Typically I make sure that my work is peer reviewed, and while I certainly read over it a few times, I hadn't shown it to anyone. I had found a paragraph that I had written among a series of rambling, unrelated paragraphs, and I realized that it had an actual setting, beginning, middle and end.
They accepted it and mailed me a check. The story is up there, and I may be getting a check if and when they make an audio story out of it. This sort of blows my mind since this is a family site and my story is essentially about how there's no way of knowing if life has any meaning whatsoever.
It is worth noting the intellectual property agreement is royalty free and non-exclusive. So they can make money off the story forever without giving you any more money, including by selling it in books or CDs for just paying you once--but you can make money off the story too, either through another publisher (although many don't accept previously published work) or in your own self published thing, like a collection of short stories.
Although some might have their hearts set on getting the slow trickle of royalties, this opportunity is still worth while as I see it. They're definitely a small-time startup, so we'll see how they progress from here. In the mean time I'm pretty psyched that I've contributed to some family operation in another state. And if some place insists on my having a publication history, if I really feel like it I can point to this, a story someone bought, small time though it was.
Stories that lift is paying $5 or more (but less than 20$) for stories between 50 and 7,500 words that are acceptable for adults and children, but more on that later.
Submissions are always being accepted.
Most of the publishers I talk about here are people I think of as kind of cool, and this is no exception. They are accepting stories to post on their website with the intention of making them into audio books, authors are paid an additional $5 when their story is turned into an audio story that can be streamed for free--they appear to pay for the site through their Google text ads.
The audio book thing is very appealing to me, and initially, the idea of a site for family friendly stories put me off--so much that is supposed to be family friendly is really just neutered or neurotic--afraid of saying anything and yet brazen in the disregard for the intelligence of the reader. When I saw the title An Atheist's View I thought I had a chance after all, and I sent in a very short memoir on the irrelevance of identity--perhaps I was thinking of the children's and family entertainment of COSMOS, Carl Sagan frightening children with his elongated consonants and his unrelenting "billions and billions and billions."
Typically I make sure that my work is peer reviewed, and while I certainly read over it a few times, I hadn't shown it to anyone. I had found a paragraph that I had written among a series of rambling, unrelated paragraphs, and I realized that it had an actual setting, beginning, middle and end.
They accepted it and mailed me a check. The story is up there, and I may be getting a check if and when they make an audio story out of it. This sort of blows my mind since this is a family site and my story is essentially about how there's no way of knowing if life has any meaning whatsoever.
It is worth noting the intellectual property agreement is royalty free and non-exclusive. So they can make money off the story forever without giving you any more money, including by selling it in books or CDs for just paying you once--but you can make money off the story too, either through another publisher (although many don't accept previously published work) or in your own self published thing, like a collection of short stories.
Although some might have their hearts set on getting the slow trickle of royalties, this opportunity is still worth while as I see it. They're definitely a small-time startup, so we'll see how they progress from here. In the mean time I'm pretty psyched that I've contributed to some family operation in another state. And if some place insists on my having a publication history, if I really feel like it I can point to this, a story someone bought, small time though it was.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Why you shouldn't be using opportunities you got from a random stranger on the internet
I like Craigslist.
I like the connections and the ideas and projects.
There's another place where artists and writers collaborate and gig and get employed, it's called everywhere.
So pick up what's on the news stands and floating around the coffee shops where you live, and see if they'll let you submit to that. Find a local artist/writer to emulate--look at their biography or resume. Where did they send their work?
Sending your work to my motley assemblage of publishers (and ..."publishers") is okay, as a supplement to participating in the creative community where you are.
Your personal experience or identity probably could propel you into a few creative communities, too. I like this blog and the idea behind it, but nobody needs this.
This is my disclaimer. This blog is not how you get published. I am not a lawyer and this does not constitute sound legal advice--I am not an editor and these do not constitute sound opportunities to get published.
Stephen King said that anyone who doesn't have time to read, doesn't have the time or the capacity to write. So be a patron of the arts and submit your stories to the rags that you read and your visual art to the galleries that you visit, put your bucket down where you are* because even if you're dying of thirst there's a good chance you're floating in fresh water.
That said, a lot of the old writer's block for me is the knowledge that I'm trying to make a story for my favorite rag, and I'm 2/3rds sure they should never accept it. I used to draw on used paper just to make sure that I was improving the paper instead of making it worse.
Blogs like this can feed an inferiority complex--I'm encouraging you to send to sketchy small press operations off of Craigslist instead of telling you all to submit to The New York Times.
But sometimes I need to trick my inferiority complex. Making work for small time people who don't pay at all is fine with my inferiority complex, but I can write and edit and do my best, and I can say, inferiority complex, I wrote this for that ad on Craigslist, but it really feels more like the Times to me.
*This references an allegorical story you can easily look up.
I like the connections and the ideas and projects.
There's another place where artists and writers collaborate and gig and get employed, it's called everywhere.
So pick up what's on the news stands and floating around the coffee shops where you live, and see if they'll let you submit to that. Find a local artist/writer to emulate--look at their biography or resume. Where did they send their work?
Sending your work to my motley assemblage of publishers (and ..."publishers") is okay, as a supplement to participating in the creative community where you are.
Your personal experience or identity probably could propel you into a few creative communities, too. I like this blog and the idea behind it, but nobody needs this.
This is my disclaimer. This blog is not how you get published. I am not a lawyer and this does not constitute sound legal advice--I am not an editor and these do not constitute sound opportunities to get published.
Stephen King said that anyone who doesn't have time to read, doesn't have the time or the capacity to write. So be a patron of the arts and submit your stories to the rags that you read and your visual art to the galleries that you visit, put your bucket down where you are* because even if you're dying of thirst there's a good chance you're floating in fresh water.
That said, a lot of the old writer's block for me is the knowledge that I'm trying to make a story for my favorite rag, and I'm 2/3rds sure they should never accept it. I used to draw on used paper just to make sure that I was improving the paper instead of making it worse.
Blogs like this can feed an inferiority complex--I'm encouraging you to send to sketchy small press operations off of Craigslist instead of telling you all to submit to The New York Times.
But sometimes I need to trick my inferiority complex. Making work for small time people who don't pay at all is fine with my inferiority complex, but I can write and edit and do my best, and I can say, inferiority complex, I wrote this for that ad on Craigslist, but it really feels more like the Times to me.
*This references an allegorical story you can easily look up.
Monday, March 3, 2008
About this blog
There are other blogs or listings of opportunities for artists, and they are confusing to me. To that end (and others) I am doing this blog. The opportunities I collect here are ones I endorse as medium-okay to good ideas.
The jist is this: I don't have a teacher giving me baffling exercises and assignments anymore, so I'm typing "Call for submissions" into Google and crawling through craigslist just looking for something that will give me a deadline and force me to create, edit and show my work to people.
You (the hypothetical reader) can follow along. You can even do the same thing on your own, but the internet is a tantalizing place, which is to say it will dangle food over you just to yank it out of your grasp and annoy you in new and interesting ways. I cope and try to maintain my intentions for this blog using these seven commandments:
(WARNING: The following is less interesting for the casual reader, and is put online on the off chance that somebody wants to become a contributing writer for Empty Promises and Broken Dreams, which is not, in fact, an exciting opportunity for any writer--but is a possibility.)
I shall not give money to strangers: If a place I know and love is doing a curated show and I've got work that I think fits, paying a submission fee isn't out of the question. If a contest online has a submission fee, it is (out of the question.) The wonder of web 2.0 is that people can be creative and get connected for just the price having a networked computer.
I shall delete expired opportunities: I hate reading a call for submissions and after three paragraphs seeing that it ended last week.
I shall show the reader everything I know: I will post the website or listing where I heard about the opportunity.
I shall know the opportunity pretty damned well: Perhaps at the price of having a more extensive listing of opportunities, I am actually reading up about these folks, and emailing them questions--and I'm submitting to them and being rejected, much as how I imagine a reader might. For every one opportunity I post here, I email questions to a dozen sketchy propositions to people who never get back to me.
Related to that,
I shall not post any opportunity that's too busy to send a rejection letter: My criteria for a valid organization is that they send rejection letters. If I've discounted a legitimate rag for accidentally not getting back to me, that's fine.
I shall use a specific definition for "opportunity:" An opportunity includes a publisher who will put work in print, will pay the writer some amount of money, or both. A "publisher" who does neither is not a publisher, they are a web host.
I shall not just put up listings: The opportunities I put up are personal to me, and while I won't get into that too much, they are my doubts, and my aspirations. I shall, in brief, discuss exercises or tutorials used. I shall have secret challenges.
The jist is this: I don't have a teacher giving me baffling exercises and assignments anymore, so I'm typing "Call for submissions" into Google and crawling through craigslist just looking for something that will give me a deadline and force me to create, edit and show my work to people.
You (the hypothetical reader) can follow along. You can even do the same thing on your own, but the internet is a tantalizing place, which is to say it will dangle food over you just to yank it out of your grasp and annoy you in new and interesting ways. I cope and try to maintain my intentions for this blog using these seven commandments:
(WARNING: The following is less interesting for the casual reader, and is put online on the off chance that somebody wants to become a contributing writer for Empty Promises and Broken Dreams, which is not, in fact, an exciting opportunity for any writer--but is a possibility.)
I shall not give money to strangers: If a place I know and love is doing a curated show and I've got work that I think fits, paying a submission fee isn't out of the question. If a contest online has a submission fee, it is (out of the question.) The wonder of web 2.0 is that people can be creative and get connected for just the price having a networked computer.
I shall delete expired opportunities: I hate reading a call for submissions and after three paragraphs seeing that it ended last week.
I shall show the reader everything I know: I will post the website or listing where I heard about the opportunity.
I shall know the opportunity pretty damned well: Perhaps at the price of having a more extensive listing of opportunities, I am actually reading up about these folks, and emailing them questions--and I'm submitting to them and being rejected, much as how I imagine a reader might. For every one opportunity I post here, I email questions to a dozen sketchy propositions to people who never get back to me.
Related to that,
I shall not post any opportunity that's too busy to send a rejection letter: My criteria for a valid organization is that they send rejection letters. If I've discounted a legitimate rag for accidentally not getting back to me, that's fine.
I shall use a specific definition for "opportunity:" An opportunity includes a publisher who will put work in print, will pay the writer some amount of money, or both. A "publisher" who does neither is not a publisher, they are a web host.
I shall not just put up listings: The opportunities I put up are personal to me, and while I won't get into that too much, they are my doubts, and my aspirations. I shall, in brief, discuss exercises or tutorials used. I shall have secret challenges.
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