Flash Fiction Chronicles

I am an unpaid writer.  Recently on the Everydayfiction.com forum someone asked the question ‘When do we get our stripes?’ wondering when a writer can considered themselves a Writer (note the capital or this could get messy).

The old standby answer is fairly well known. If you haven’t read Letters To A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke then you have probably heard Whoopi Goldberg quote her in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit:

A fellow used to write to him and say:

“I want to be a writer, please read my stuff.”

And Rilke says to this guy:

“Don’t ask me about being a writer. If, when you wake up in the morning you can think of nothing but writing…then you’re a writer.”

A writer is a person who ‘has’ to write. That’s seems to satisfy me and I think most people would agree. But what about the social status? What about the great status of ‘Writer’ that all us ‘young’ aspiring writers wish to own?

I tried to answer this question by saying a writer is someone who is published regularly, and paid for it. I honestly think this fits with what most people assume about a Writer. However I think that the fairly recent increase in non-paying, easily accessed markets in the form of non-paying eZines (web based magazines) has changed how important this is.

But I think I need to add a few points onto my definition before I say why.

1. Regular might be irregular

The nature of the publishing and writing game is that a lot of people don’t get a story out every 2 weeks, some only manage a small one every 2 years, others write books every month or so.

2. You have to find the right pair of eyes, at the right time.

Getting published isn’t just a matter of getting the thing written. In fact I’ve heard it said that publishing is a numbers game. The more you send, and the more people you send them to, the better your chances.

It might seem like a spaghetti approach (throw it and see what sticks to the wall) and that’s because it is.

I don’t mean that artistic struggle or passion isn’t alive and well, but no mater how artistic we all still are in the modern world if you’re not wiling to throw you best work around like soggy pasta then you’re going to struggle. Unless you’re really good, or lucky, or both.

3. Oh and it also has to be good.

Yes, this comes third; you wouldn’t think so would you.  Good is obviously a subjective thing. But that’s a whole different can of worms I might open another time, but not now.

As I said at the beginning, I am an unpaid author. But that doesn’t make me an unpublished one.

I have had three acceptances recently, the first from Yellow Mama (long dark horror fiction), the second from The Short Humor Site (not surprisingly a short humor piece) and the third, (another short humor piece to be published on January the 8th) by The Dew on the Kudzu.

I am grateful and happy to have been published, and accepted, by all three.

I think this type of market gives us ‘mere’ unpaid writers a chance to test ourselves against paid Writers. Salt our wounds, grow some confidence and know that here, at least, the same pair of eyes thought our story was, (heck I’ll say it), as good as a Writers. But it’s important to see the number of writers with paying credits on these sites.

In all the debate about online publishing I think this is the point that I like the most: the story is more important than the name under it.

Because these new, early, non-paying and easy to submit to eZines exist people who may not have ‘earned their stripes’ are putting stories next to ones written by those who have. If it’s a good enough story, it can stand a chance!

Does that make me a Writer? Probably not, ask me when I know what getting paid feels like I guess. But I think it suggests that the question, in terms of getting published has changed direction. In other words the question now seems to be not ‘are you a Writer?’ but ‘is it a Story.’

While my story sitting next to these Writers’ stories on a web page might not make me a Writer, anymore then sitting next to an fruit tree holding a Granny Smith makes me an apple tree, it does make me feel hopeful. After all, if you pick an apple off the ground, it’s still an apple.

A Version of this article was original posted on my personal blog: Mostly Unsure

Sources:

Quote from Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit taken from http://www.script-o-rama.com .

Peter Howard lives in Kentucky, USA. He divides his time between writing a lot and bugging the hell out of his wife and son. He has a story due to appear at The Dew on the Kudzu on January 8th. He is originally from England.

I’m afraid to go into the file cabinet filled with my writing.  My limited organizational abilities have lumped together a score of published pieces with the rejected or unsubmitted orphans that just don’t work.  Either I killed the idea or editors have responded:  “After careful consideration, we’ve decided we won’t be able to use it.” 

And they end with the kiss-off benediction: “We wish you luck in placing it with another publisher.”

Some stories are saved from oblivion by the suggest ion that I rewrite.  One editor wrote, “We loved your story [about dolphins that had adapted to human incursions into their territory] but the last sentence stumped us.”  My chief character finds herself pregnant and the dolphin lover has migrated north to Alaska.  Sorry, Editor, the story hangs on this punch line and I’ll submit the piece elsewhere.

Every Day Fiction’s panoply of sharp-eyed slush-pile readers encouraged me last week to rewrite another piece I thought was pretty good if not perfect.  And I shall rewrite because Camille Gooderham Campbell and company pointed out where my story had gone astray.

No, my difficulty lies in handling the orphan rejects.  Should I cremate them with only a small prayer?  Save them because there may be a plangent phrase or image worth resurrecting?  Shred them to keep my heirs from crowing over my failures?

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were an archive of failed efforts, like Jasper Fforde’s brilliant Well of Lost Plots where all unpublished writing resides?  My flash story “Alien Nation” (read “Alienation”) about a werewolf vegetarian would sit next to Fforde’s “unread and unreadable Caversham Heights, a cliché-ridden pulp mystery.” 

My three novels—begun but never completed—would collect dust until some literary archeologist cried “Eureka!”  And “Gaslighting,” where I poured my heart into a tale of spousal abuse ending with a Halloween murder, would lie comatose.

Or—and this is the germ of an idea—could my orphan stories be posted where struggling writers might find they serve as the perfect prompt needed to re-energize their spirits?  I would get a credit line, much like F. Scott Fitzgerald did when he failed to turn in a satisfactory script for Tender Is the Night.  And the new author, bound for the Elysian heights of publishing, would add insights into the successes and failures of humanity.

Let me think about that before I take out the trash.

Walter Giersbach’s fiction has appeared Bewildering Stories, Big Pulp, Every Day Fiction, Everyday Weirdness, Lunch Hour Stories, Mouth Full of Bullets, Mystery Authors, OG Short Fiction, Northwoods Journal, Paradigm Journal, Short Fiction World, Southern Fried Weirdness, The Short Humour Site and Written Word.  Two volumes of short stories, Cruising the Green of Second Avenue, have been published by Wild Child (www.wildchildpublishing.com).  He also served for three decades as director of communications for Fortune 500 companies.  Walter’s website can be found at http://allotropiclucubrations.blogspot.com.

Editor’s note: Today is Kevin Shamel’s birthday.  Happy Birthday, Kev!

Flash fiction made me a better novelist. Novella-ist? Well, anyway…

I found flash while wandering the shadowy paths of publishing short stories. It was like stumbling out of an enchanted forest and into neat rows of juicy little fruit trees. I knew I could grow some tasty stories like that. By the time I’d had my fifth or sixth flash fiction story published, I was an amateur orchard-grower. I spent a year writing lots of flash. The more I wrote, the more I wanted to write. Soon enough, I was producing juice. (I later fermented it all and got everyone drunk, but that’s another story entirely.)

A majority of the writers I know—and I know more writers than I know other kinds of people—have never attempted flash fiction. Most of them haven’t thought much about it. Of the people I casually speak to about writing flash that have not done so, most really don’t think much of the art. It’s because they’ve not explored it.

The common misconception about flash fiction is that it’s an easy thing to write. It’s a thousand words or less. I can write that in ten minutes. That is true. In fact, I’ve had stories published that I wrote in ten minutes. (Keep in mind that I also write publishable novellas in under two weeks, and I’m writing one soon that will be written in three days. It’s not the “normal” way of doing it.) It’s not unheard of to whip out an amazing bit of flash in no time at all. However, it’s not uncommon to spend days, weeks, or months getting a flash story just right.

That’s because it’s an art-form. It has to be mastered. When you’ve got it figured out, it’s a skill you can draw upon for the rest of your authoring life.

By learning how to write a complete story with such a small word count, I learned to cut my story to its quick. I learned about what words are really necessary for the story. I learned that a great number of people prefer to read stories that are lean and to the point. I honed my sentences and cut out all the extras that took the story (and the reader) somewhere beyond the point of it all. I learned how to make my stories shoot straight to the heart of the reader. I learned to edit.

My year of writing flash helped me to find my true writing style. One that is fortunately in synch with the world today. I write books that can be read in the time it takes to watch a movie. People like that. In fact, they love that. How many people spend fifteen hours watching a movie? Do you push pause after watching for fifteen minutes and go to work? Are movies two hundred hours long? No. People like the idea of complete, satisfying, lasting stories that they can digest quickly. Stories like flash fiction.

Because of flash, my longer works are leaner and quicker. Because of flash, it’s easier to make a story something that people will read straight through because they don’t have a moment to stray from the story. Because of flash, I had a book published.

In the toppling forest of the publishing industry, there is new growth. I urge anyone growing giant Sequoias of novels to consider spending a year learning the art of pruning flash fiction bonsais. In no time we’ll have acres and acres of shady rows of producing trees. Then we can feed the world our fruits.

Or get them all drunk on apple cider.

Kevin Shamel lives in the Pacific Northwest in a house that was once surrounded by apple orchards. You can find his flash at Every Day Fiction. His first book, Rotten Little Animals, can be read on a long commute or on a flight to Maui (it has been done). Visit ShamelessCreations for art, words, and shameless weirdness.

I sold my first piece of fiction in 2007 to a small magazine that has since folded. After I’d done a happy dance around the house and called to order a celebratory pizza, I reread the editor’s note and started to panic.

She really liked the story and wanted to publish it. But she also asked if I could rewrite the ending to make the story a little more speculative in nature. Since I thought the story was perfect in every way already, I emailed a friend to complain that the editor was an idiot, an idiot! and that she wanted me to ruin my story for a token payment. But once I’d finished venting, I opened up the file and rewrote the ending.

The editor loved the new version–and so did I. Since that first sale, I’ve had a few dozen stories published, and a number of editors have asked for rewrites. In every single case, the rewrite has made the story stronger. The same goes for edits.

A lot of writers are so focused on the process of getting accepted that they have no idea what to expect afterwards. I know I didn’t. The rewrite and editing process for that first story confused me. If the story wasn’t perfect in the first place, why did the editor accept it? Why did she want to change it?

Nearly three years later, I now know that there is no such thing as a perfect story. Of course, I try to make each story as near-perfect as I can, but I’m not insulted or worried if an editor asks for a rewrite or extensive edits. Sometimes an editor sees an underdeveloped theme in a story that I never noticed, and wants me to emphasize it. Sometimes an editor finds a plot hole or pinpoints a problem with motivation. Sometimes, alas, my writing is unclear.

There are all sorts of reasons why an editor wants changes. I may complain (to myself or a friend, never the editor), but I always make the changes and I always end up happy with them. After all, the editor and I are both aiming for the same result: to make my story as good as possible so that readers will like it. That’s worth a little extra work.

Look for K. C. Shaw’s story, Fall or Fly tomorrow November 24th at Every Day Fiction.

K.C. Shaw’s fiction has appeared in Every Day Fiction, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Space Squid, Fictitious Force, and many other fine magazines. Her first novel, Jack of All Trades, was published in September 2009. Visit her website at http://kcshaw.net and her blog at http://kcshaw.blogspot.com/.

The editor of Flash Fiction Chronicles asked me to write a post about my writing life and I’m happy to answer her questions, though my first response was to make a joke, but she wouldn’t take “no” for an answer so here are my responses to her insistent questions.

How do I manage to be so prolific? 

I write for an audience and the audience is mostly the folks in my writer’s community.  We do challenges every week and that gives me something to write about and it keeps me writing regularly.  They are very short pieces of course.  I’m in flash poetry forum too so I usually write one to two pieces of poetry and flash a week.  That’s output!  

Of course I have a few other little audiences as well – the audience at Every Day Fiction, Bewildering Stories, Static Movement and last but not least, Micro Horror.  I tend to put stories together in such a way that they can be submitted to one of those magazines and I have a few others I submit to too.  10FLASH and Doorknobs and Bodypaint run regular themed challenges and I can’t resist that.  

I’ve been on over-drive throughout October.  The Halloween Competition at Micro Horror always inspires me.  I wrote six flashes for that this year.  I usually send one a month but I just love Halloween!  I’ve won the competition twice and the prize is always something unique and well worth winning but I’d do it anyway.  My husband says I have to lose sometime but even if I lose I win because I get read.  I’m a most unusual candidate for writing horror because I don’t read horror – too scary!  But my brand of horror is I think fairly traditional – more ‘chiller’ than horror.  I was invited to write a story for Toe Tags because Brian Barnett and William Pauley III liked my Micro Horror work.  That was great! 

I love when somebody wants me to tell them a story.  Being so prolific in the way that I am does have a down side.  I don’t have a book out there and I’m just vain enough to think that I should.  Larger projects tend to get pushed out by ‘immediate gratification’.  I have a collection of poetry but it wasn’t big enough to go for the Crashaw Prize – I’d not have won anyway…  I have 7 chapters of a novella, and unfinished business with some Technopolymorphs I know.

 Where do I get ideas? 

For a start, I write according to prescribed parameters.  I mostly know the length and the theme and sometimes the genre I am going to write.  After that I use whatever knowledge and experience life has thrown at me, information gleaned from internet research, conversations with my very erudite spouse, other peoples’ conversations at the pool, on the bus – anything really. 

I look for a character’s name to give me an idea who I’m talking about and then I people his or her world and it seems to fall into place with the name.  

How long does it take? 

It’s a piece of string.  Sometimes the first draft is almost the final draft.  “Trip to Tangier” took me two years.  “Dance” took me three.  I had a poem published in Twisted Tongue that I finally got right after twenty years!  “Resolution,” a favourite for many EDF readers took me just over half an hour and one revision. 

Sometimes you just know when something is right.  At other times it takes a clever editor’s eye to see where improvements are needed.  My story “Dock,” due this month in EDF on November 15, was one of those.  It just needed a tiny tweak but I needed Camille and the team to tell me that.  

Well, Gay I hope that answers your questions – thanks for asking!

Oonah V. Joslin is the winner of two Micro Horror prizes and an honoree in The 2009 Binnacle Comp. Full lists of what went where available on at Oonah’s Every Day Fiction author site. She also served as judge of  The Shine Poetry Competition 2008 and is managing editor of Every Day Poets. Anthologies: The Best of Every Day Fiction 2008, Toe Tags, and  A Man of Few Words.

My short story collection, In an Uncharted Country, will be published by Press 53 in early September. I’m truly excited by the thought of people holding my book in their hands and maybe even reading my stories, now that the book is finding its way into the world. Since I’m a man, I can’t and won’t use the birth metaphor, but it certainly is odd to think of this little part of me existing on its own, having a life that’s separate from mine. (Except, of course, for that mystery known as “marketing” which will keep me tied to the book for months to come, but that’s a whole other subject.)

How did I get to this point?

I wrote a novel. I thought it was great. It wasn’t. It needed and still needs a lot of work.

But in order to feel like a writer, I needed to publish something. I needed to finish things and send them to editors, and I needed to see them in print, and, most of all, I needed other people to see them in print.

So I started writing short stories. I liked the fact that I could be “done” with something. I could submit it—to several journals simultaneously, usually—and editors would read it and a magazine might actually publish it. That happened almost immediately, and continued happening as I kept writing more stories.  

I wasn’t thinking “collection” when I started, but I discovered that my process of writing stories is rather organic. That is, there is usually something in a story that serves as a seed for the next one—a minor character who needs to be explored further in his own story, for example, or a resolution to a story that suggests further conflict and another story or two. I wrote about a couple with marital problems living out in the country, and all I had to do to get the landscape right was look out my window. And all I had to do to get ideas for characters is walk down the street in the small town near where I live.

One thing led to another and I had a pile of stories that felt like a book. Because the stories were linked by overlapping characters, location, and even theme, they fit together nicely. But I thought something was missing, and I came up with the idea of a “cap-story”—a final story for the collection that tied together most of the other stories and suggested a thematic resolution, almost as if it were the end of a novel instead of a book of short stories.

So I had a finished manuscript, but story collections are notoriously hard to publish and, as a result, most agents won’t touch them unless they can be sold as part of a two-book package with a novel. The only novel I had was that manuscript that still needed a lot of work—work that I wasn’t mentally prepared to do yet—and so I didn’t have what agents wanted.

As a result, I turned my attention to small presses. For many emerging writers, small presses are the way to go, especially as the large trade publishers go after bigger and bigger blockbusters in order to maximize profits. The small presses follow a different model and many of them are willing to look at stand-alone story collections. I sent my manuscript out to a few, and Press 53 was interested. They’ve been terrific to work with, allowed me some say in the choice of cover and other design features for the book, and I’m grateful to the publisher, Kevin Watson.

Ironically, though, while I was searching for a publisher, I was working on a new book. I still couldn’t bring myself to work on the old novel, but I felt that I needed a novel to be taken seriously. But I love stories! And so I took a shot at a hybrid form—a novel in stories. Some readers may consider In an Uncharted Country to fall in this category, too, but with the new book that’s what I set out to do. The stories are even more closely linked, and there is a story arch that connects all the twelve pieces together. At this point four of those stories have been published and, somewhat to my surprise, an agent was interested in representing me for that book—I signed with her the same month I signed with Press 53 for the story collection.

I’m now working two projects. One is a novel. A real novel. And the other is a different animal altogether: a novel in flash. It’s a collection of flash fiction pieces that all deal with the same character. Although a number of those have been published, it’s too soon to tell where that one is going. But it’s been a blast to write.

My collection of linked short stories, IN AN UNCHARTED COUNTRY (Press 53, September 2009), is set in rural Virginia, where I now live. Before turning to writing fiction, I was an international lawyer and spent most of my career in Asia. I have an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. For more info: http://cliffordgarstang.com

It’s summer and toodling through various writing sites this week, I remembered that August kicks off  ”Submission Season,” the time when college literary types head back to school and brace for the mudslide of submissions coming their way.

I’ve been writing for years, but I haven’t always subbed with any consistency.  In the old days of  “No simultaneous submissions,” I’d send a piece to one venue and then wait three to six months before the postman delivered an SASE with my returned story.  Clipped at the top would be a  slip of  paper addressed to “Author”  followed by the cryptic message, “No thank you.  This piece does not suit our current needs.”  Okay.  So.  I’d rewrite the story (I can always find something to fix, change, deeper, scrap) and send it out to the next lit mag on my list.   And wait another six months. 

There were so few places to submit, it took so long to hear back, and I was so unsure of my abilities that it was tough to stick with the writing, to have the sense of progress.  While writing groups and writer friends can do a great deal to help someone come into his or her own, it is the relationship with the market that produces professional writing.

The submission process is better now.  With the advent of the internet, online literary and genre magazines, email, and submission software, there are fewer trips to Staples for envelopes, less waiting in line at the post office, and even better, a real possibility for dialogue between author and publisher, even if such a relationship consists of nothing more than several submissions and several rejections in a row.  The time between sub and NO is usually shorter than it used to be and that alone makes learning the craft much easier for new and emerging writers.

A while back, I decided my goal for the year would be to get 100 rejections. Yes. I know. That’s weird, but if I’d called my goal  “To Get Published,” each rejection would mean failure.  While I had limited power over an editor’s choices, no one could stop me from writing and submitting.  So I played a trick on myself.  I changed the language.  By making “rejection” my goal, I could not fail.  The power shifted to me.  

Quality was in my power too.  Even if my goal seemed to be negative, what would be the point of writing lousy stories?   I had to make them the best stories I could.   Then if a piece was rejected,  I’d be one story closer to my goal 100.   If it was accepted, I’d open a bottle of champagne.

The goal of 100 rejections forced me to write more often, with more commitment and awareness of what professional writing looks like.  After writing, editing , polishing, and submitting one story, I have learned to write another story and another and another.  This is a good thing.  I don’t have time to sit around to see if the first 5 or 10 places reject me. I have more rejections to apply for!  

So I write a new story and send it to 5 or 10 other magazines.   It encourages me to write with purpose and to submit to the best market for each piece.   And the more I write, the better I get. 

Maybe I won’t make my 100 rejects per year.  I haven’t yet, but that’s not my goal.  Not really.  The jig is up.  I’m onto myself. 

And while getting published is certainly a wonderful result of all that work, it ’s not the goal either.  I’ve been published and it’s very cool.  But writing is really about–oh, dear, I’m going to sound like an American Idol contestant–the journey.  What turns out to matter is learning the craft, becoming aware of what works and what doesn’t, acquiring skills, and allowing imagination and passion to find the page, and maybe someday writing something really good. 

Here’s to Submission Season!  I hope I get to open a couple of bottles of bubbly this year too.

To read Gay Degani’s stories online, visit her Words In Place blog.

Rose Metal Press has published a new book called Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field, edited by Tara L. Masih.  This short (of course!) 157 page-handbook gives beginning writers of flash fiction a place to start and continuing flashers a much-needed resource. 

In their introduction, publishers Abigail Beckel and Kathleen Rooney discuss flash (0-1500 word range) as fiction that blends “genres and forms.”    However, in presenting the conventions of flash fiction, they wanted a book that would not “pin said inventive forms down with strict definitions.”   What they offer instead is “a book of ideas about and for flash fiction.” 

Editor Tara L. Masih has pulled together many of those ideas in twenty-five essays by writers such writers as Ron Carlson, Rusty Barnes, Kim Chinquee, Steve Almond, Vanessa Gebbie, Robert Olen Butler, Stuart Dybek, and Randall Brown.  The essays are divided into useful categories including “Freedom and Feeling in the Form,” “Beginnings and Endings,” and “Focusing and Editing,” making the book a user-friendly field guide to Flash Fiction, to be read either as it has been put together or searched through for specific help or inspiration.

“In Pursuit of the Short Short Story,”  the editor’s introduction, Ms. Masih opens with the following quotation, “Each drop encases its own separate note, the way each drop engulfs its own blue pearl of light,” from Stuart Dybek’s story “Nighthawks.”  Although this description in its original context is meant to define rain, Ms. Masih believes it is “as close to a definition of flash fiction” as she can give us.  The editor of the “Field Guide” then unfolds a history of the short short story beginning with Washington Irving and Poe to its present incarnation on the internet and in print journals dedicated to short short fiction. 

As for the essays, they offer insights into the art and craft of flash as well process.  Vanessa Gebbie writes about kidnapping the reader and using prompts in her piece called “Fireworks and Burnt Toast.”   Shouhua Qi discusses the origin of flash in China where short shorts are called Minute Stories, Pocket-Size Stories, and more familiar to the online flash reader, Smoke-Long stories.  In Robert Olen Butler’s “A Short Short Theory,” the author expands James Joyce’s one ephiphany at the end of a story to include a similar epiphany early on in the piece, “when the yearning of the character shines forth.”  Many of the essays feature flash fiction pieces written by their authors.

A useful, intelligent addition to the discussion of flash fiction, Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction manages to give readers what they want to know about flash fiction without limiting the genre with “strict definitions.”

The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction:
Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field.
Edited by Tara L. Masih
ISBN: 978-0-9789848-6-1
$15.95

 Order directly from Rose Metal Press

LATELY, I’VE BEEN FIGHTING THE EXCUSE MONSTER— that insidious little voice inside my head that whispers excuses for not writing. I’m too tired. I’m too busy. I have no ideas. The list goes on and on.

Now, there is a difference between a reason and an excuse. Sometimes, you really do have writer’s block or you just worked a ton of overtime and are brain-fried. But, other times, you’re just giving into the excuse monster.

I guess it’s the same for any aspect of your life. You have to put time into something to get something out of it or to get to the next level. If I don’t spend time writing stories and honing my craft, I’m won’t have stories to submit or ever improve in my craft. Both of those mean that this writing thing is never going to be any more than a hobby for me.

Writing as a hobby isn’t a bad thing. Tons of people do it. But I want something more. And if I want that something more, then I have to banish the excuse monster and his whispers about laundry, returning phone calls, and surfing the Internet, and get writing.

Of course, even still, the odds are against me. There are way more aspiring authors/novelists out there than those that get published every year. But, to quote one of my favorite movies, “Your odds go up when you file an application.”

What about you guys? Career or hobby? What do you think? And what do you think will help you achieve your goal?

Erin M. Kinch lives and writes in Fort Worth, Texas. Visit her blog, Living the Fictional Dream at www.erinmkinch.com for links to her published stories and more of her musings on writing. A version of this post was originally posted on her blog on 7/10/08.

YOU WRITE. You have some great ideas for a story, a review, a play, perhaps, even a novel. You have reams of scribbled ideas, short stories, a flash or two. But you want and dream of the satisfaction of getting published, not just a writer, but the right to now call yourself a published author.

Author. Has a nice ring to it, huh? And you don’t have to be famous to write the title of your published story in italics. And when someone asks: “Oh. Anything I’ve heard of?” You don’t have to sheepishly answer that your unpublished. You can proudly tell them where and when. (and hopefully, they’ll go look!)

Writers and actors have much in common. Ask one what they do and you’ll get a list of credits—Jack Nicholson and Stephen King obvious exceptions. But don’t think professors, nurses, firefighters, and sales clerks don’t brag about their achievements too!

But there is a void between the published and unpublished. Once there it might well be easier to attain that next publication. And it is frustrating when an editor requests you put any credits you might have in your cover letter and your stuck admitting you’re unpublished. Not that it matters to most editors, they’ll accept or reject your submission on its own merits. But I know what it feels like to write at some point in that cover letter, “I’m unpublished.” It’s like the job interview where you must admit you have no actual experience in the position for which you are applying.

Actors don’t just show up in Hollywood and land a leading role in the latest blockbuster. Neither should a writer expect to have Stephen King’s Carrie experience. So what to do?

Well, you’ve joined that reading group, have sought advice from them and online at sites such as Flash Fiction Chronicles and others. You’ve made a pact with yourself to hone your skills and write every day. Your group likes what you write. (and hopefully your group isn’t polite and genteel, but brutally honest) Then the next step, intimidating as it might be, is to send that manuscript to a market.

But what market?

If you’re minimally computer literate there are sites which separate the wheat from the chaff for you. Two I would recommend are: Duotrope’s Digest and Ralan’s Webstravaganza.

Read everything on each site they have to offer before you submit a manuscript anywhere. Their advice and instructions on how to navigate their sites will save you time and rejections from markets.

Now comes something very important. Send your story to an appropriate market!
If you send your space opera, no matter how great it is, to a market that specializes in horror, your not only going to get a rejection letter, the editor is going to know you never read their submission guidelines (which many markets direct you to before you submit—and many are very picky about writers who do not bother to read their guidelines) So when you send that nice little horror story in the future, that same editor upon seeing who’s submitting might just delete it unread. Things like that can and do happen. It’s best to keep editors happy, just like traffic court judges! Little things mean a lot. Read The Guidelines!!!

If you still live in an uncomputerized state and write on an old IBM Selectric or some such, fear not. For there is a journal called Writer’s Digest which produces lists of every market imaginable in a large book titled, Writers Markets. And you don’t have to go to Barnes & Noble and plunk down $50. to get it. Just go to your local library, it’s probably right there collecting dust.

Don’t worry if your are computer-less! Many markets, especially professional-rate-paying markets, want hard-copies via Snail-Mail—no e-mails at all! And there are still numerous small and local journals and weekly newspapers just dying to have some local writer send a story be it fiction, non-fiction, or poetry. But you must look for these, they may not be laying about on every newsstand.

And one other point: Your manuscript must appear professional. Many markets, right in their guidelines, will tell you specifically how they want submissions formatted—follow what they suggest exactly—you are, after all, competing with other writers. Never forget that! You might have a nice little fantasy that you’ve sent to the perfect market, but your manuscript is single-spaced, no space between paragraphs, typed in a small font, and, well, not very neat in appearance.

It will generally take much more memory space, or paper and postage, to format your manuscript as the editors want. But like that traffic court judge, they look at these things all day long! If you care about what you write—make your manuscript look like you do. The editor will pick up on that, appreciate it, in fact. Like many things, it’s easy for the editor to just quit reading a sloppy manuscript and send it to the oblivion of the rejection pile—so make it neat, clear, and follow those writer’s guidelines!!!

I began writing seriously a few years ago. The Rejection-Connection, that was me! And I deserved all the rejections, too! But I wrote every day, worked on my voice and flow. Tinkered with dialogue and genre. Started using prompts. Joined a writing group. And finally have had at least a modicum of success.

That kind ear of your spouse, or sister, or neighbor is not the best one to read to. Get in a group. They’re not emotionally involved, meaning: They’ll most likely speak the truth. If what you wrote stinks, they’ll tell you so.

And lastly, don’t get bottled up by genre. You may do one thing well, but bear in mind the more differing types of writing you do, the more and more markets open up for you—remember that competing with others aspect I mentioned.

There is no race. Take your time. Make it neat. Follow the Guidelines. Write something every day. Join and participate in a writing group. Get feedback. Give feedback. Read books of genres you write. Try to write in some genre you haven’t before—you might surprise yourself. And don’t be shy—write what you love, hone it, perfect it. And when it’s ready, submit it!!!

DJ Barber writes stories, flash, poems, and novels. He was born in the northeast and lives in the northwest. When not writing he has a wife and two dogs that keep him busy.  He has been published online at Every Day Fiction, Moon Drenched Fables, Tales From the Moonlit Path, Big Pulp, Every Day Poets, and Everyday Weirdness.

In print, DJ has been published by Darker Intentions Press, Odyssey Magazine, has a short story in the anthology, Damned in Dixie, and has a flash in the Best of Every Day Fiction 2008.

DJ would like to remind everyone that even a broken clock is right twice a day.  DJ’s website is located at http://canyonsofgray.blogspot.com.