Sue Fagalde Lick writes about the ups and downs of being published. I have three books coming out next year: A memoir, a full-length poetry book, and a poetry chapbook. Different genres, different subjects, different publishers. I didn’t plan it this way, but it’s happening. I have also had a run of acceptances for short pieces. I should be overjoyed. Isn’t this what I wanted? But I feel guilty boasting about my three books when other writers are not able to get even one acceptance. It’s the “people are starving overseas while I’m complaining about ice cream making me fat” conundrum. After years of mostly no’s, I’m reading proofs, approving cover designs, and preparing for “pub dates” like a real writer. How will I promote three books at once? What if something goes wrong between the signing of the contract and holding the books in my hands? I’ll deal with it. Just…
Tag: Brevity
Beats Plunge Readers Into Scenes
Guest Blogger Jan Pezarro shares what she learned about beats, using her experience with lung cancer to illustrate physical, emotional, and setting beats. I hope you enjoy this entertaining and informative writing about different kinds of beats as much as I did. — Marlene Jan Pezarro: “A few beats missing here.” In the first year of my MFA program, after 40 years in business and on my way to fulfill a long-held ambition to write a book, my mentor added this comment to my submission. I was pretty sure she wasn’t referring to golden or purple beets, but neither did I know exactly what she meant by “beats.” My knowledge gap of storycraft tools and techniques was formidable. Lectures on structure, place, scene, and character sent me repeatedly to the internet for supplemental tutoring. The process reminded me of trying to read a text in the original Greek by translating…
Submit. Yay or nay?
Excerpt from “Submission Control” article about submitting your writing to publications, in the March/April 2019 issue of Writers Digest magazine, by Dinty W. Moore. Sending your work to literary magazines puts you at the whim of editors—but there’s more in your power than you may realize. Every few months, ask yourself why you’re doing this [writing]. If writing, waiting, and facing rejection make you truly miserable, maybe you should stop. But if you don’t want to stop, if writing is necessary, like breathing, then change your way of thinking. The long wait, the long odds, the sometimes inscrutable aesthetic taste of the editorial staff: You have to put all of that aside and write new poems, essays and stories. And that’s a good thing. Because the more you write, the better you get. Dinty W. Moore is the author of the memoir Between Panic & Desire, the writing guide Crafting…
Brevity publishes extremely brief essays.
Brevity is an online journal, publishing short narrative essays (750 words or less). Employing strong verbs and using sensory detail increase chances of your writing being selected. “There is no room for throat-clearing in search of a point. . . You need each sentence to do more than one thing . . . provide setting, forward the action and give insight into character, all at once.” Founder and editor Dinty W. Moore, interviewed by Kerrie Flanagan, The Writer August 2015 Information about using sensory detail can be found in the Just Write section on The Write Spot Blog. Good Luck!