The Write Spot Blog by Marlene Cullen

Category: Just Write

  • We insist that all of our content is contrary.

    Do you have some writing that could be considered contrary?

     Contrary Magazine wants your contrary writing.

    “The ‘n’ in the title on Contrary’s website banner is backwards, fitting for a literary magazine guided by the editorial statement, ‘We insist that all of our content is contrary. And, we insist, so is all of yours.’”   — February 2014, Writer Magazine

    Contrary receives submissions throughout the year and publishes four issues per year, with the change of seasons. Spring deadline is March 1.  Summer deadline is June 1, Autumn is Sept. 1, Winter is Dec. 1.

    Types of work accepted:  Fiction, poetry, commentary.

    Click here for submission guidelines.

    Click here for Contrary Blog.

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  • What is the point of your essay?

    “Personal essays represent what you think, what you feel . . . your effort to communicate those thoughts and feelings to others . . .  What is the point of your essay? Don’t belabor the point too much; let the point grow out of the experience of the essay. It might be true, in fact, that you didn’t even have a point to make when you started writing your essay. Go ahead and write it and see if a point develops.” — Essay.Grammar.com

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  • Emerging Voices wanted — Florida Review

    “The Florida Review wants emerging voices to transport editors and readers.” —January 2014 issue of The Writer Magazine.

    ” Our artistic mission is to publish the best poetry and prose written by the world’s most exciting emerging and established writers.”

    2014 Editors’ Awards submissions accepted until Monday, March 17, 2014

    Sonoma County author, Stephanie Freele, was published in the summer 2011 issue of The Florida Review.

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  • We read and write personal essays for the same reasons. — Barbara Abercrombie

    “We read personal essays to understand our lives, to find humor, to discover a new way of looking at the world. We write them for the same reasons. the short personal essay (about 500 to 1200 words) is your journey through a specific experience, whether commonplace or one of life’s milestones, and ranges from the personal to something more universal, something your readers can connect with.” — Barbara Abercrombie,  “On Writing Personal Essays,” The Writer, January 2003.

  • Got a short-short? WriterAdvice wants your story.

    WriterAdvice seeks flash fiction, memoir, and creative non-fiction running 750 words or less. Enlighten, dazzle, and delight us. Finalists receive responses from all judges. First prize is $200.

    Submit to the 9th WriterAdvice Flash Prose Contest by April 18, 2014. Complete details at www.writeradvice.com.

     

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  • Are there rules for essay writing?

    Pat Olsen has written an excellent article about writing personal essay in the December 2013 issue of The Writer magazine. Highlights:

    “. . . when I am so obsessed about an idea that I can’t wait to put pen to paper, the essay almost writes itself. That’s not so say I don’t struggle over every word, or that I’m done after the first draft . . . Some of the best advice I’ve received is that it’s not only what you choose to include in an essay that’s important, but it’s also what you choose to omit.”  She gives an example and then goes on to ask:

    “Are there actual rules for essay writing? If so, not all writers agree on them.” After consulting essayists, here’s what she discovered:

     Kate Walter:  “‘An essay should have a universal theme . . . No matter how unusual a story may seem,’ she says, ‘there should be a broader theme that every reader can identify with.”

     Andrea King Collier:  “‘Voice is everything,’ she notes. ‘Two people can write an essay on the loss of a parent, and it is the voice and the approach/lens of the writer that can make one sing over the other.’”

     Bob Brody: “Start with an anecdote, a scene or an observation, Brody advises. Go back in time or stay in the present. Have a single big moment or a series of big moments.”

     Amy Paturel:  “The best essays, she says, are about a transformation. ‘Between the beginning and the end of your essay, there has to be some sort of epiphany or awakening . . . ”

     Andrea Cooper:  “. . . take a break from your essay. ‘I studied once with memoirist Patricia Hampl, who encouraged us to think of revision literally,’ she says. “It’s re-vision, re-seeing.’”

    Lots of good information in this article about writing personal essay.

     Nina Amir posts writing prompts on her blog.  Her January 31, 2014 post, about personal essays, includes Writing Prompt #9, Brainstorm Personal Essay topics.

    Nina writes, “Personal essays tend to focus on one particular event and how it affected you or your life. They often have universal themes that makes it possible for readers to relate to personal stories.”

     

     

  • Phantom Drift accepting submissions.

    Phantom Drift accepting submissions Jan. 1 – March 31.

    Fiction: Looking for fabulist flash fiction and short stories: stories that favor the unusual over the usual; stories that create a milieu where anything can happen.

    Poetry: Prefer poetry composed in the new fabulist tradition: that shatters or valuably distorts reality, whether this means surrealism, magical realism, fantastique, or bizarrerie.

    Non-fiction: Looking for essays on New Fabulism (or the range of imaginative literature generally referred to as slipstream, new weird, magic realism, fabulist and cross-genre fantastic literature difficult to categorize).

    Art: Looking for fabulist art for cover and for b/w interior. We are not looking for realist or abstract art. Please acquaint yourself with surrealists and artists of the fantastic. Artwork may be based on myths or dreams or purely imagined, but must complement the range of literature we seek

  • Writing is like being a salesperson . .

    Elizabeth Berg, Escaping Into The Open, The Art of Writing True on Persuasiveness, page 32. Excerpt:

    In some ways, writing is like being a salesperson. you are in the business of convincing someone to buy something, as in, believe something. Try to develop your skills of persuasion so that your villain, say, is really felt as a villain. In doing that, think about the small things—everything really is in the details. For example, it’s not so much the description of the murderer killing someone that demonstrates his evil nature, it’s the flatness in his eyes as he does it; it’s the way he goes and gets an ice cream immediately afterward. Similarly, a man offering a diamond bracelet to a woman shows love; but that same person smiling tenderly when he wipes the smear of catsup off her face shows more.

     Your turn. Write a scene showing the bad guy as a villain. Really. . . show how he or she has no remorse. Show the evil. OR, write a scene showing the love felt between two people. Just write.

  • Your Life. . . in 100 words

    Reader’s Digest 100 words contest. In 100 words or fewer, tell a true story about yourself. One grand-prize winner will receive $5,000 and have his or her story published in our June issue. One runner-up winner will receive $500, and six finalists will receive $100 each.

    Entries must be received by March 14, 2014

    Good Luck!

  • Take a risk and go long.

    In the January 2014 issue of Writer’s Digest magazine, Elizabeth Sims writes about “Miscalculations and Missteps.”  One is, “take a risk and go long.”

    “The value of a relatively long description is that it draws your readers deeper into the scene. The worry is that you’ll bore them. But if you do a good job you’ll engross them. Really getting into a description is one of the most fun things you can do as an author. Here’s the trick: Get going on a description with the attitude of discovering, not informing. In this zone, you’re not writing to tell readers stuff you already know—rather, you are writing to discover and experience the scene right alongside them.”

    Sims continues with “Go below the surface.”

    “A gateway to describing a person, place or thing in depth is to assign mood or emotion to him/her/it.  . . . The Bay Bridge was somber today, its gray girders melding with the fog.”

    Alla Crone expertly illustrates what Sims is talking about in her historical novel, Winds Over Manchuria.

    Here’s an excerpt from Alla’s book:

    “On the cold Sunday of January 9, 1905, the pallid sun hung over the rooftops of St. Petersburg trying to burn its way through a thin layer of clouds. By two o’clock in the afternoon the dull light had done little to warm the thousands of people milling the streets.”

    More about Alla Crone-Hayden and her book’s journey in Chris Smith‘s January 21 article in The Press Democrat.

    Your turn.  Make a list of inanimate objects, perhaps landmarks in your town. Write a few sentences, giving them moods and emotions.  Or, use weather to describe and mirror your characters’ emotions.  Write a scene and, as Sims says, “take a risk and go long.”

    Note:  Check back here for Sunday’s book review of Alla Crone’s riveting novel, Captive of Silence.