Resources
From Category:
Laura Thomas Communications
Laura Thomas Communications hosts a blog with writing opportunities for authors aged 21 and under. There are free poetry and fiction contests (no cash awards) and a personal essay prize based on Thomas's book Polly Wants to Be a Writer, a YA fantasy novel that is also a creative writing manual. The LTC online store sells workbooks inspired by the novel, with writing prompts and an overview of basic concepts.
Woman with Crows
By Ruth Thompson. This poetry collection, earthy yet mythical, celebrates the spiritual wisdom of the Crone, the woman with crows (and crows' feet). Because of her conscious kinship with nature, the speaker of these poems embraces the changes that our artificial culture has taught us to dread. Fatness recurs as a revolutionary symbol of joy: a woman's body is not her enemy, and scarcity is not the deepest truth. For her, the unraveling of memory and the shedding of possessions are not a story of decline but a fairy tale of transformation.
The Maine Review
Launched in 2014, The Maine Review is an online quarterly literary journal publishing poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and artwork. The first issue featured work by Maine authors, including celebrated poet Annie Finch, Authors Guild President Roxana Robinson, Maine Senior Poet Laureate Roger Finch, and Ellie O'Leary, host of WERU-FM's Writers Forum. Currently they are open to English-language submissions from around the world. There is also a writing contest with modest prizes.
Keeping It Legal
Lawyer and self-published author Helen Sedwick writes this blog to help writers, particularly self-published ones, navigate the legal issues involved in publishing, promoting, and protecting their work. Topics include fair use, defamation, and copyright.
A Woman’s Write
The website A Woman's Write offers writing advice, editing and reviewing services, links to other useful sites for women writers, and an annual Good Read Novel Competition with a $500 prize for unpublished manuscripts. The contest fee includes a critique.
Black and White Gets Read
Kind of a Hurricane Press publishes this webzine devoted to reviews of poetry books and chapbooks.
Celebration
By Martina Reisz Newberry
The morning's birthday rang through us like
a gong. Outside, no one believed there
was such a thing as mortality
and there was a perpetual grin
on the windshields of the cars down
in the street. Someone may have been
dreaming us, but we hoped they would not
wake up; our happiness was that
feral. We were safe and slipped into
the day on the remnants of last night's
moon. Over glasses of tea, we read
each other's palms to see where we were
going, but we could see only that
there is more than one truth in this world.
The morning's birthday showed us where to
how to begin the celebration,
where to put our things and where to go out
so that others could come in and find ease.
First published in Where it Goes (Deerbrook Editions, 2014)
Robert McDowell
Poet, workshop leader, and activist Robert McDowell writes and teaches about the spiritual side of creativity and reclaiming the divine feminine. McDowell's books include Poetry as Spiritual Practice and The More We Get Together: The Sexual and Spiritual Language of Love. He has edited anthologies on topics as diverse as cowboy poetry and the postmodern poet-critics of the 1980s.
We Are You Project
The We Are You Project is the first comprehensive 21st Century coast-to-coast exhibition depicting current Latino socio-cultural, political, and economic conditions, reflecting triumphs, achievements, risks and vulnerabilities, affecting all Latinos "within," as well as "outside" the USA. It is also the first 21st Century art movement that cohesively combines Visual Art, Poetry, Music, Performance Art, and Film making, amalgamating these diverse art-forms into one ("united") socio-cultural artistic Latino voice, which utilizes ART to confront current challenges and opportunities that are faced by contemporary Latinos and Latinas throughout the USA and Latin America. Featured poets include Raphael Montañez Ortíz, Colette Inez, George Nelson Preston, and Gloria Mindock.
New York Shakespeare Exchange: The Sonnet Project
The New York Shakespeare Exchange's mission is to expand the audience for Shakespeare's plays and to support innovative presentations. One of their ventures is The Sonnet Project, a series of short films juxtaposing a Shakespeare sonnet and a vignette set in a distinctive NYC location.
Water, rising.
By Sally Stewart Mohney
for Vinings
Waking in the night to a thunder-full
of dark. Green stage rises as you sleep,
crests a high angry orange. Rushing sluice
groans and juices over moss banks. River feels
coarse grain of pasture grass on its underbelly.
Horses pulled from half-graze. Neighbors in
sudden red kayaks witness mattresses, chairs
and sofas tossed in a slow, painful ballet. Stormwater
mud-gullies into your street belly-level. Like watershed
creatures, you find alternate egress. Folks collect in pluff
mud at tide's edge to watch churn boil: dam of net,
leaves, rope. Warped door. Pool toys. Hopeful raft.
Copters cast shaking shadows. Your fingers trace
the dull floodmark on a bowering honeysuckle stand,
nurse the remains.
Kids’ Book Review
Kids' Book Review is an online journal that showcases authors, illustrators, and publishers in the children's literature field. They publish news, reviews, interviews, articles, guest posts, events, and specialist literacy articles. The site also hosts monthly themed creative writing contests.
Nullipara
By A.M. Thompson
nul·lip·a·ra (noun) A woman who has never given birth.
I am gill-less in a sea of the alive,
an ocean of female forces, dark and green.
This deprivation is ancient, biblical,
back to the days of fire pillars, ashes.
I feel too modern to be sistered back
to Sarah, to Elizabeth to time...
yet time is the deep that drowns the heart:
I see a burgeoning belly and cannot breathe.
Too basic to explain or understand,
I can only strive not to inhale the sea
then struggle up to gasp unholy air
and catch lost lullabies above the surf,
A primal music sorrowing this loss:
My songs of unforming—
ungrowing, and unborn.
One Throne Magazine
Founded in 2014 at Dawson City, Yukon, One Throne is an online literary magazine published quarterly (always on the first day of each season). Editors say, "We showcase the foremost in writing, spanning genres, and running the gamut from elegant prose and poetry, to plot-driven stories, to speculative fiction." One Throne also hosts contests where entrants receive a writing prompt and have 24 hours to write their entry. The prize is a percentage of entry fees.
Now What? The Creative Writer’s Guide to Success After the MFA
Published by Fairfield University's MFA Program, this multi-genre writer's guide features essays from numerous published authors about their postgraduate career paths.
Valancourt Books
Founded in 2005 by partners James Jenkins and Ryan Cagle, Valancourt Books is an independent small press dedicated to the rediscovery of rare, neglected, and out-of-print fiction. They specialize in gay titles, Gothic and horror novels, and literary fiction.
Rhyme Desk
Rhyme Desk is an interactive writing tool for poets, songwriters, and copywriters. Type in a word or phrase, then use the search buttons to count syllables, generate exact and slant rhymes, or find synonyms and antonyms. You can also use it to share your writing on Facebook and Twitter.
Fogged Clarity: An Arts Review
Fogged Clarity is a Chicago-based print and online journal that has published original work by Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award winners, and Guggenheim fellows, as well as emerging writers. They accept submissions of literary fiction, nonfiction, poetry, visual art, and music. The online edition comes out quarterly, the print edition every two years. Submit online.
Prayers & Run-On Sentences
By Stuart Kestenbaum. This affable, Buddhist-inflected poetry collection invites gratitude for the daily rhythms of life. As if through the imaginative, unbiased eyes of a child, Kestenbaum's poems find wonder in ordinary things like clotheslines, oil slicks, and even a plastic trash bag left in the woods.
Rawboned
Rawboned publishes flash fiction and nonfiction, poetry, and hybrids up to 750 words. The magazine is published monthly online, and the editors' favorites are reprinted in a biannual print journal. They offer a weekly Twitter micro-essay contest and an annual themed flash fiction and essay contest with cash prizes. Their motto is "the marrow of the story".
Verses Scribbl’d in My Burning House
By Katherine J. Leisering
While reviewing 17th c. surveyor map holdings, Massachusetts librarian Emma Loade discovered this first draft of Anne Bradstreet's "Upon the Burning of Our House". Footnotes are Miss Loade's.
Asleep was I, to dream of love
When three floors below to me above
Rose cries of, "Fire! Fire! my dear!
Get thy derriere outta here!"
Before I flew, toward door as dart,
My pen grabbed I close to my heart,
And put to scorch'd paper few brief verses,
In between some well placed curses.
Thought I, nightie now well heated,
"The hell with poems!" I'd become unseated.
Rising swiftly pray'd I to God,
"Please! Spare for me my bod!
And allow me like, you know, to step
Outside real quick and call a Geico rep."
We are covered well 'tis sure
For occasions ill, e'en backed up sew'r.
And should no payment come or stall late,
I shall but compare costs with Allstate.[1]
How didst such flames begin a-firing?
Was it ubiquitous faulty wiring?
Or mayhap pyromaniac parson[2]
Who lately'd been accused of arson?
My goods turned to ashes thus
Will ne'er make me Gloomy Gus.[3]
Though friends they may become aloof
Refusing meals if there's no roof.
Then shall we simply move up windward
To summer digs on Martha's Vineyard.
________________________________
[1] I, too, have Allstate.
[2] Parson Thurgood Mulch racked up a record thirty-three trips to the neck pillory in 1652 for setting trash can fires all over Plymouth.
[3] "Gloomy" Gus Standish (Miles' nephew) briefly dated Anne Bradstreet before tragically choking on a Thanksgiving turkey bone and succumbing in the arms of an Indian.
childplay
By The Poet Spiel
you learn to touch the knob with your eyes closed
so you may believe it cannot hurt you—twisting it silently—
like you are not touching it at all
you learn to release the latch
by pressing your small body against such a heavy door—delicately—
so the hinges will not groan like he makes them groan
you learn to shift your tiny feet whisperlike—
the way you imagine an angel might shift its wings—
as if your feet never touch the floor
while he is in his deepest sleep
you learn to become as invisible
as a grass snake escaping the garden—
so you may play in the dark
you eventually learn—
even in sunlight—
not to cast a shadow
—but before all this
you had to learn
not to scream
#
First published in the 2013 Ascent Aspirations Anthology
Tattooed Poets Project
Launched in 2009, the Tattooed Poets Project blog features photos of artistic tattoos paired with a poem by the wearer. Some of the tattoos are also portraits of notable poets such as Whitman and Dickinson. Contributors to the site include award-winning authors Kim Addonizio, Kazim Ali, Charlie Bondhus, Joy Harjo, Noelle Kocot, Simone Muench, Carl Phillips, and many others.
Google Lit Trips
Google Lit Trips is a computer-based resource that uses satellite and street view data from Google Maps to visualize the travel routes of characters in hundreds of great books for readers of all ages. Parents and educators can use Google Lit Trips to enliven lessons about geography, history, and foreign cultures.
Unbeknownst to You, My Brother
By Lucia May
Downtown the coroner speaks
with averted eyes about the bullet
and its path from your hand to your head.
He whispers his request
to kindly remove my child from the room.
For your funeral your wife dresses
in plastic shoes and a tight ruby dress.
You don't know that she will never give
our mother your ashes in the cardboard box.
She will scatter them to your son's horror.
You don't know that one morning
our mother will be found
lying in a field in the muddiness
of her stroke.
Your young son sits in the back row
during the service at the funeral home.
You don't know that he too will die
at your age.
In my Bible
there is no holy card from your funeral
but I have saved a yellow lined
memo sheet from the coroner
with the heading William J. Brown.
In my handwriting is
One spent, 5 extra
Smith and Wesson
The coroner, Dr. Edelstein, wrote
S&W Revolver
357 Magnum
Ser # S-305856
The minister glanced down to his notes
during the final prayer
to remind himself of your name.
#
(Reprinted from Blond Boy (Evening Street Press, 2014); originally published in The Awakenings Review, Fall 2012)
Two Sides of a Ticket
By Helen Leslie Sokolsky. This distinctive poetry chapbook from Finishing Line Press contains a portrait gallery of urban characters. Their alienation is healed, momentarily, by the author's mature and compassionate re-imagining of the lives she glimpses in passing. These narratives show us recognizable scenes made fresh by Sokolsky's original metaphors.
The Difficult Farm
By Heather Christle. The haunted-looking one-eared rabbit on the cover is an apt mascot for these poems, whose randomness can be both sinister and humorous. The title carries echoes of "the funny farm", slang for an asylum, the place where persons deemed "difficult" are shut away, laughed at for the nonsense they speak. But is it nonsense? Christle's poems are held together by tone rather than logic. They have the cadence and momentum of building an argument, but are composed of non sequiturs. But the individual observations within that stream of consciousness often ring so true that you may find yourself nodding along. The speakers of these poems are eager for connection through talk, while recognizing that we mostly use language for social glue rather than sincere information exchange. So why not serve up a "radiant salad" of words?
The Barricade
By Ned Condini
I would be glad to take his place
like a prince of orphans, to enjoy
my pinch of power in the royal hall.
But this elusive king leaves the door
ajar, warm coffee on the table,
the lights on & the book still open.
I lunge thinking there's the answer
& find a whiff of incense wafting
beyond the room into the dark where he vanished.
I know he will always be
millions of years away from me,
isolated on the remotest star;
yet the fact that he seems to move
when I, too, move makes me believe I'm on his track.
Fulfilling myself yet struggling
to get rid of the self that's me,
I am the Pompei man who saw
what was coming yet stretched out his hand to save
one piece at least of the barricade erected
against you, fighting you tooth and nail,
gripping the axe of his youth.
For Ned Condini, Poet
By D. Elaine Calderin
You made allusions to lost Gods
over cups of NesCafe
in rural coffee shops.
Your eyes never failed to smile.
There were moments when
the wrong word
made you wince,
but the right one made your soul sing.
The rest of us, lost children,
prayer books in hand
looked to you
for the pronunciation of Elysium.
But you were one of us too.
You loved your Micia
and your Marilyn,
the truth self
evident in the gracefulness of your shrug.
You spoke the vernacular
and the vulgate even
as you thought
in glorious septet, sextet, and hexameter.
You shared our jokes with
us even when we were
the joke, a cosmic
a'muse, an aperitif in Life's banquet.
In talent and talents, coin
and culture, you stood
above us but you
never failed to stoop down and aid
us in our struggles and vainglorious dreams.
Goodbye, Ned, dos voydonya,
and yes, Ave Atque Vale.
Hail, and farewell.
We will see you in Ee-lee-see-um.
Your friend for too short a space,
Elaine
Open Minds Quarterly
Open Minds Quarterly is a publication of The Writer's Circle, a project of NISA/Northern Initiative for Social Action. Open Minds Quarterly is dedicated to writers worldwide who have survived depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. The journal publishes fiction, book reviews, poems, and first-person narrative accounts, and sponsors the annual BrainStorm Poetry Contest for mental health consumers and survivors.
Pentimento Magazine
Pentimento publishes poetry, short fiction, essays, and artwork by writers with disabilities (including children), and authentic, well-written essays and poetry with a disability-related theme. Submissions may be by a individual with a disability or an individual who is part of the community such as a family member, educator, therapist, etc. Please indicate in your submission which category you are in. "Pentimento" is the term for an underlying image that shows through the top layer of a painting. The journal's name reflects their mission of "seeing beyond the surface". Currently a print magazine, with an online edition in the works.
Advice from Ellaraine Lockie, Judge of the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest
Winning Writers editor Jendi Reiter asks Ellaraine Lockie what she's looking for in the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest
What, for you, makes a poem in traditional verse feel fresh and contemporary?
The trend in contemporary traditional verse is to interpret form rules loosely, sometimes to the point where the spirit of the form is there, but the body isn't. So I consider a traditional verse poem that takes some liberties with the original rules to be one way of making the verse contemporary. I should add here that as a judge, I will categorize a poem as free verse if it veers absurdly far from the classic form it represents.
There are also other ways that a traditional form can feel more up-to-date, such as using today's vernacular instead of obsolete language, such as thee, thou, whilst, etc. Or, the poet can introduce a modern slant on an historical event or person. There were several excellent examples of villanelles and sonnets that employed this approach in last year's Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. Also, a modern happening or person can be placed in an earlier era through traditional verse. I haven't seen this as much, but it can be very effective, and it's a innovative way to make a poem feel fresh.
What poetic qualities do you look for in free verse, to differentiate it from prose?
In free verse, I look for conciseness and use of poetic devices, such as metaphors, similes, alliteration, assonance, and internal rhyme. I also look for sound and rhythm in the words, which delight the ears as much as the mind. Free verse, along with all other forms, often has more of an intensity, an excitement, than prose. It's the gelato where prose is the ice cream. In addition, there's a maverick quality to free verse, a willingness to break the rules of convention.
How can poets figure out whether our contest is a good fit for their work?
That's easy. Winning Writers Poetry Contests are a good fit for all poets. They are professionally and ethically run and have historically chosen fine poems as winners who receive high-end monetary prizes. Plus, the winning poems stay indefinitely on the Winning Writers website.
It could be important, however, to be sure that a poem is entered in the appropriate Winning Writers Contest. For example, strictly humorous poems probably would be better entered in Winning Writers' Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest rather than in the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest.
As a judge and reader, I'm not opposed to humor. There were many excellent rhyming humorous poems entered this last year, and I enjoyed them greatly. However, a solely humorous poem, no matter how good the form or its "funny factor", loses much of its effect after the first one or two readings, while poems that are multi-layered have the potential to become more meaningful with each reading. That to me is one of the more important qualities in a winning poem. Winning poems get multiple readings before ending placements are made.
Of course, it's possible to combine humor with more serious subject matter in the same poem, and that can create a powerful piece. These would be very competitive in the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Contests.
Do you have any pet peeves as a contest judge? E.g. over-used themes, clichés, awkward line breaks...
I'm not a fan of poems that tell me directly, as a reader, what to think or feel. I want to see language used in a way that allows me to come to my own conclusions. This kind of writing can be summed-up by the commonly-used phrase, Show/Don't tell.
Impact will be far greater if the poet empowers the readers in this way. It's accomplished through the use of examples, action, and dialogue rather than through directives. Description also can be effective if there is minimal use of adjectives. In place of most adjectives, I like to see similes and metaphors that let the reader come up with the words beautiful, ugly, bossy, etc.
What are the greatest rewards of being a contest judge?
I like having a tiny influence on what defines good poetry in our time. I love poetry, so when I judge, I'm living right in the center of one of my greatest passions. Almost as important to me, though, is how much I learn during the process. When I evaluate a poem and come across a word, phrase, place, social custom or poetic form that's unfamiliar to me, I research it. In so doing, I often come away from a judging experience, especially after a big contest, feeling as though I've completed an intensive college class. This is especially the case with international contests such as Winning Writers and Voices Israel's Reuben Rose Poetry Competition.
And then there's the knowledge gleaned from the poems themselves; I've learned in depth about worlds I barely knew existed. I also feel a kind of kinship with each poet whose poem I read. I like that too. I have a tendency to talk out loud to the poets during or after a read, giving feedback, etc., and since I do much of my poetry-related activities at coffee shops, I imagine other customers think I'm slightly unbalanced. I do confess to laughing and crying over a lot of poems, both in and out of coffee shops.
Do you encourage writers to re-submit the same poems in future years (or revised versions thereof), or would you prefer new work each time?
Absolutely I'm open to reading repeat poems. Poetry contests are like perfect storms, in that so many variables have to fall into place for a winning poem to happen. And the quality of the poems as a whole will vary from year to year. A poem that didn't quite make it to the finals list one year may very well do so the following year, even with the same judge. Winning a prize is as much about who and what else has entered as it is about the quality of a poem.
I particularly like to see revised poems.
How do you know when a poem is "done"? What are the signs of over-revision?
Well, I never consider a poem finished. Recently, I made a minor change in a poem after its twelfth publication. I encourage this kind of growing a poem as we grow as poets. Why not? Our poems belong to us as long as copyrights have been returned.
But of course, we must have some way of knowing when to introduce a poem to the world. Here is the list of steps I take before I submit a poem for publication or contest consideration:
- Ask one or two trusted poets to read and honestly comment on the poem and then welcome constructive criticism. I trade new but final draft poems with a couple of poets whom I respect. Often we don't see our own mistakes when we proof because we read what we intended to write rather than what we actually wrote.
- Print the poem in a significantly different font and size from the usual one. It will look as though it's been written by someone else. I started this exercise when my poems came back in published journals, and I could immediately see problems that I hadn't seen when the poems were in my familiar format.
- Read the poem out loud several times. Doing so exposes problems, especially with rhythm. Musicality is as important, although not as formally dictated, in free verse as it is in other forms. Some computers have options where documents can be read out loud by different voices with varied accents. This can be helpful and also fun to hear your poem read by various computer voices.
- Then read the poem for an audience. This is important because it causes the reader to hear the poem through the ears of others. Syntax or awkward line-length problems will announce themselves as stumbling blocks.
I change something in a newly-written poem nearly every time I read it in front of people. This is one of the valuable benefits to participating in poetry readings. Of course it is possible to over-revise. To check for that, I read the poem and sometimes ask someone else to read it as well, to check for the following:
- Has the poem become boring or tedious to read?
- Is it too long or too filled with details that would be better saved for prose?
- Is it repetitive (outside of repetition used as a poetic device) or too explanatory?
How Books Win Awards: Advice from C. Hope Clark
C. Hope Clark is the author of the Carolina Slade mystery series from Bell Bridge Books, and the editor of the FundsForWriters newsletter and website. In this guest post at author Glenda C. Beall's blog, Clark describes what judges look for in contests for small press and self-published books. Also included are her tips for spotting scams and protecting your rights.
What He Left
By Charlie Bondhus
I know it's broken,
but the cool, dark potential still unnerves me.
Many things are wrong:
something (the bullets?) rattling
like coins in a jar, the bright silver firing pin
snapped like a link in an old rosary.
Its black weight makes my hands
crinkle, two leaves flaking apart;
the only way I can hold a thing so potent
is with the knowledge that the moving parts
are immobilized.
It's always been this way,
loving chrome-cut men,
so solid there's not a hollow space to accommodate
the rising contractions of the heart.
You showed it to me one day,
explained hammers, pins, and primer;
cartridges and sparks, mechanical energy
and chemical reactions, you said
firing a gun is a little like writing fiction;
there's an initiating action,
a chain of events, the moment of crisis,
and then the falling tension,
the irrevocable resolution, but,
I know ours is not that kind of story.
No climax: you simply packed
what was useful and indisputably yours,
leaving me everything that might have been
ours, so why abandon this broken, deadly bit
of memory you carried
through Afghanistan?
Hard and cold as canteen water,
a memento of more than one desert,
I cradle it as though it were your heart.
Foothill: A Journal of Poetry
Foothill, a publication of Claremont Graduate University, accepts unpublished poetry by graduate students enrolled anywhere in the world. Submit 1-5 poems by email. CGU administers the prestigious Kingsley Tufts and Kate Tufts Awards for poetry books.
Historica Canada
Historica Canada (formerly the Historica Dominion Institute) is a national nonprofit that helps Canadians connect with their country's history, culture, civic institutions, and democratic values. The site includes oral histories, aboriginal arts, lesson plans for educators, and the "Heritage Minutes" series of short documentary videos.
Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
Word-lovers will appreciate graphic designer and filmmaker John Koenig's list of words he's invented to express subtle, familiar, as-yet-unnamed feelings. Some are illustrated with video clips. What imaginative person hasn't experienced "onism: the frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time"? E-books have their merits, but they'll never evoke "vellichor: the strange wistfulness of used bookstores".
Advice from Arthur Powers, Judge of the Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay Contest
As a past judge of the Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay Contest, I've been asked to provide some advice for contestants. I'm half-reluctant to do so as I don't really want to influence anyone's short story. Your story is your story, and you should write it the way you feel called to write it.
However, it's fair that you should know something about the way I think, so here goes:
Fiction
I love short stories. Writing them and reading them. I believe the short story allows a writer's craft to be honed in a special way, and I enjoy seeing the different ways that different writers approach their stories.
All the rules you have ever learned about writing are important. You should know them, master them, then work around them. People will tell you it is important to show, not tell; they are right—yet sometimes you should tell, not show. People will discuss whether to write in first or third person, from a specific or more omniscient viewpoint—all this is interesting but, in my experience, it is the story that tells the writer what viewpoint to write from, not the writer who tells the story. People (including me) will tell you never to write in the second person—yet I once wrote an entire novella in the second person and it worked (won an award and was published).
In his wonderful novel, My Name Is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok says much the same thing about painting: "This is a tradition...Only one who has mastered a tradition has the right to add to it or to rebel against it."
I tell my students that character is the most important element in fiction. You should know and love your characters. Plot is what happens when characters interact with one another or situations. This is true not only of psychological and literary stories, but of science fiction, thrillers, westerns, even mysteries (where the temptation to distort characters to fit the plot is particularly strong).
Atmosphere may also be important to a story—the way a place, a situation, and the story itself feel. Texture may be created through a few key phrases, through the words you choose.
Walter Pater said that all art strives toward music, and there is a great deal of truth in that. The rhythm of a story—pacing, timing, speed—is very important. I find it sometimes helps to think of my stories in terms of musical composition.
Avoid cliches—not only in words, but in thoughts. Try not to be too self-absorbed—take your craft seriously, but don't take yourself too seriously.
Essays
I do not want to overly influence any writer—it is the individuality of your work that makes it interesting. But here are qualities I am looking for in essays:
- Have something to say.
- Say it in a way that makes readers see differently or understand differently—that provides a new angle or a new insight, without necessarily doing acrobatics to try to be different.
- Say it with style—a style that has texture, that readers can savor.
- Make it memorable—words, phrases, thoughts, images that will stay in readers' minds for days—perhaps years—that will give them something to ponder.
- Develop it beautifully (whether the subject is beautiful or not)—with a quality that carries readers along with you, whether elegantly or on a bumpy (but meaningful) road.
May you break any of these guidelines? Of course. Surprises are always welcome. Write what you feel called to write the best you can. Enjoy writing—I'll enjoy reading it. Good fortune!
Poetry Magazines Online (Saison Poetry Library)
The Saison Poetry Library at the Southbank Centre maintains this online archive of 20th and 21st century UK poetry magazines, including both active journals and those that are no longer publishing. Not all journals have a complete press run available.
Transoceanic Twitter
By Alex Deppert
Transoceanic tubes twitter, trigger transition,
timely tighten transcontinental transmission.
Tie Trotsky to Trudy, Tunisia to Tennessee,
trigger transmutation, teeming translucency.
Two trillion text tatters, twittering tirelessly,
trading tirades, trueness, tomfoolery,
towering tom-tom tons, terrible tastelessness,
treasure troves, trenchancy, terrific tastiness.
Textual tadpoles terrify, titillate,
troglodytes, townsmen take to tolerance, transmigrate.
Tackle textual tessellations, tidal text tweezer,
trigger talk-triple-tripe-trips, tipsy text teaser,
technological tongue tongs, titanic travesty,
turning tricks, taking turns toughly, tempestuously.
GLA Blog “Dear Lucky Agent” Contests
Writer's Digest hosts this recurring free contest at Guide to Literary Agents (GLA) blog. Each contest is focused on a different genre, e.g. contemporary middle-grade fiction. Entrants should submit the first 150-200 words of their manuscript via email. No entry fee, but to be eligible for consideration, you must mention the contest twice through any social media. Contest is judged by literary agents who are seeking new authors to represent. Winners receive critique and subscription to WritersMarket.com.
Writing Maps
Writing Maps are illustrated fold-out posters with creative writing prompts. The story and memoir ideas on the posters can be used in writing workshops or on your own. The site offers monthly themed contests, with two winners each month. Prize is publication in the Writing Maps Journal plus free copies and posters. Entries may be prose, poems, graphic stories, or any hybrid thereof.
Loretta Wray
By Terri Kirby Erickson
My mother, lipstick red, barefoot, toenails painted
the palest shade of pink, stretched out her dancer's legs
and rubbed suntan lotion into a face
that should have been magnified on a movie screen—
the kind that bowled men over even with curlers in her hair
and children dangling from both hands wherever she went.
They never saw the greasy chaise lounge behind our house
where the sun whispered sonnets in her ears
and darkened her skin with hot kisses while the radio
played "Blue Velvet." And the green grocer and the mailman
and the gas station attendants and the jean-clad
teenage boys loitering downtown on Saturday afternoons,
who caught glimpses of Loretta Wray every now
and then, if they were lucky, would have dropped dead with desire
if they'd seen her sunning herself in our backyard wearing
nothing but a two-piece bathing suit and a lazy, sun-drenched
grin, the best years of her life almost, but not quite, past.
#
(Reprinted from A Lake of Light and Clouds (Press 53); originally published in storySouth)
What the Prince Doesn’t Know
By Maureen Sherbondy
Two months ago the mammogram revealed
a lump, and days since then have passed.
She can no longer throw her hair over the wall
for him to shimmy up beneath the star-scarred sky.
In a nauseous-chemo blur, clumps of golden thread
fell from her head to the tower's cold stone floor.
Still, the witch keeps her here, caged and ill, the left breast
completely gone. Her head a pale bald egg.
So when the Prince yells up to her, Rapunzel, throw down
your golden hair, she hides beneath the sterile sheets.
#
(First published in On the Dark Path: An Anthology of Fairy Tale Poetry)
The Difficulties
By Ruth Hill
The difficulties in trying to save
your enemies' children
—the innocents, collateral damage—
is that they belong so thoroughly
to your enemies
Handing candy to them in the refugee camps
you see it in their eyes
they have already learned to throw stones
waggle their tongues at you like wild turkeys
to repeat the irrational rationale
of why you are their enemy—'infidel'—
your food and your kindnesses,
their rightful plunder
This poem won an honorable mention in the 2013 Poets for Human Rights contest.
Seawoman’s Caribbean Writing Opps
Writer Sandra Sealy's blog showcases writers of Caribbean descent and links to publishing opportunities for them.
The Wishing Tomb
Winner of the 2013 PEN Center USA Award in Poetry, this exquisite collection surveys the cultural history of New Orleans over three centuries, in poems that quiver and shake with music and surge with the violence of floods. End-notes provide background on the incidents that inspired each poem.
All the Heat We Could Carry
This masterful, heart-wrenching collection by Charlie Bondhus, winner of the 2013 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, brings the poetry of gay male love and the poetry of war together with unprecedented candor, but the story this book tells is more elegiac than celebratory of civil rights victories. The alternating narrators, a veteran of the Afghanistan war and his homefront lover, seem free from their forerunners' self-conscious anguish about sexual orientation. They can admit openly how sex between men is like martial arts grappling, how killing can be orgasmic and the camaraderie of soldiers more intimate than lovers. However, the unbridgeable rift of combat trauma still forces them apart.
Barking Sycamores
Launched in 2014, the online literary journal Barking Sycamores publishes poetry by writers on the autism spectrum, and essays on autism's interplay with the creative process. Editors say, "Barking Sycamores supports the concept of neurodiversity: in short, the idea that autism and related conditions are valid neurological ways of being that are the result of normal variations in the human genome as opposed to pathologies which need to be cured." No simultaneous submissions or previously published work. See submissions guidelines page to learn about their philosophy before entering.
