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By: Kathy Temean,
on 7/13/2010
Blog:
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Short Short Story Competition
The Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition
Writer’s Digest is no longer accepting entries in the 8th Annual Short Short Story Competition. Winners will be notified by February 11, 2008 and will not otherwise be made public until they are announced in the June 2008 issue of Writer’s Digest.
Winners of the 7th Annual Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition were listed in the June 2007 issue of Writer’s Digest. Click here for a full list of winners.
The Writer’s Digest 11th Annual Short Short Story Competition
We’re looking for fiction that’s bold, brilliant…but brief. Send us your best in 1,500 words or fewer.
ENTRY FEE: $20
But don’t be too long about it—the deadline is Thursday, December 1, 2010.
PRIZES
First Place: $3,000 and a trip to the Writer’s Digest Conference in New York City
Second Place: $1,500
Third Place: $500
Fourth Through Tenth Place: $100
Eleventh Through Twenty-Fifth Place: $50 gift certificate for Writer’s Digest Books
* The names and story titles of the First-through Tenth-Place winners will be printed in the May/June 2011 Writer’s Digest, and winners will receive the 2011 Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market and Agents, Editors, and You: The Insider’s Guide to Getting Your Book Published. Plus, all First through 25th place winners will receive a free copy of the 11th Annual Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition Collection.
http://writersdigest.com/short
Remember, contests are a good way to get your name out there and maybe make some money. Plus if you win, it will give you a giant morale boost. Good luck!
Talk tomorrow,
Kathy
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2 Comments on Writer Digest Short-Story Fiction Contest, last added: 7/16/2010
Manuscript update: Still perfecting my query letter and synopsis. I’m attending the Austin SCBWI conference on Saturday — so excited — and hope to have a fantastic, shiny, brilliant query letter and synopsis ready to start sending out to the conference speakers soon after.
Yesterday, I wrote about why it’s important to write the perfect query letter and synopsis, and then I read a really great article on the subject and wanted to share.
One thought before I do: Your query letter and synopsis are supporting players to your manuscript. Ultimately, it’s your manuscript that will get an agent to sign you as a client, so working hard and as long as it takes to make your manuscript perfect is essential. But once that’s done, don’t short-change this next part. Even though the query letter and synopsis are supporting players, they are the first ones on stage, and if they don’t shine with brilliance, your audience won’t stay for the full show. So, take the time, do the work, no matter how frustrating it can be. If necessary, shelve your query letter and synopsis for a few weeks, just as you would your manuscript, to make sure it’s the best it can be before you send it out.
When I was submitting my first novel to agents, I worked hard on my query letter and synopsis, and my first query letter got a good many requests for the full manuscript — the goal — but it also got many no thank yous. Later in the process, I revised the query letter, and my ratio of requests to no thank yous rose enormously on the side of requests. (Ultimately, my first manuscript got back very positive comments about my writing, the story, characters, etc., but the agents I submitted to said they felt it wasn’t right for them right now. As I had finished my second novel and started revising it, I decided to stop submitting my first book and start again with my second, which is what I’m doing now.)
Ok, now for the sharing part. Writer’s Digest just posted a really great article about query letters by literary agent Ann Rittenberg, Basics of a Solid 3-Paragraph Query Letter. Ann gives an example of a query letter that worked for her and dissects the parts of a query letter and how they should be used.
But what I like best about Ann’s article is the statistics she gives at the beginning. They might be daunting, scary even, but they’re the reality, and the way to look at them is as a challenge. Let’s face it, with these statistics, the odds are against anyone getting a request from a query letter, but people do get requests (see above) and books from debut authors are published every year. There’s nothing to say that it can’t be your book or mine, as long as we put in the work that’s necessary.
Read Ann’s article but don’t feel discouraged. Feel energized, charged up that you are now closer to getting that request, closer to being a debut author, because you have something other writers must not: You have the keys that Ann is giving you about how to write a query that will get a Yes.
Coming next, more on writing a brilliant synopsis.
P.S. You’ve got til the end of this week to enter the contest to win a PDF copy of Laura Cross‘ book Complete Guide to Hiring a Literary Agent: Everything You Need to Know to Become Successfully Published. Go to my
0 Comments on More on query letters as of 1/1/1900
Upcoming Events (Where You'll Find Me!)...
I always think of January as being nothing but dull dull dull and cold cold cold. January 2010, however, is shaping up to rather exciting (and yet...still cold cold cold). Here's what's coming up:
WRITER'S DIGEST 90th ANNIVERSARY PARYT, January 20th
This takes place at the very cool Northside Tavern in Cincinnati. Join us for networking, give-aways, cake and various other anniversary fun. Here's my recent post about the party. No RSVP needed--just show up.
DIGITAL BOOK WORLD, January 26-27
This two-day industry event in New York City is a big ol discussion of current and future strategies, tools, and best practices for consumer publishers big and small in the age of eBook and e-readers. And pretty much everyone will be there. Registration is still open. (I will be tweeting and blogging.)
Click here to follow DBW on Twitter.
ALICE RESTS, January 28
SCBWI ANNUAL WINTER CONFERENCE, January 29-31
You can still register for the biggest and best event for children's writers and illustrators there is (besides the SCBWI Summer Conference). If you can't attend, don't fret--you can follow the conference as it happens on The Official SCBWI Conference Blog manned by SCBWI TEAM BLOG (Jaime, Jolie, Lee, Suzanne and me.)
Writer's Digest is Turning 90, We're Having a Party & You're Invited!...
Writer's Digest is hitting the big 9-0 so we're celebrating with a birthday bash at the ubercool Northside Tavern in the Nati on Wednesday, January 20th at 7 PM.
We'll be giving away lots of writerly swag and there will be cake (and a well-stocked bar).
“All of us on staff are honored and humbled to be a part of the Writer’s Digest legacy, and this anniversary gives us a moment to celebrate and give thanks to the writing community that supports us,” say Jane Friedman, our Publisher and WD Community Leader. “Anyone who’s ever worked with or for Writer’s Digest is encouraged to join us, as well as anyone who has read and appreciated the magazine over the years.”
If you are in the area--or even if you're not--come join the WD team in anniversary revelry.
In my agent travels, I find that most of the questions I get from aspiring authors are about queries. And that makes sense: everyone (including myself) will tell you that your query is an important weapon in your agent-getting arsenal. So, having been told that the difference between publishing superstardom and form-rejection comes down to one page, authors obsessively work on their queries. But that’s not quite right: what they do is obsess. And I think a lot of times they can’t see the forest for the trees. They ask agents what font or paper stock they should use, whether HTML email or plain text is better, or if their bio should be longer or shorter or more personal or more formal. They receive conflicting advice from different websites, agents, editors, author friends, and spouses. And then they have a nervous breakdown.
Ok, that last part may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but I don’t think it’s that far off. Writers, who tend to be obsessive anyway, get downright crazy about query details, and I really don’t blame them. We publishing professionals haven’t helped the situation, what with all of our dire warnings about doing it perfectly or else. So I want all of the writers out there to pay attention: if you’re reading this blog, if you’re paying attention when publishing pros give you advice, if you’re going to good, appropriate conferences, you don’t need to panic. This is the catch-22 of it all: when agents go on and on about bad queries and what-not-to-do, they’re preaching to the choir! Anyone savvy enough to be paying attention is probably doing it right in the first place. I don’t mean that all of you have winning queries that will score them an agent and publication, but I doubt any of your are going to wind up the cautionary query tale that you hear at conferences.
But, the question the remains: what am I looking for, if it’s not all of those little details? What I’m looking for is a unique idea and good writing. I’m looking for an authentic, interesting voice--yes, voice in your query. I’m looking to get a feel for your style in just a couple of paragraphs. I’m looking for you to describe your book, whether it’s commercial or literary or in between, in a way that makes me want to keep reading. In October, I linked to a great query example, the one that Lisa McMann had written for Wake that was recently in Writer’s Digest. It was exactly I’m looking for: it was unlike any query I’d received before (or since). How so, you ask? It was entirely unique to Lisa and her book. It didn’t follow any formula or template. It gave me the information I ask for, but it did so in a way that was different. And I can promise you, all of the successful queries I’ve read have done the same thing.
I’m sure this will spur many questions, but I’d like to have a saner, more humane query discussion with aspiring authors, one that focuses on ideas, narrative, and writing instead of on boring details like font and word count. A little common sense in putting together a presentable query, plus a killer idea and great writing, and you’re all set!
- Michael
A recent blog entry and comments by Natalie Murphy made this article catch my eye.
4 Tips for Choosing the Right Word
February 11, 2008 The date it originally was written.
How do you choose the right word for the right situation? The most powerful words tend to be the shortest and, not coincidentally, the ones most basic to the English language. A long-time editor gives more advice about choosing the right word.
Here are a few thoughts on choosing the right word from “English Through the Ages,” a reference book by William Brohaugh:
- Keep word and phrase choice appropriate to the context. For example, streetwise characters in a novel wouldn’t likely use technical jargon or acronyms. Nor would the writer of a novel about streetwise characters. One lesson here is to let word choice in the narrative conform at a certain level to the word choice of the people populating the narrative. For instance, formal narration lacking contractions wouldn’t serve a story about rural folk, nor would colloquial narration serve a story about high society — even if the characters themselves spoke completely in context.
- Listen for what sounds right. I’m thinking of the TV mini-series Merlin, in which a medieval character states, “My mind is made up.” I don’t have reference to when the idiom “make up your mind” was first used, but I suspect it wasn’t in use in Arthurian times, and even if it was, it sounds modern. Better the character have said something that sounded a bit archaic, like “My mind is firm.”
- The precise word isn’t necessarily the right word. Susurration might be more precise than murmur in a given passage, but if the word is confusing or (see above) at odds with the context or the atmosphere of the story, a less-precise word might actually be the better choice. This is true only if “less-precise” isn’t synonymous with “wrong.” A less-precise word can still be the right word.
- The most powerful words tend to be the shortest and, not coincidentally, the ones most basic to the English language. Said Sir Winston Churchill, “Broadly speaking, the short words are best, and the old words best of all.” Words like kin, thanks and small, for instance, are deeply rooted in Old English before A.D. 1000, while words like relatives (from the 1600s), gratitude (in use by 1450) and tiny (from the 1500s) are from succeeding generations. But again, it’s best to choose the word that communicates your point while evoking or echoing the tone of your manuscript, and if it’s the longer word, so be it.
Become a Writer's Digest VIP (and Join Our New WD Community)...
I'm a shopper and I love a bargain, especially if it's for something I wanted to buy anyway (like books and shoes). That's why I think our new Writer's Digest VIP program (which just kicked off yesterday) is a pretty sweet deal--lots of good stuff for not much money.
For $49.95 you get a one-year subscription to both WritersMarket.com (which now includes all the info from CWIM) and Writer’s Digest magazine, plus you also get a free webinar recording (which is usually $99), 10% off WOW courses, and 10% off all WD Shop purchases.
If you do the math, it could normally cost up to $198.80 so you can save $148.85. (The best part about finding a bargain is figuring out how much you save.)
Click here to visit the WD Shop and learn more about becoming a WD VIP.
Here's something else new: We've also just launched the Writer's Digest Community on Ning. Stop by, join, and become my friend. (I only have 79 so far. I want more. One can't have too many friends, too
many books, or too many pairs of shoes.)
Visit Writer's Digest Community
At this weekend’s Editors’ Intensive, Alice Pope & I were trying to explain how Twitter works and how it can be helpful for writers.
There were many skeptics in the audience. So I posed the question to my friends/followers on Twitter: How has Twitter helped you as a writer?
I love the responses I received, so I’m sharing with all. Thank you for your generous tips—and if you have more to say beyond 140 characters, you have the comments to elaborate!
Twitter’s let me meet writers, editors, & agents I might not have, & helped me understand all aspects of the business better.
@littlefluffycat
Contacts, sources and community – it’s a digital moveable feast
@FictionMatters
I’ve met editors, agents, big authors, up & coming authors, spread the word about my blog, made wonderful friends!
@RachelJameson
The connection/interaction to other writers, editors, even agents has been hugely enlightening.
@jdistraction
Twitter helped me meet ppl I wouldn’t have had access to otherwise. Casual format makes asking questions less intimidating.
@RocchiJulia
Twitter has helped me connect with other writers like me. We encourage each other–writing is no longer a lonely occupation.
@TboneJenkins
Twitter has helped me learn more about specific agents and enabled me to make a better decision on if they’re right for me.
@HeatherMcCorkle
Twitter also keeps me updated on the writing industry & has helped me meet great writers I wouldn’t have otherwise met.
@HeatherMcCorkle
Met many writers and authors I never would have met on Twitter.
@lafreya1
How has Twitter helped? Connected to writers, pubs, opportunities, promotion – gotten more readers on blog, my novel, etc
@tericoyne
Twitter helped me find an excellent guide in southern Austria on a research trip for my next historical novel.
@KarenEssex
Twitter helps me observe the minds of literary agents! I’ve discovered those not living in New York are almost normal, almost!
@kenkanten
Inspiration: microfiction and poetry at my fingertips, showing how much can be conveyed in 25 words.
@amgamble
Networking in a telecommuting industry. Editing for concise: make cuts and preserve meaning. Best clipping service ever.
@amgamble
Writing community with support and very imp. info re: today’s publishing world.
@jessrosenbooks
Twitter gives affirmation of what I know and information about what I don’t. Networking allows pub. & unpub. to come together.
@jessrosenbooks
I agree with everything @jessrosenbooks says about writers & twitter. Support, info & encouragement is incredible, even for a rookie 
@CafeNirvana
I am learning a lot from twitter friends and people who share info through twitter. And I’m getting to know fantastic people.
@mariblaser
Twitter has taught me about platforms, promotion, community, and audience.
@alittlesandy
I’ve had hot scoops from tweeters in other countries, I’ve met ace journos i never would have otherwise … I’ve been filming a Lisbon city guide using nothing more than my phone, mostly twitter, no printed research, guides etc.
@UKtraveleditor
Twitter helps me connect with fellow writers in a fun and collegiate way
@Debs1
Networking, research, discovering new things, calling attn to my blog has been ESSENTIAL to my work flow.
@jenzug
Learned of an online auction, bid for crit from my dream editor, won, got crit & a request for full!
@AuntBirdseed
Still learning Twitter, but like the opportunity to follow info on specific subjects from lots of sources in one place.
@meredithrmorgan
From @DavidRozansky:
I have acquired more than a dozen potential new authors for our house via Twitter pitches.
Linking to articles via Twitter has increased blog traffic by 900%.
Twitter keeps tabs on rival publishing houses & client bookstores.
By following industry experts, knowledge of books industry grows exponentially.
Links to books on Twitter results in increased book sales.
I’ve built platform of 2,600 Twitter followers in only 5 months, no gimmicks.
I run #scifichat, a weekly scifi books group discussion, Fri. 2-4 pm.
Twitter gives me ideas for books and marketing before competition.
Through Twitter, I am first to learn of trends and news in the books industry.
The best thing-I make friends with fab people in the industry, like yourself!
Leave your tips and thoughts in the comments!
I kept this link to pass on to others. It’s Writer’s Digest annual listing of the 101 best websites for writers. Check it out! This listing/edition of the magazine is always one of my favorites.
I often find handy sites and apps to use, including Windows Live Writer–the software I am using at the moment. I use it to write and edit my blog entries. It’s free, and easier to use than the blogging editor that came with my site.
So check out the new listing at: http://writersdigest.com/article/101-websites-2009.
Enjoy,
Shutta
I'm Doing a Webinar February 12...
Writer's Digest has recently begun offering a series of webinars as part of Writer's Online Workshops--and the next one will be led by yours truly! These have been popular so far--and pretty exciting. My February 12 session will be my webinar debut. I'll be going over some basics, offering tips, answering questions, and doing first page critiques. I'm kinda stoked about this (although nervous about technical difficulties of my own doing. But I always worry about that and the other editors have had no problems, so, really, things will be fine.)
The marketing copy is below. (Doesn't it sound marketing-copy-ish?) . You can click here to register and click here to see the list of upcoming topics that will be offered in upcoming webinars through the end of March.
You Can Write Children's Books
Thursday, February 12, 1 p.m. eastern time.
Take the mystery out of children's writing! With this 60-minute seminar presented by Alice Pope, Editor of Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market, get the resources you need to get your work in print. Whether you've written before, or are just getting started, this seminar covers the children's market in a way that makes it understandable for everyone. You'll also get a listing of websites and resources that every children's writer needs to be successful.
Special Bonus! Alice will offer 25 First Page Critiques in live time during the webinar. Writers who register may submit the first page (ONLY) of a manuscript, and randomly chosen first pages will be critiqued from the perspective of an agent or editor reading them for the first time. Alice will point out strengths and weaknesses and discuss whether she feels an agent or editor would be compelled to read on.
Our New Farmers & Writers Blog Rolls Out...
The editorial staff of Writer's Digest Books has recently debut a new blog called Farmers & Writers. For those of you who don't know, WD Books is an imprint of F+W Media, formerly F+W Publications--the F for farmers, the W for writers. Writer's Digest and Farmer's Quarterly were the first magazines published by F+W back in the '20s. FQ is long gone, but WD magazine and WD Books live on and thrive here in Ohio, so we offer you "footnotes from the midwest publishing empire."
The whole team will participate in the blog--publisher, editors (myself included), designers, and marketing--and we'll be posting daily on weekdays.
Here's the link.
Author: Bob King
Illustrator: Bill Slavin (on JOMB)
Published: 1994 Kids Can Press (on JOMB)
ISBN: 1550741497 Chapters.ca
Imaginative, engaging illustrations and plenty of predictable, belt-it-out repetition rendered our copy of this sing-along comedy a ragged but treasured relic of the fleeting toddler years.
Tags:
Bob King,
Podcast,
singalong,
Sitting on the Farm,
toddlerBob King,
Podcast,
singalong,
Sitting on the Farm,
toddler
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There was a time when I thought 1,500 words was a lot. First Place is $3,000 for just 1,500 words. I plan to try it. I love a challenge!
CB
Just got a letter that stated a poem I submitted to a contest has made it to the semi-finals! The contest was suggested by my cw professor this past spring.