Indholdsfortegnelse for March 2020 i Writer's Digest

Spend enough time in the freelance trenches, and you’ll find yourself working for an eclectic array of editors. If you’re lucky, the majority will be talented individuals who have your best interests at heart, work hard on your behalf, and use their skills to make your words shine. Unfortunately, not all editors epitomize the ideal. Some are quirky, difficult to work with, and sometimes just plain weird. Here’s a guide to the different kinds of editors you’re likely to encounter in the wilds of freelancing and how to work with them. 1. THE WITHHOLDER. Typically short on details when making an assignment, the Withholder can be among the most frustrating editors a writer will work with. Even if they know what they want, they have difficulty conveying it, frequently leaving…

POETIC FORM: ZEJEL The zejel is an old Spanish poetic form that may also be an older Arabic poetic form—dating back to the ninth century. In fact, Edward Hirsch’s A Poet’s Glossary reports that the form may have been invented by Hispano-Muslim poet Muqaddam iben Muafá. Here are the basic rules: • The first stanza is a mono-rhymed couplet (two-line stanza) or tercet (three-line stanza). • All other stanzas are quatrains (four-line stanzas) with an XXXA rhyme scheme, so the second stanza would be BBBA, third CCCA, and so on to the end of the poem. • Lines are usually eight syllables long Here is an example by a Poetic Asides reader: Figment by RJ Clarken The old swing set is weather-worn;bare, save for bee and garden thorn. The opening…

Erik Hane grew up in Littleton, Colo., attended college in the Midwest, and spent a few years working as an editor in New York before moving to Minneapolis. “I’m very lucky now to be working in the field I care about most in a city I love,” Hane says. “Minneapolis is one of the country’s great writing and publishing cities.” He has served on the editorial staff at Oxford University Press and The Overlook Press and worked as an agent at Red Sofa Literary before co-founding Headwater with Laura Zats. Hane’s writing can be found in places like LitHub.com, and he’s working on a novel that he plans to pitch to agents this year. Hane and Zats are co-hosts of the award-winning publishing podcast, “Print Run.” “In nonfiction, I work…

Have a character who’s simply too predictable? Let’s pull him out of your work-in-progress and into the sandbox to play. First, write a sentence or two that sums up your character in a nutshell (e.g., He couldn’t help being such a goody-goody rule follower: He’d practically been programmed that way from birth). Then, it’s time to brainstorm: Use one (or more) of these prompts to follow that with something unexpected. Notice that these call for all five senses; find the emotion hidden in a taste, a feel, a smell. What kind of out-of-character behavior does he already have within him? But no one knew …But she had never …But on the day of his wife’s funeral …But every time she caught a whiff of a certaincologne …But the taste of…

As a writing coach and college professor, I keep current on what agents and editors want because outside of basic craft instruction, those are the secrets/tips/tricks that aspiring writers most want. One of the prologue “rules” I’ve heard plenty of times is a variation on the following: •“Most agents hate prologues.”—Andrea Brown (president of Andrea Brown Literary Agency, Inc.) •“Damn the prologue, full speed ahead!”—Laurie McLean (founding partner, Fuse Literary) •“I am fully settled into the I Hate Prologues camp … I go so far as to NOT read them in a manuscript.”— Janet Reid (agent at New Leaf Literary & Media) In short, a lot of smart story people want novel prologues to die a quick and seemingly necessary death. But is that really the best advice to follow,…

One of Katherine S. Ulshafer’s all-time favorite things to do is read to her children. “I think it’s so important to their learning and the whole bonding experience,” the children’s book author says. “It’s just priceless.” So it comes as no surprise that her picture book, which won the Grand Prize in the Writer’s Digest 27th Annual Self-Published Book Awards, is called I Love You. The simple and sweet story relates the emotions of parenthood to the traits of animals. “I love you as fiercely as a mamma bear,” Ulshafer writes in the book. “I love you as softly as a meadow hare.” The idea for the book came to Ulshafer because when she thinks about how much she loves her six children and 10 grandchildren, she is overcome with…

Dear FYSA I am a bestselling author and have been asked to teach a writing seminar at a conference. I was flattered and excited so I accepted. But—and no one knows this except for my agent and editor—I am terrible with some aspects of grammar, especially homonyms and homophones. Should I be up front about this? Sincerely, Write Right Dear Write Right, Argh! I know, right? Why can’t we all just have Lynne Truss on speed dial and she can be like, “There, there, they’re there!” It’s all so confusing, because homophones have the same pronunciation, but differ in spelling and meaning, and homonyms have the same spelling, same pronunciation, and different meaning. [*Suddenly looks up*] [*Squints in middle distance*] [*Commences flop sweat*] [*Screams in brackets at editor: “Did I…

In a business in which irony is a useful tool, it is perhaps unsettling to realize that the term premise—unarguably one of the fundamental elements of storytelling—is so frequently misunderstood and misused within the universal writing conversation. It is often contextually abused by authors, agents, and even editors and reviewers, who refer to everything from story ideas to theme to plot slugline—even character arc—as premise, when in fact they are referring to those subsets specifically. None of which actually is, when regarded alone, an actual premise at all. This imprecision is fine if writing conference conversations and online forums were all that matter. But when it absolutely does matter—as part of a pitch, in a query letter, and especially in the quiet of our writing space when we are alone…

Each week I do volunteer work at a local cat rescue. Cleaning the cat rooms and socializing the cats is a great way to decompress after a stressful day at the office. When the other volunteers found out I was a book editor, they asked if I would help them make a book about the shelter. It was a project that had long been on their list to raise awareness of and fundraise for the shelter, but they didn’t know where to begin. When I said I’d help, the first thing I did was create a schedule for our process. Although we are self-publishing the book, the schedule I created for our volunteer group was based entirely on the format of the schedule Writer’s Digest Books, along with other nonfiction…

The following two magazines were suggested by Lee Gutkind as potential outlets for creative nonfiction writers beyond Creative Nonfiction magazine. Brevity ( BrevityMag.com ) Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction is published three times per year and features extremely brief essays of 750 words or fewer. Writers are paid a $45 honorarium for featured essays and craft pieces. Submit via their Submittable page. The Sun ( TheSunMagazine.org ) The Sun is a nonprofit, ad-free magazine that accepts submissions year-round. They pay $300–$2,000 for personal essays that should max out at 7,000 words (without a minimum length). Submissions can be made via their Submittable page or by mail to The Sun, 107 N. Roberson St., Chapel Hill N.C. 27516.…

CALIFORNIA CALIFORNIA CREATIVE WRITERS CONFERENCE™, produced by West Coast Writers Conferences. March 20–22, 2020 Westside Los Angeles, CA. Writers of all genres and disciplines will benefit from three-days of educational and inspirational learning focused on the craft and business of writing. Our 25th conference will feature Creative Writing programs for fiction & nonfiction, as well as genre writers (from our popular Genre-LA™ event), Read and Critique opportunities from our BCX™ Boot Camp, and the latest on the golden age of Indie Publishing (from our Digital Author Conference). The event will also include workshops for the 3-A’s™ (Aspiring, Active, and Accomplished) for writers of fiction, nonfiction, and screenplays. Topics will be presented by 40+ literary agents, editors, veteran educators, bestselling authors, and industry professionals in progressive tracks of workshops, and panels.…

GENRE CHAOS There’s been some chaos at the grand opening of your new bookstore—the signs marking the genre sections of have been mixed up. Unscramble the letters to reveal the name of each genre. 1. anlaarprom aemocrn 2. bunar fsantay 3. sccpillyghooa ehrilltr 4. uret rcmei 5. icnseec foictin 6. bohpiygar 7. dytsanpoi iiftcon 8. ikcch tli 9. flse ehpl 10. kooocbko ERASURE Create an erasure poem with a newspaper, magazine, old journal, or book that you can scribble in. Using a dark marker, scribble over all but a select few words on the pages. The words not “erased” by the marker will make up a new piece of found poetry.…

Hello dear readers. Welcome to our March issue. The theme is chaos. And as I write this to you, it is less than a week until Christmas. I’m listening to Joni Mitchell’s Blue again (“It’s coming on Christmas, they’re cutting down trees …”—“River”) and thinking about all the stuff I have yet to do; the list is long. I’m overwhelmed and hoping Joni can help. She usually does. It may seem odd to mention Christmas in our March issue, but in the magazine world, we work far in advance. In fact, I am actually behind schedule in getting this letter written, due to the (dare I say it?) chaos of the past month or so. Actually, the chaos of the past year, if I am completely honest. I’ve learned over…

This past fall I was once again in Cincinnati’s Mercantile Library to hear an author speak about her new book. I went in with no real expectations—I hadn’t read any of Susan Jane Gilman’s books yet; I just take any opportunity to hear writers talk about their work. When Gilman began, I was struck by how warm and downright hilarious she was. She gave wonderful advice on how to get better at this brutal gig we call writing and made us all laugh out loud. I started with her latest novel. Donna Has Left the Building (Grand Central, 2019) follows a woman in midlife and on the brink—she wakes up one day in a world she no longer recognizes and it sends her on a chaotic two-week journey from Detroit…

Constance Sayers A Witch in Time (Romantic historical fantasy, February, Redhook) “A young witch is cursed to relive a doomed love affair through many lifetimes, as both troubled muse and frustrated artist.” WRITES FROM: Washington D.C. PRE- WITCH: I had been writing rural noir. I had short stories published and a novel that I had been struggling with for several years. I just didn’t know how to write a novel. After getting a good draft, I landed an agent, but the book failed to sell. My agent had seen an early 50 pages of A Witch in Time and encouraged me to focus on that instead. TIME FRAME: It took two years to write A Witch in Time from first draft to pitch. My previous book took 8+ years to…

500 pages. That’s the length of the transcript journalist Rachel Slade had to wade through in researching her 2018 bestselling book, Into the Raging Sea: Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking of El Faro. Assembled from 26 hours of audio pulled from a doomed ship’s data recorder—actual conversations between the crew and the Ahab-like captain—Slade had to sift through the transcription’s technical language to unveil these complex characters and their extraordinary situation, extracting quotes along the way. The 790-foot-long El Faro was freighting 25 million pounds of goods between Jacksonville, Fla., and Puerto Rico when Hurricane Joaquin devoured the vessel in October 2015. The container ship was ripped to pieces and the entire crew perished, making it the deadliest American shipping disaster in 35 years. The catastrophe was covered…

GRAND PRIZE I Love You by Katherine S. Ulshafer. Illustrated by Sarah Frushour Emms. ($20.66) Christian Faith Publishing. EARLY READERS/CHILDREN’S PICTURE BOOKS FIRST PLACE Dash’s Week by Nicole MacDonald. Illustrated by Claudia Varjotie. ($17.99) Manhattan Dog Press. Nicole-MacDonald.com HONORABLE MENTIONS Super Beagle by Kim Edge Ambler and Rell Ambler. ($13.95) Peirce Street Press. My Magnificent Hair by Natalee Antoinette Johnson. ($10) Passion4Dreams. GENRE FICTION FIRST PLACE The Chateau by Tiffany Reisz. 8th Circle Press. ($14.99 paperback; $30 hardcover) TiffanyReisz.com HONORABLE MENTIONS Knuckle Down: A Cage Life Novel by Miles Watson. ($10.99) Innocent, Until Proven Black by Tyrone R. Gibbs Jr. ($20) TyroneGibbs.com The Memory Box by Eva Lesko Natiello. Fine Line Publishing. ($15.95) EvaNatiello.com Chain Reactions by Lynn Ames. Phoenix Rising Press. ($15.95) LynnAmes.com The Matrimonial Advertisement by Mimi Matthews.…

In Robert Dugoni’s two-million copy bestselling mystery, My Sister’s Grave, the quick appetizer premise is this: the story of a woman’s loss and a man who may have been falsely imprisoned for her sister’s murder. It’s a great idea and an empowering starting point for story development. It pushes buttons even before you hear the rest. But it’s not a premise, because several key bases remain undefined. Here’s the full premise, in Dugoni’s own words via a clip on Amazon’s “My Book in 15 Seconds” feature, which he renders in only 11 seconds: To find out who killed her sister, Sarah, 20 years earlier, Seattle homicide detective Tracy Crosswhite must get a new trial for a convicted murderer, but she might just be opening the door to darker secrets, and…

“When I talk to students, especially younger students,” says Creative Nonfiction founder and editor Lee Gutkind, “they have no idea that creative nonfiction hasn’t been around forever. But it hasn’t. It had existed before, but never as a genre. It was like a secret genre.” Because Gutkind had been writing creative nonfiction since the early 1970s and having trouble finding publishing outlets outside of “the big deal, slick magazines like TheNew Yorker or Esquire,” he decided to launch his own Creative Nonfiction journal (now a magazine) in 1994 and says, “It really sparked a creative nonfiction revolution. Finally, with the journal, it seemed like it was much more official as a fourth genre than any time in the past.” Over the past 25 years, Creative Nonfiction, the journal, has evolved…

JONATHAN MABERRY JonathanMaberry.com is a New York Times bestselling multi-genre novelist, five-time Bram Stoker Award winner, and comic book writer. His vampire apocalypse novels and comics, V-WARS, are a Netflix original series. His novels include Glimpse, the Joe Ledger thrillers, The Wolfman, Ghostwalkers, Mars One, and many others. He is the editor of many anthologies, including TheX-Files, Aliens: Bug Hunt, and the hotly anticipated Don’t Turn Out the Lights, which is the official tribute to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. His comics include Captain America, Bad Blood, Black Panther, Punisher, Road of the Dead, Pandemica, and more. AMY COLLINS is the founder of Best Seller Builders and president of New Shelves Books NewShelves.com Collins is a trusted expert, speaker, and recommended sales consultant for some of the largest…

In the early days of our marriage—before kids, before I was a serious writer—my husband invented a little game he called the Flower Challenge. The goal was for me to make floral arrangements out of 20 or so mismatched flowers he’d plucked from the dregs of the florists’ discount buckets near his downtown office. These were the flowers that didn’t get sold during the week, the ones that would probably wilt before the florists opened again on Monday morning. At home, my husband would proudly present a ragtag cluster that looked like fodder for the compost bin and the Flower Challenge would begin. This is what it’s like to write memoir. I’ve had cool things happen to me in my career as a professional ballet dancer and tragic things happen…

Where does the line fall between giving your readers what they want and writing for a trend? At what point does following a trend leave the realm of clever storytelling and move into cheap, derivative manipulation of your readership? Many authors write across numerous genres, but successful authors who jump genres all share the same advice: “Write what you love.” Authors with huge fan bases in one genre such as Emma Donoghue, Joyce Carol Oates, and Michael Crichton have all tried new things after their initial success and written books in a variety of genres. They found that they could move from one fan base to another, so why not you? Let’s look at the three things every author should ask themselves before switching genre horses midstream: 1. WHAT IS…

Always make sure your characters are behaving in character on the page. It’s conventional wisdom for fiction writers, oft repeated at writing conferences, in craft books, and in magazines like this one: a given on your revision checklist, an essential of Character Building 101. This well-intentioned advice is not always well-heeded, however, in part because it’s easily misunderstood. What it does mean, and should mean, is that authentic, three-dimensional characters develop when you’ve taken care to know, inside and out, who these imaginary people are, and to portray that vision on the page so your readers know them, too. Fair enough. But fair enough alone does not keep readers turning pages. Because once you’ve established who your story’s players are, it’s actually out of character behavior that can propel them…

Andrew Sean Greer, winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for his novel Less, gave a keynote address at the 2019 Writer’s Digest Novel Writing Conference wearing a bright red suit and angel wings, happily joining in on our Halloween costume party for the evening. What Greer may or may not have realized was that as he spoke about revising that novel and discovering in it symbols like flight and birds, the wings of his own costume silently underscored his point. A graduate of the MFA program at the University of Montana and author of five novels and a collection of short stories, Greer is deeply interested in the craft of writing and explained his willingness to speak at the conference, “Usually I don’t talk to a crowd of writers, and…

THE CHALLENGE: Write the first line (one sentence only) to a story based on the photo prompt below. You can be funny, poignant, witty, etc.; it is, after all, your story. TO ENTER: Email your entry to yourstory contest@aimmedia.com with the subject “Your Story 104” (entries must be pasted directly into the body of the email; attachments will not be opened). NOTE: WD editors select the top 12 entries and post them on WritersDigest.com/ Your-Story-Competition. Join us online in May, when readers will vote for their favorite to help rank the top 10 winners. Follow @WritersDigest on Twitter for Your Story updates. The winners will be published in a future issue of Writer’s Digest. DON’T FORGET: Your name and mailing address. One entry per person. DEADLINE: March 30, 2020.…

The Creative Nonfiction Foundation offers several opportunities for writers to submit their work to Creative Nonfiction, True Story, and In Fact Books. For Creative Nonfiction, writers should submit complete manuscripts of 5,000 words or fewer when specific calls for submissions are made. Writers can also pitch column ideas year-round. For True Story, writers should submit a complete manuscript between 5,000 and 10,000 words on any subject, in any style. Published writers are paid $300 on publication and receive 10 free copies of “their” issue. Calls for submissions can change. So check their submission guidelines for current calls and specific Submittable pages at CreativeNonfiction.org/ Submissions.…

Attending a writing conference can often be a pricey endeavor, especially when the event takes place out of state. Here are some tips on how to save money and still get the most out of your conference experience. • Take advantage of early-bird registration. In most cases, the cost of early registration is far less than it is as you get closer to the event. • Volunteer. Most conferences offer volunteers free or reduced admission in return for working at the conference. The downside: You may be asked to work during sessions you want to attend. • If you will be attending the conference with friends, inquire about a discounted group rate registration. Similarly, save on airfare by driving to the conference with those same friends. • If the conference…

• Keep in mind that there may be more than one workshop in each of the listings. • These workshops are listed alphabetically by state, country, or continent. • Unless otherwise indicated, rates include tuition (T) only. Sometimes the rates also include airfare (AF), some or all meals (M), accommodations (AC), ground transportation (GT), materials (MT), or fees (F). • When you find workshops that interest you, be sure to call, email, or check the website of the instructor or organization for additional information. • All listings are paid advertisements.…