Writer's Digest May/June 2020

“People now enter my home, and I enter their homes. The opportunity to interact with other writers, publishers, and fans is endless, virtually. The world is my neighborhood. Alas, with opportunity comes great power to distract … and be distracted. I wouldn’t give it up for a second.” —dabester “The internet is an infinite library full of answers or distractions at our fingertips. Imagine having immediate access to readers and their feedback, writers and their suggestions, or direct contact with authors and their personal or professional experiences; also imagine the magnitude of temptation to chase down any fleeting, passing curiosity that might float by or linger in the back of the mind. The internet, then, rewards or destroys what could be the most ageless and essential skill of any writer:…

Hello, dear readers. Welcome to our annual 101 Best Websites issue! I recently read somewhere that the first message sent over the internet was “lo”—a failed attempt at “login.” I like to think of it as a shortened form of “hello.” Since that first message, how many scads and oodles more have there been? We login to our accounts and communicate endlessly now. If you want at least some of that web time to be productive, do we have a list for you! Writer’s Digest has been rating the best websites for writers for 22 years. In this year’s roundup, we’ve assembled a fresh array of sites to help writers do just about everything—from beating writer’s block to finding new markets for their work; from finding a supportive writing community…

JEANNE VEILLETTE BOWERMAN is the editor-in-chief of Script magazine, senior editor of Writer’s Digest, co-founder of Twitter’s screenwriting chat #Scriptchat, co-founder of Writers Strong, and listed as one of the “Top 10 Most Influential Screenwriting Bloggers.” She has authored and pitched her award-winning screenplays to many of Hollywood’s top producers and networks, including both her narrative and limited-series adaptations of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Slavery by Another Name. Follow Jeanne on Twitter @jeannevb. By day, CEDRIC ROSE is a librarian at The Mercantile Library in Cincinnati. By lunch, night, and the early hours of the morning, he is a freelance writer. His work has appeared in Saveur, The London Library, Belt, Cincinnati Magazine, Edible Ohio Valley, and other magazines. He’s interested in the environment, nature, jazz, short stories, cultural change,…

As a young man growing up in Mableton, Ga., Wayne Vansant heard a lot of war stories. He heard them from his father, who served in the Navy during World War II, and from a grizzled Sunday school teacher, who fought the Nazis during the Italian Campaign. He heard stories of honor and bravery, and of death and destruction, for these are the tales that survivors of war bring home with them. Vansant is a veteran of the Vietnam War, serving in the Navy from 1969 to 1971, though he never saw combat. Instead, years later, he illustrated other men’s war experiences as one of the primary artists on The ’Nam, a comic book published by Marvel Comics that ran 84 issues from 1986 to 1993. From there, Vansant took…

Looking for writing inspiration, Alexandra Hill found a prompt on NYC Midnight that gave a genre, location, and theme for a short story: horror, library, and loyalty. The prompt resulted in “A Life Measured in Moons,” which won Grand Prize in the 15th Annual Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Awards. The dark fantasy explores a choice a young woman makes to protect her younger brother, the consequences she must live with, and how these choices influence the world around her. “While [loyalty] was something I had trouble defining, I wanted it to feature siblings because romantic love and parent/child love felt too obvious,” Hill says. “I’m an only child and siblings have always been interesting to me, so I wanted to look at what loyalty could do to someone who loved…

GRAND PRIZE “A Life Measured in Moons” by Alexandra Hill YOUNG ADULT FIRST PLACE “Life After Dusk” by Douglas Jern HONORABLE MENTIONS “Truth Will Out” by Lisa Jenkins “The Sixteen-Year-Old Night Owl” by Savannah Bobo HORROR FIRST PLACE “Tree Gifts” by Benjamin Barbour HONORABLE MENTIONS “One Pound a Day” by Erin Chavis “The Lujana Tile” by Roland Royster MYSTERY/CRIME FIRST PLACE “A Cowgirl Farewell” by Mary Lou Condike HONORABLE MENTIONS “Slipher’s Rail” by Sherry Rankin “Clay Goddess” by Uma Rajasingam ROMANCE FIRST PLACE “Just a Little Push” by Leslie Wibberley HONORABLE MENTIONS “The Pillowcase” by Carol Thornton “Paradise” by Fiona Kroll SCI-FI/FANTASY FIRST PLACE “The Inhibitor Check” by Christopher Wyer HONORABLE MENTIONS “Brushing the Dust” by Rebekah Heaney “By the Stars, We are Found” by Matthew Ford THRILLER/SUSPENSE FIRST PLACE…