Innehållsförteckning för May/June 2020 från Writer's Digest

“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:…

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…

As writers, we know how to put pen to paper and create engaging content. However, promoting our work is equally integral to strong writing, and public speaking provides a valuable way to increase book sales. When I first published my memoir, Breaking Vases, I gleefully set up a book signing with a local bookstore. To my dismay, I spent two long hours trying to catch the attention of anyone willing to listen. I only sold six copies that day—I was completely disheartened. That same week, I was booked to present at a conference and set up a booth in the lobby of the event. After my speech, there was a line of people eagerly waiting to purchase their signed copy. I sold more than 60 books, with the two boxes…

Dear FYSA, I have read in some agents’ bios that they are also writers and working on their own books to shop around to agents. So that makes me wonder if agents can represent themselves when trying to sell their own book. And if this can be done, should it be done, or are there better options? Signed, If an Agent’s Agents Agent Dear A3, Oh I love this question. Is it a bad idea to agent one’s own project? Like, are all of the physicians sick? Are all of the cobbler’s kids barefoot? Is the haberdasher’s husband bald? In my opinion? Yeah. Those folks are just barfing and barefooting and balding eeeeeeeeverywhere. OK, OK, to be fair, I only have a data set of one: me. When my Writer’s…

Back when you wrote the draft you now realize needs fixing, you thought you were ready—to send it out into the world, to get it published. Revision will be difficult but perhaps more accessible now that you have tools, standards, and targeted benchmarks to work with. But to make sure you’re ready, let’s look at what all this really means. NOBODY LIKES TO TALK ABOUT REVISION But that’s why we’re here, and already we’re well down a contrarian path. But to fully embrace the revision process, we need to get your mind in the right place, myopically focusing on the formidable task of making your story better using a new and upgraded set of storytelling skills, tools, and principles. Here’s a short list for you. This one identifies criteria from…

For this 101 Best Websites issue, let’s look at a few websites that pay writers—something still not as common as it should be. With this list, I’m sharing online markets that pay writers and that don’t have a major print component. A couple of these are sections within a larger site. Here are eight paying online markets covering travel, business, yoga, motherhood, and more. BUZZFEED READER (BUZZFEEDNEWS.COM/SECTION/READER) BuzzFeed READER is the culture and criticism section of BuzzFeed News. Launched in 2016, this section publishes cultural criticism and personal essays from both established and emerging writers. For personal essays, they want “writing with a strong voice that doesn’t just describe your own experience, but builds on it to create something deeply valuable and compelling to readers.” For cultural criticism…

MAY/JUNE 2020 • 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.…

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…

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…

POETIC FORM: AE FREISLIGHE The ae freislighe is an Irish quatrain (or four-line stanza) form with multi-syllable end rhymes. Here are the basic rules: • Four lines per stanza• Seven syllables per line• Lines one and three rhyme with three-syllable words• Lines two and four rhyme with two-syllable words• The final syllable, word, or line of the poem should begin it as well  Here is an example by a Poetic Asides reader: Practice Aims for Perfection by Darlene Franklin Practice aims for perfection.Do and do over again.Pause, take time for reflection.Repeat, do over again. Lines one and three end rhyme with three-syllable words (in this case, “perfection” and “reflection”). Poets, don’t get discouraged.Fluency flows from edits.Make room, others encourage—sometimes you share the credit. Lines two and four end rhyme with…

Heather Cashman earned her degree in biochemistry, but always loved literature and writing. This resulted in a career change, editing middle grade, young adult, and adult books for Cornerstones Literary Consultancy. After interning for three years at The Bent Agency and Entangled Publishing, she recently joined Storm Literary Agency as an associate agent. Cashman has also worked as a freelance editor and consultant for traditional and nontraditional publishing firms, and has served as managing director of Pitch Wars, #PitMad, and Pitch Madness. A mom of three, Cashman calls herself a “jack-of-all-(publishing)-trades.” Cashman’s dream client is someone who trusts her and keeps trying. “Someone willing to revise until it’s right, take feedback but know their book well enough to take suggestions and produce revisions above and beyond what’s expected,” she says.…

Defying a downward trend in book sales across much of the traditional publishing world, the audiobook market has seen a meteoric rise over the past few years. According to Publishers Weekly, audiobook sales rose nearly 25 percent in 2018, totaling almost $1 billion. This trend follows an increase of over 22 percent in 2017 and 18 percent in 2016—ultimately six straight years of double-digit growth—and this runaway train doesn’t appear to have slowed in 2019. General fiction and genre fiction lead the charge, though nonfiction isn’t far behind. One in five Americans reports listening to audiobooks. With publishers releasing tens of thousands of new audiobooks per year and indie authors joining the charge, there’s now an opportunity for talented narrators to bring these books to life. Plus, platforms like ACX…

Always follow specific style guidelines, but here are tips for more effective online writing. • CREATE “SEARCHABLE” TITLES. While witty titles win for print articles, searchable titles win online. When crafting your post titles, ask if there’s a way to word it so people might search for keywords in the title. • BE CONCISE. Think fewer than 20 words per sentence and fewer than 150 words per paragraph. • USE EFFECTIVE HEADINGS. A good rule of thumb is to never write 300 words without a heading to break it up. This makes articles easier to scan online. Plus, you can work in a keyword from your title into one of these headings—making the post more searchable. ONE MORE IMPORTANT TIP: Avoid keyword dumping in your posts. Think quality over quantity. If you want…

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,…

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…

In May, Jennifer Weiner’s newest novel, Big Summer, will be released. Here we revisit her February 2006 WD interview where she was celebrating the release of Goodnight Nobody and preparing for the film adaptation of In Her Shoes. You were a feature writer and columnist before you were writing novels. How did your journalistic training prepare you for fiction writing? Journalism is wonderful training for fiction. It helps you get ready and helps you observe and listen carefully to people and pay attention to human dynamics. It also makes you very comfortable with deadlines, where you don’t whine and cringe and say, “Oh, my muse hasn’t spoken to me yet.” That doesn’t go over so well in the newsroom. Part of what makes your books so successful is your sense…

Self-published authors seeking to publish audiobooks have several options that vary in terms of the amount of work done and profit earned by the author and reader. Readers can join and add their profiles to services such as Findaway Voices, Spoken Realms, Author’s Republic, and Amazon’s Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX) for consideration by authors. These platforms typically include a database of readers who upload samples that authors can listen to. Production and all associated costs are typically handled by the author, and the author receives a royalty cut that varies depending on the service and the type of sale. Free has a profile on ACX, and several indie authors have sought him for audiobook reading—notably Josh Lanyon and Jay Bell, whose books include or focus on LGBTQ romance. “When [Bell]…

As soon as I began reading the young adult fantasy Steel Hand, Cold Heart by Rachel Menard, I knew it had to be the Grand Prize winner of the 7th Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published E-Book Awards. The anti-heroine Carina drew me in with her determination to prove her worth and transformation into a warrior—complete with replacing her hand with a steel hand for battle. Carina is an outsider in the Viking-based matriarchal community of the Daughters of Hel—a society that appeases the goddess Hel by raiding towns and killing their people. When Carina is kidnapped, she must choose between proving her worth by killing her captors or forging her own path. Menard’s winnings include $5,000 and a trip to the Writer’s Digest Annual Conference in New York City. She sat…

THE CHALLENGE: Write the first line of a story based on the prompt below. You can be funny, poignant, witty, etc.; it is, after all, your story. TO ENTER: Send your story via email to yourstorycontest@aimmedia.comentries must be pasted directly into the body of the email; attachments will not be opened). Entries without a name and mailing address will be disqualified. NOTE: WD editors select the top 12 finalists and post them on our website ( WritersDigest.com/ Your-Story-Competition). Join us in July, when readers will vote for their favorite to help pick the top 10 winners! Follow @WritersDigest on Twitter for Your Story updates. The winner will be published in a future issue of Writer’s Digest. DON’T FORGET: Your name and mailing address. One entry per person. DEADLINE: June 29,…

Last issue, we talked about why many people, myself included, have a love/hate relationship with comp titles. But, because I knew they’re important—and required—I needed to find a way to make looking for them more enjoyable as I worked on book pitches. So, I started to think of my search for the perfect comp titles as a scavenger hunt. I put myself in the shoes of the book’s perfect reader and asked, what are they reading and what do they want to read but can’t find? From there, it became a black hole of internet searches. As an example, my most recent searches for comp titles were for Writer’s Digest Books that I was going to pitch to the pub board. While all of them were books about writing, there…

1 Port Townsend Writers Conference Sponsored by the Centrum Foundation, this event’s focus is on rigorous attention to craft, workshops, guided free writes, and a vibrant reading and lecture series. WHEN: July 12–19, 2020. WHERE: Fort Worden Historical State Park, Port Townsend, Wash. PRICE: Morning and afternoon workshops, $760 (intensive sessions); afternoon only, $460 (more time to write independently). Scholarships and fellowship awards are available. Evening readings are free and open to the public. Optional housing and meals available for an additional fee. See website for details. WHAT MAKES THIS CONFERENCE UNIQUE: Participants range from established authors to students beginning to write. Acclaimed writers from across the nation engage with participants in intensives that focus on generating new material. “We write together, faculty and participants listen to each other, enjoy…

Using social media during an event can help with personal branding, expanding your network, and getting more out of a conference. The people you meet can provide the real value of attending, so consider these dos and don’ts when you want to stand out. • DO follow the event hashtag. Check the schedule for networking events that might facilitate more intimate and personal conversations. • DO engage with presenters and attendees found online beforehand. Use the event hashtag to search for attendees on Twitter, or share content on LinkedIn. Prior engagement can make it easier to nail down a conversation at the event. Everyone is there to meet new people, so don’t be shy. • DON’T abuse hashtags. Added appropriately, they connect your posts to others on that topic, increasing…

CALIFORNIA ANNUAL GREATER LOS ANGELES WRITERS CONFERENCE, produced by West Coast Writers Conferences at the DoubleTree by Hilton, Westside Los Angeles. August 7–9, 2020. Writers of all genres and disciplines benefit from this popular educational and inspirational three-day event on the craft and business of writing. Our 26th conference will feature multi-track programs for what we call 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 streams of seminars, workshops, and panels. Live critique workshops include Great Beginnings for Novels & Screenplays, Query Letters, and more. There are FREE one-on-one pitch sessions with literary agents and publishers looking for new talent with polished manuscripts. We also offer a…