10 Things I've Learned from Sending Out Stories for 12 Years

Josh Rolnick offers up some tips, care of the Millions.

From the piece...

2. Send stories out broadly – ten to twenty journals at a time. This is particularly important if, over time, you hope to receive useful feedback. Since sending my first story out in January, 1999, I’ve sent to 225 journals, contests, or competitive retreats; I’ve received 219 rejections and had six stories published. But I’ve received some kind of encouragement – from formal letters to “send more” checked on a postcard – from 71 publications, about one-third of all my submissions.

3. Aim high. Make a list of the top tier journals you’d love to have your story published in, then start at the top and move down. I submitted my very first story in 1999 to 12 places, including the Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker, Zoetrope, and Virginia Quarterly Review. While the odds are very low, any feedback you receive can keep you going.

Do You Want to Get Published in a Literary Journal?

Than read this.

Five Alternatives to a Creative Writing MFA

College is damn expensive. Are there other options? Media Bistro thinks so.

Write for a Living in Seven Easy Steps

Lickity split, you're a writer. Thanks, Creative Penn.

Five Writers Talk about Book Editors

From the Awl...

To gain some insight into what writers should look for in editors and how best to “manage” the relationship, we asked Haven Kimmel, Calvin Baker, Emily Gould and Don Van Natta Jr. to answer some questions.

These questions were:

1. Did you have meetings with more than one editor before you sold your manuscript or book proposal? If so, what qualities did you look for in the editor when you first met? (And did these qualities turn out to be more or less important than you imagined?) How important was the editor (as opposed to say, the amount of money involved) in choosing your publisher?
2. How many revisions did your book go through with your editor? Were you generally pleased with his or her guidance? Were there moments or periods of friction or tension or frustration, where you felt that the editor was not “getting” your ideas/work, and how did you resolve? Do you have any advice in terms of knowing when and how to fight or give in, so to speak?
3. What are the most important qualities in an editor, e.g., shaping the manuscript or serving as an effective advocate in the company at large (if that was an issue)?

Five of the Best Writing Books....Ever

The list, care of Writer Magazine.

So You Want to Write a Novel

How to Write Like a Victorian

What can the first how-to book for fiction still tell us? That's the question Slate asks.

From the piece...

Cody's call for carefully detailed characters and settings remains timeless. New writers adopt an inadvertent shorthand, forgetting that the reader cannot see what is in their head. It's a plight How To Write Fiction compares to emptying out a quart bottle of molasses and finding that it only yields a pint. The rest is still stuck inside the container: "The young writer imagines he has a good story, but when he has a written it out the story is not half so good as he fancied, and he wonders what is the matter. The truth is, half of it still remains in his mind."

If Cody's advice from 1895 is familiar, it's probably because writers have changed much less than writing itself. Aspiring authors are still told to beware of their pet lines—their darlings—and most still don't listen. Ruthlessness with one's own copy remains the mark of a professional, because you have to stab yourself in the back. And the stricture to "write what you know"? It's still the universally misunderstood abridgement of Write what you know—so go out and know something. The writer who doesn't will only have one or two books in them. Writers in for the long haul don't have a great story—they have a dozen—and because they believe in their own ability to create more, they'll toss them aside whenever they're not wanted or needed.

It's here that How To Write Fiction is most haunting. Memoirs now bear authors the same peril that coming-of-age novels once did: namely, a self-centeredness that leaves them with nothing else to write. Cody leans on a fence to observe these one-trick ponies: "There are a great many writers who start out in the magazines with a few brilliant and interesting short stories. There are a few printed on the strength of their first reputation, which are not so good ... and the reader hears their names no more until one or two of their first stories are reprinted in some collection, and he wonders what has become of the authors."

Authors: Why Aren't You Getting Noticed on Facebook?

Amy Potterfield, for the Huffington Post, offers some ways to get more notice on social media.

From the piece...

Arielle: Those experiences sound like a fantastic way to stand out on Facebook and also give great value to your fans in the process. I can see how authors can really carve out their own space on Facebook by using this strategy. For authors interested in creating a signature experience, do you have any tips to help them get started?

Amy: Yes, I have 3 great tips to share:

1. Be consistent and do them regularly. This will keep your fans coming back for more.
2. Make these experiences unique to your brand and also of great value to your fans.
3. Keep them simple. If you add too many bells and whistles, you might make the experience too complicated and lose your audience.

Overall, signature experiences are so valuable because you are increasing your viral visibility and strengthening your relationships with the people who matter most. After all, that's what Facebook is all about!

Common Faults in Short Stories

Does your short story kind of, well, stink? Perhaps it has fallen for one of these 27 Common Faults, care of the Willesden Herald.