You’ve written a novel, but you cannot afford to submit it to a dozen competitions that charge $20 to $50 per entry. The thought of investing several hundred dollars in entry fees only to hear you didn’t win (assuming you hear anything at all), is enough to curdle your stomach. So what’s a budding novelist to do?
What does “ibid” mean? I’ve seen it referenced in footnotes in books.
Lisa
We arrived home from our fun, month-long trek through the midwest and the northeast…just in time to fire up the heater. It’s been downright chilly here in Bangor. Last night, we went out to dinner to celebrate the first day of school, and got goosebumps walking from the restaurant to the car. The wind was blowing with sprinkles so tiny they made us wonder if it was really raining or if it was our imagination.
Letters to the editor will return next week.
The Smithsonian has one. Good Housekeeping and Redbook, too. It’s the back page article, a one-page piece that adds a touch of humor, opinion or information before the final close of a magazine’s cover.
Back page articles provide excellent break-in opportunities for writers eager to place their work in major markets. Written with a slant towards essay or opinion, these last words are often the first published pieces for freelancers not (yet) listed on the magazine’s masthead.
I get your ezine every week and really enjoy what I read and have learned a tremendous amount. I’ve written you on occasion and thought you’d be a good one to bounce this situation off of…
I started writing professionally about four years ago, at age 41, starting with a small weekly newspaper that has grown from about 8000 copies to about 21,000 copies now. I write all sorts of feature stories and news writing and sometimes take my own photos.
As a Toronto-based freelance writer, I was often asked when I was going to write a book. When The Toronto Star, Canada’s largest daily newspaper, started buying articles about my life growing up in the wilds of Northern Ontario, I figured the time had come.
So I collected a number of both funny and poignant anecdotes I had written about my early life into a manuscript with the title Some Sunny Day. But, as an unpublished author, I found that it wasn’t easy to attract the interest of a traditional publishing house.
We took three days off from work this weekend, called it a “real vacation” and had a blast! We spent two days with international best selling horror author Doug Clegg, and even had a ghost story round-robin with him…at OUR campfire! He was very kind and didn’t laugh (much) at our attempts to tell a scary tale. Ha!
Angela is WAY behind on her email. Letters will return next week.
Finding a reputable short fiction contest that doesn’t charge an entry fee is like seeking the Holy Grail. You believe it’s out there, but you’re not sure you have the commitment to find it.
