Letters To The Editor For September 5th
Letters to the editor will return next week.
Back Page Break-In By Barbara Neal Varma
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.
Is this Newspaper Trying to Pull a Fast One?
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.
BookLocker.com Set the Stage for a Multi-Book Contract With a Traditional Publisher By Tom Douglas
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 But, as an unpublished author, I found that it wasn’t easy to attract the interest of a traditional publishing house.
Ghost Story Round-Robin With International Best Selling Author Doug Clegg… At Our Campfire!
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!
Catch-Up
Angela is WAY behind on her email. Letters will return next week.
No-Entry-Fee Fiction Contests By C. Hope Clark
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.
YOU Are Reponsible For Making Your Writing Career Happen! By David Berlin
I wrote my first piece when I was 20 and got my first useful lesson in professional writing a couple of weeks later: I received a letter from the publication saying that the article had been accepted. It contained no information about when they planned to publish it and pay me. Over the years I’ve learned that getting a publication date is hard and getting an editor to tell you the exact date the check was sent is well nigh impossible.
Heading To The Big Apple!
We spent a few days last week at the Wisconsin Dells. We rode a duck, ate a LOT of food, played mini-golf, had our portrait taken in a bathtub, and more!
We’ve been faithfully logging our experiences (and photos!) here: https://www.wirelesstrips.com
BAM: Book A Month
Hi Angela,
I’ve been working on my books for some time. You notice I said it too, huh? “Books.” Yes, I’m working on too many books. I have a short attention span, and so when an idea comes I delve right in.
Recently, I decided I needed to bite the bullet and develop some sort of format to finish writing the book(s). I’d heard of using outlining and also using note cards to attempt to bring order to some disorder…