Hilarious. I submitted a 53-word short story, not even flash fiction (more like whatwasthat fiction) here: 53-word story contest at Press Fifty-three.
What fun! Why not give a read there and try entering. Come on! Even I could write a 53-word story.
Erm….that’s usually just one of my quotations in a story or poem, so this was good practice!
Have fun!
(Note: I wrote this fictional prose poem after the devastating fire and explosion nearby that hurt more than a dozen teens in late April.)I didn’t Say Goodbye
Look here:
Must come back to this one. I’ve been writing more non poetry these days and have a hundred stories in my head.
And another image I especially like.
iPhone app blog post #2. How did I do?
Enjoy ! 
HerStory Literary Magazine s
tates it is “empowering women through storytelling” and publishes fiction, nonfiction, interviews, poetry, and personal essays. In addition, the site sponsors a “monthly theme” for writing. I particularly enjoyed the magazines mission, which is ” HerStory wants to get every woman writing, talking, and sharing her story because
Every Story Matters.”
Every story matters, what a great motto.
The monthly themes for the rest of the year, as noted one their website, are:
july:
dear past me
august:
handle with care: stories about grief
september:
role models: stories about the women who shaped us
october:
spooky stories
november:
what you don’t know: stories about our secrets
december:
dear someone: letters to the people who changed our lives
Why not read some of the writing there and consider submitting your own writing? The literary magazine is trying to go, it notes, and there could be as long a delay as six months in hearing back about submissions.
mission is “to publish exceptional talent, both new and established, from our region and across the country.” Streetlight publishes poetry, fiction, essays, memoir, art/ photography, and blog posts. In addition, Streetlight sponsors writing contests and strives for a three-month decision on submissions. Publishing since 2012, it appears each issue contains poetry, fiction, essays/ memoir, art/photography, and blog posts. The latest issue contained an ekphrastic poem, always a plus for me. The artists do get a short bio with publication, another plus.
I found the site a bit confusing to navigate, but the content good. The artwork and photography was breath-taking.
It’s good to find new writing sites, and I enjoyed this one.
Thanks for reading!
Laura Lee
Writers! Perhaps you knew about this great feature of Submittable, but I did not until today. Submittable.com is a site where some publishers collect submissions to journals and contests, reply to the writers, accept submissions, reject submissions. It’s a way to read submissions “blindly,” without seeing an author’s name.
I like using Submittable, since it also helps me keep track of what piece of writing I’ve submitted where.
What I just discovered, however, is a great find: the “discover” section of the website. There I found many journals listing their requirements, deadlines, etc. All in one place.
I also found sites I now like to read from (is that the term…read from? Read there?)
So, writers, if you haven’t discovered the DISCOVER feature of Submittable yet, here you go: Discover Opportunities Submittable. If you don’t have an account there yet, you will need to create a free account.
What are some useful writing tools you have discovered?
Thanks for reading!
Laura Lee
Interested in your thoughts about this list from:
I write mostly poetry, although this blog has gotten me to write more nonfiction. That’s a good thing. I do share many poems in their rough draft stages on my Facebook page, but I have a closed site and limit the views even there. However, I don’t post my poetry here on my website/ blog just yet.
Why? I’ve submitted poetry many places, and editors/ publishers don’t want work that has been “published” elsewhere usually. Mind you, only a few people are “reading” the poems there at all, but some will even claim a closed locked down Facebook site means
you’ve published your poem.
We poets are not writing Pulitzer Prize winning novels and posting them on Facebook! It seems a bit silly and excessive to me to not be able to share and get my close friends’ critiques; however, with the poetry publication market as competitive as it is, I don’t want to ruin any chances I might have of publishing.
I admit to liking an audience for my writing. Is that shallow? Probably.
Two good sites that are open to accepting poetry already posted on social media and personal blog posts and two I greatly respect are Rattle Magazine and Tuck Magazine. (Links here: Rattle Magazine and Tuck Magazine.)
In fact, Tuck Magazine just published a poem I’d placed here; they simply asked me to take it down for three weeks and to link to them. Sounds fair! Their goal is to INCREASE readership of writing about social issues. I posted this poem here on the first day I created this blog, and now it is published here: Refuge Laura Lee Poem in Tuck Magazine.
Rattle Magazine is a top notch magazine of modern poetry, and its poems knock me out. I can only dream of being published there.(I need to read and write more! Much more. I come away renewed with the power of poetry when I read their published poetry!)
Yet they don’t consider social media published for the sake of accepting work for competitions and possible publication.
Having said all that, I admit I am not a great poet. I can write good poetry of a particular style, narrative poetry and dramatic monologues, the latter of which is out of style. I have sometimes written good lyrical poetry. I am not an academic but a caring reader and writer, so to me it’s okay I’m not making a living as a poet.
As if. DECADES ago I did research and found that only 9 people in American admit to making their living as a poet. NINE out of what–1/3 of a billion Americans?
So I continue to read and write. I should spend more time reading and writing, and now that I am a part-time worker, I will.
I’m fighting the impulse to return to full time work; I don’t want that heavy workload anymore. Been there. Done that! For DECADES.
So here’s to the talented poets and fiction writers and nonfiction writers–I admire you! I’m looking for more great writers to read, new or old writers, poet or fiction, for good literature really inspires me.
And I’ve only got so many poems in me–I don’t want to lose the right to publish them unless they are actually PUBLISHED elsewhere. I send out the ones I can stand to lose! Since poetry doesn’t pay, I have many poems I just don’t want to lose. I know. As if!
Keep reading and writing!
If you have any writers you would recommend or novels, I’d love to hear about them!
Laura Lee
Yesterday I wrote about Willa Cather, a great American writer. Links to her most popular novel can be found here: Full Text My Antonia Willa Cather.
And more information about this novel’s 100 year anniversary can be found here: My Antonia 100 year anniversary.
I believe I should re-read My Antonia next in tribute! It’s a precious novel to me, with characters I understand, from the plucky Antonia to the depressed and ultimately suicidal father who laments the harshness of the prairie life, missing his urban life back in Europe.
But we also have to have a look at Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women. Full text of the novel can be found here: Full text of Little Women.
Like Cather, Alcott felt her life was limited by being born female. Alcott saw her mother working day and night while her father was speaking to Emerson, Thoreau, and at times even Nathaniel Hawthorne; imagine those three greats as your neighbors.
I underestimated Alcott until I read more about her and saw PBS’s biopic, which may be found here: Alcott on American Masters PBS.
I regret I underestimated Alcott as a writer, being influenced by the rather young adult/ juvenile novels she wrote. She wrote so much more! She supported her family of four sisters AND her parents (mom and all the sisters worked at whatever “respectable” women could do, while it seems the father was educated but not particularly inclined to work after his school failed) with her writing of dark gothic stories and then these wildly popular “little women” type novels. Of the latter, she disliked writing them but to quote Fantine from Les Miserables? “It pays a bill.”
I would encourage watching this program and getting to know more about Alcott.
Of the three female writers I have written about so far, Anne Frank, Louisa May Alcott, and Willa Cather, both Alcott and Cather did feel constrained by being female. Anne Frank did not live long enough to learn what the world would do with her, a female writer, after World War II. I don’t want to limit them by saying they are “just” women writers–they were good writers, period. Their gender, for Alcott and Cather, did limit their careers they felt.
Worth looking into further, this idea of how gender can partially become destiny. All three were good writers, however, and I cannot help but wonder what they could have written if they were born male.
I believe the Bronte sisters in England, (Bronte sisters) published using male names, and I believe they also supported an intellectual father who, if I remember correctly, didn’t bring in much money to support the family. I will look into this further.
I am not a literary scholar not an academic; I am a caring writer myself who is in awe of anyone talented in writing. I like to spotlight and give tribute to the greats as I can in my own small way. In a way, it’s good I’m not a scholar but just an interested reader and writer myself, since that way I can be wrong and admit it if I am.
***Another issue to consider later on is social class; Cather, Alcott, and even Anne Frank came from families that might be considered middle class today. I wonder if that is whey they could even dream of being WRITERS.
Anyone else have a favorite female writer? I’d love to hear about her!
I’ve written to fictional characters for many years; sometimes, I get replies. When very young, I used to write to Anne Frank to offer comfort, to seek comfort, to wish she had lived. Imagine what she could have written, what she could have become as an adult. I wrote to her when I was very young, before I really understood her history. I wrote to her as if she were a character in a book, and I just loved her.
I have written in characters’ voices to other characters, in the form of ekphrastic poems.
I have written poetry in the voices of Levin from Anna Karenina, of Macduff from Macbeth, of Simon from Lord of the Flies. I have written in the voice of Lucy Gayheart in Willa Cather’s fine novel of the same name. To characters in the novels of Thomas Wolfe–o, lost! To characters in the amazing novels of John Steinbeck. To characters in those many young adult novels I read when a teen–I wanted to tell them I understood.
Do many others do this? It seems such an incredible thing to me when a writer creates characters that truly speak to me; they help me grow as a person. They help me empathize, see things from other points of views.
From one mind to another, across the years and the miles? That’s such an amazing gift of literacy. Literacy means we don’t have to be confined to one place and time, and that is a priceless gift.
Laura Lee 