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Archive for the ‘Funny’ Category

From Flash Fiction Online’s Facebook page. I can’t even say how much I love this…

Like many other committed readers and writers, I spent a significant part of my time from childhood on in public libraries. People often take them for granted now, but imagine a time (or place) where you couldn’t pop down to the corner for a book, or a consultation with a librarian, or a safe quiet place to read and work, where knowledge wasn’t freely available to all. What a wonderful invention.

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“Write something, damnit! Send it in. Do it again.”
– Gardner Dozois

Because some days you (ok, I;) need a kick in the pants.

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Joe Hill's Thrills.

I was feeling a little blue and I was looking for something on the internet to cheer me up and Warren Ellis has a post on his tumblr pointing to a website, I Write Like, so I thought, oh, hey, why not? Warren got David Foster Wallace; I was thinking, huh, maybe it’ll tell me I write like John Steinbeck! Hell, maybe David Mitchell!!!

Thanks to the above post by Joe Hill I’ve discovered an entertaining website called “I Write Like.” Unlike him, however, my stylistic tendencies seem to be more varied. Depending on the story, I apparently write like Cory Doctorow, J.K. Rowling, Ray Bradbury, and David Foster Wallace. I think the minds behind the site put this fun tool together to raise writers’ confidence levels; who wouldn’t want to be told they write like any one of the people on that list?

I don’t write like Stephen King, though. Joe Hill’s got that all wrapped up.

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The New Yorker Rejects Itself: A Quasi-Scientific Analysis of Slush Piles

… I grabbed a New Yorker story off the web (no, it wasn’t by Alice Munro or William Trevor), copied it into a Word document, changed only the title, created a fictitious author identity, and submitted it to a slew of literary journals, all of whom regularly grace the TOC of Best American Short Stories, Pushcart Prize, O’Henry, etcetera and etcetera. My cover letter simply stated that I am an unpublished writer deeply appreciative of their consideration.

That was it. I sowed the seed, and waited.

As for the result, please sit down and place your Starbucks Venti on a secure surface.

Dear reader, every single one of these journals rejected my poor New Yorker story with the same boilerplate “good luck placing your work elsewhere” auto-text that has put the lid on my own sorry submissions.

Oh my.

Obviously I’m not the only one who has ever wondered how overworked slush readers can stay consistent in the face of all of that precipitation. Author David Cameron’s quasi-scientific study (sample size: two) concludes, quite sensibly I think, that “slush sucks.” Now, I can either be depressed that even previously published stories can’t get published in some markets, or, well, not.

Rejections are inevitable, but I have to say that this makes me feel a bit better about my own.

Chin up, folks, and soldier on. The good news is, it’s not just you.

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To Make Mice Smarter, Add A Few Human Brain Cells

… because there’s absolutely no way that can go wrong;)

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