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Tag: writing

Screw you, spell check! Oh wait, that IS how you spell Wednesday…

Published by Kelly on September 8, 2010

Tonight I was plugging away at some submissions/future rejections, and I noticed something both disturbing and embarrassing.  It has been over 3 months since I moved, and I got tired of manually typing my new address, and I figured it was probably time to give the query letter templates the once over anyway.

The query letter for The Redheaded Stepchild misspelled protagonist. The query letter for Two Steps Forward misspelled Forward. Twice. And it’s in the title. It also referenced The Other Dentenia Zickafoose when it should not have. It’s no wonder these magazines have dismissed without a second thought. That, and “I’m not what they’re looking for.”

There are few things I hate worse than writing query letters. I’m sure many of my fellow writers feel the same pain. We’re writers; we want our work to speak for itself. I have part of marketing degree, and I still hate marketing myself. So I spend some time trying to say what I want to say, and save it to a template so I don’t have to think about it every time. Apparently, I’ve been too lazy with this as of late, and as much as I hate, I know that a good query letter is important and a necessarily evil on the route to being a novelist. I encourage all you writers out there to spend 15 minutes to take a look at your query letters, just to make sure they are in tip-top shape. And that the title of your piece is not misspelled.

I am equally annoyed when I see outdated or incorrect information on a publisher’s website, or worse, a 404 or a bounced email.  Since most literary journals are run by colleges, I know they don’t accept submissions during the summer.  News flash – it’s back to school time, so you’re probably accepting submissions again. And if your submission banner reads “We are currently not accepting submissions. We will begin accepting submissions in July 2010” and it is now September 2010, there is something wrong with that.  If you say your next edition is coming April 2010, it should be posted by April 30, not still hanging around as a “coming soon” in November. You want me to not be lazy, do my due diligence, see what kind of work you typically publish and then craft my query letters accordingly? Do yours. Update your goddamn website.

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Weekly writing challenge 9-7

Published by Kelly on September 7, 2010

I’ve been struggling with killing a lot of my less-than-stellar ideas for the last few weekly writing challenges. Sometimes, no matter how many ways you try to look at and change a piece of crap, it’s still a piece of crap.

But this week, it was all inspiration and just an eesny bit of motivation and perspiration. I write best when it comes like that. Not to say that this new flash fiction piece is my best work ever, but I give it the stamp of approval instead of the wadded ball in the trash.

This was inspired by an album released early last week by artist who is part of my favorite band, and a word I have hated ever since an unfortunate incident in college. Enjoy 🙂

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Weekly writing challenge 8/25

Published by Kelly on August 25, 2010

I’ve been battling iliotibial band issues with my marathon training, and I’ve been going through a whirlwind of emotions about it. Runner’s World had an article the other day about how dealing with running injuries is a lot like the normal grieving process (DABDA) and I think I am finally reaching acceptance, so I felt it was crucial to write this flash fiction piece, just to help me get that much closer to healed.

Enjoy!

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Weekly writing challenge 8-9-2010

Published by Kelly on August 9, 2010

For the second week in a row I have honored the sacred weekly writing challenge. This week, I looked to twitter for inspiration, and I had two suggestions that caught my eye. One was simply “chipmunks” and the other was to write from an animal’s perspective. I killed two birds with one stone in this flash fiction piece I wrote in my head while swimming laps tonight.

This was without a doubt one of the most fun things I have written, and I am sure this neglected toy of my dog’s has just as much trouble getting into her head as I do. We’ll see what the Rose City Sisters think of this one 🙂

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New poem: “Meeting Hokey”

Published by Kelly on August 4, 2010

I recently (read: two days ago) decided to start giving myself weekly writing challenges to keep cranking out new stuff to pimp to publishers. For some reason, I decided to make this week’s challenge “Finding love during Shark Week”. I am pretty damn amused by Shark Week, and it stuck.

So, I took some creative liberties with an actual story and adapted the facts to fit my little writing challenge. The result is here, a new poem called “Meeting Hokey.”

Got a writing challenge for me for next week?

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Cullenitis

Published by Kelly on June 14, 2010

At the risk of sounding like a literary snob, I must admit publicly that I have not read many of the series that have become more popular than Molly Ringwald’s characters in 80s movies.

The Twilight Series I have not read this because I have no interest in vampire fiction for teens, and it stuns me that something so contrived could become so successful in such a short time.

Harry Potter Again, I always saw this as a series for children and fantasy is not a genre I enjoy. Still, when’s the last time people waited in line for a book?

The DaVinci Code and similar ilk by Dan Brown. I never got into this because mystery thrillers have never really done it for me.

But the more I think about these wildly popular series that I have never troubled myself to read, the more I think there may be another reason behind the self-important one I believe is me fighting against perceived mediocrity. I think I am jealous of the success of these books in spite of their literary value.

Granted, I don’t know if they actually are devoid of literary value, because I have never read them. For all I know, they could be highly visceral works filled with sardonic wit. I doubt it, but it’s possible. I’m also not trying to imply that if it’s not Tolstoy or Milton I won’t read it. In fact, the opposite is true. I try to sandwich my classic reading with something lighter and more mainstream. Love in the Time of Cholera was like a Dagwood sandwich whose contents I thought I would never finish devouring, but was bookended with a Judy Blume novel and something equally as light and enjoyable. I’m also definitely not trying to imply that anything I write equals the literary value of Updike or Vonnegut, but like it, it doesn’t fit into a nice little genre like Twilight, Harry Potter, or The DaVinci Code. I think that’s something that literary fiction writers struggle with a lot –  trying to answer the question “So what kind of book is it?”

I have therefore resolved myself to read the aforementioned works to try and figure out what makes them so ferociously popular, instead of seething at them. Be warned – I will likely be reading these very conspicuously.

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First flash fiction piece

Published by Kelly on March 28, 2010

Today I decided to try my hand at Flash Fiction. I have never really given it a fair chance, because I have a hard time believing people can tell a good story in 1000 words or less. However, people are increasingly pressed for time, and the people over at Rose City Sisters gave my site a fair chance, so I decided to do them the same courtesy.

I knew I had to keep the scope of my story very limited, so I adapted an exchange I had with this guy at the gym who likes to flirt with me in a very weird way into a piece of flash fiction. I decided to call it Ad Hominem, and it’s available for your perusal.

It was a very enjoyable exercise, and one I think I could do quite often to keep my writing skills sharp and try some experimentation, which will come in handy as I move more and more toward telling other people’s stories, instead of telling my own.

Enjoy!

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