» A Guest Author

The First Draft: Love It or Hate It? Just Write It!

By Dawn Colclasure Some writers fear writing a first draft. The first draft is that blank page looming before them, daring the writer to compose a masterpiece. Feeling as though they must write a perfect first draft is just one of the roadblocks writers face when it comes to writing something new. It is also…

Issue Five Hundred Six Special Feature

Five Things To Do After Getting Rejected as a Writer

By Samuel Edward Imagine squeezing time out from other daily engagements and committing some of your brightest of creative ideas into a 5,000-word story, with a deadline for submission fast approaching. The late nights, the backaches from hours of sitting, the many rough drafts. And then the joys of putting the final touches to your…

Issue Five Hundred Five

How Authors and Writers Can Use LinkedIn to Advance Their Careers

By Jonathan Riley Being a writer requires the ability to generate a regular flow of work knowing that being in this profession, either as a magazine writer, author or in some other writing field, we must also constantly compete with other creatives. LinkedIn has helped me meet the challenges, because having followers and establishing a…

Issue Five Hundred Four

15 Lit Mags/Journals Seeking Volunteer Readers & Why You’d Want To

By Trish Hopkinson There are a variety of reasons you may want to volunteer as a reader for a literary magazine or journal. The majority of reading and other volunteer responsibilities will be conducted online, so you need not be in the same geographical area. Below are some of those reasons to consider, as well…

Special Issue

How Writers Can Benefit From Attending Local Book Fairs and Comic Cons

By Ellen Levitt I live in a city that plays host to lots of fun events that can also be beneficial to my writing career. There are free events such as book festivals and pricier gatherings such as Comic Con. Both types of events provide me with opportunities for schmoozing with magazine, website and book…

Issue Five Hundred Two Uncategorized

No Sweat Marketing

By Michael Barrington Marketing one’s books can at times appear to be a daunting task. Like most authors I have a well-developed plan which includes good use of social media, a solid website from which I also blog, make an occasional presentation and promote my books by writing articles for various magazines. But over the…

Issue Five Hundred One

How to Keep Writing a Story When You Don’t Know What Happens Next

By Dawn Colclasure It can happen to any writer: A brilliant opening scene for a story or novel suddenly pops into their head. The writer gets excited by this particular scene and feels confident of banging out that story or first chapter in one go. They rush to the desk and get to work, writing…

Issue Four Hundred Ninety Nine

When Less is More: The Art of Flash Fiction

By Emily-Jane Hills Orford “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” This is one of the most quoted six-word stories in history. It’s believed to have been written by Ernest Hemingway sometime in the 1920s, as a bet to prove that he could write a complete short, very short story. Since this oft-quoted short short, countless…

Issue Four Hundred Ninety Eight

How to Get the Best Feedback for Your Work

By Aliya Bree Hall After finishing a new project, whether it’s for a fiction story or article, it’s always important to get another set of eyes on your work. If you happen to have a really strong support network of other writers or colleagues, this is a great resource to tap into; however, sometimes you…

Issue Four Hundred Ninety Seven

Writing Believable Dialogue

Emily-Jane Hills Orford How realistic is the dialogue in your stories? Does it set the mood of the scene? Describe the characters? Add backstory? Help the story move forward? A story without dialogue can be very dry and quickly lose readers’ attention. But, a story with unrealistic dialogue will also turn them away. In the…

Issue Four Hundred Ninety Six

Where Do I Start?

By Emily-Jane Hills Orford This question, where do I start, usually refers to the writing process. Writers are good with ideas, good with sorting through the mesh of plot patterns, characters, setting and how one visions the story unfolding. Writers are told it’s best to begin with a plot map, although many, like me, dive…

Issue Four Hundred Ninety Five

The Dos and Don’ts of Working on Multiple Projects

By Aliya Bree Hall As writers, we’re constantly bombarded with new and enticing ideas. Although it can be tempting to drop any other project we’ve already begun working on to focus on a new project — that can lead to a routine of abandoning your current work in progress in favor of whatever idea is…

Issue Four Hundred Ninety Three

Poets: Fast Forward Your Path to Book Publication

By LindaAnn LoSchiavo During the coronavirus lockdown, when the book parties, readings, and events for my two newest poetry books were cancelled, instead of throwing up my hands, I spent more time at my desk and discovered a map that would steer me efficiently through my next literary labyrinth. How useful was my map? It…

Issue Four Hundred Ninety Two

Flash Fiction: Packing a Lot into a Little

By David Galef What’s under 1,000 words and read all over? Flash fiction. You can change the limit to 500, around 300 for micro fiction, and even less for tiny miniatures like hint fiction (25 words or fewer) and nanofiction, which is the length of an old-style tweet, 140 characters, including the spaces. The principle…

Issue Four Hundred Ninety Special Feature

An Accidental Novelist

By Sarah Martin Of all the different kinds of writing I’ve practised over the years, novel writing is the most exhilarating. That’s partly because things don’t always turn out the way you planned. My writing life began with school reports where careful diplomacy ran a fine line between avoiding motherhood statements or being hurtful, and…

Issue Four Hundred Eighty Nine Special Feature

Articles by A Guest Author