Tag Archives: literary magazines

# NaPoWriMo Day 3: Playing with Sounds

Water bones resized

Water Bones (2020) arrangement and photograph by Maria L. Berg

On my search for “chromatic notes” in nature around my house, I found this odd assortment of bones in the water and on the rocks nearby. I found one similar to the largest bone about two months ago. I believe they are fish bones, but they could be bird, so I played archeologist and made a fishbird.

Blogging A to Z

Today’s theme is playing with sound and creating a word bank, so my “C” music terms might make it into the poem today.

chromatic – chromatic notes are notes that do not belong to the diatonic scale (the key signature).

counterpoint – the texture resulting from combining individual melodic lines.

crescendo – gradually get louder

NaPoWriMo

Prompt: List ten words then use Rhymezone to find two to four similar or rhyming words for each to create a word bank to use in your poem.

I’ve used Rhymezone as my rhyming dictionary for a long time now, but I only used the “Find Rhymes” feature. I hadn’t explored any of the other options. It’s a whole new world. 🙂

For my word bank, I started with my three music terms then I grabbed the most recent literary magazines I have and turned to random pages.

From New England Review Volume 41 I added: single, picture, footprints, qualified

And from The MacGuffin Vol. XXXVI I added: manufacture, waiting, prickly

Turns out I chose some great words for this exercise, and now my word bank is so loaded, it could give out loans. However, an idea for how all those words want to combine into meaning still escapes me. Time to go walk around the house to find some inspiration.

PAD Challenge

Prompt: Follow (blank)
This prompt means to put a word or phrase after the word Follow as the idea for your poem.

The poem

Follow Along With The Chromatic Song

Sick of static, I searched aquatic
And found these bones

Chromatic notes in nature
An innuendo, a memento in the splendor
A flicker in the mixture becomes a picture
A fracture creating counterpoint to enrapture

The bones could be fishy but tricky
I find them acrobatic though tragic

Moving mountainside, I glide
Toward the prickly quickly
And manufacture a capture
Qualified to crystallize
A snatcher of pasture
But then a wrinkle

Concentrating, alternating surprise and confusion
Tempo and crescendo of the pulse intermingle

Equating verified with horrified
And sickly with crispy
I stared at the midpoint now a joint
Compromised alongside and single
So glad it has yet to intermingle with
my car or house or
Me, either waiting or lucky

 

Big changes to the pages: December Planner Pages. The end of the experiment.

December pages.jpg

For this final month of the planner experiment, I had a big think. I put way to much work into this to completely abandon the idea, but I also think I went about it backwards, or at least not exactly the right way.

What I have learned thus far

Yes, having a goal of 100 rejections on the year is a good one. It helps get you used to rejection letters which is part of the process of getting your stories published. And it gets you into the practice of resubmitting the story and not giving up. Perseverance is the word that keeps coming up in interviews with published authors, so there is no giving up, no matter how many rejections. So many rejections.

However, every editor of every magazine expects you to subscribe to the magazine, follow their social media, read all of their interviews and pretty much spend all of your time figuring out what they want to read, then write it perfectly and stunningly while being creative, but in the way they want it to be creative then pay a fee to submit it and unless you can read their mind, it still probably won’t fit the upcoming issue and thus will get rejected anyway.

After spending way too much money on literary magazines this year, and reading so many stories online, I learned some interesting things.

  • The majority of literary magazines aren’t magazines at all: they are books.
  • They are expensive books.
  • I liked very few of the stories I read in these expensive books.
  • When trying to read all of these expensive books, I got burned out and barely read any novels. Bummer.
  • Submitting to literary magazines is incredibly time consuming and energy zapping.

But this experiment still has one month left and I’m not completely giving up on it, so what to do?

This month’s changes

I took a look at my shelf of accumulated literary magazines and ended up with enough multiple issues of certain journals to make a study of it. On the pages, I took out the images and journal of the day and turned it into a journal of the week. It makes sense to me that every journal that I put my time into should pay its writers and I should read enough issues of the journal to find out if I would want my story in it.

While frantically trying to learn about all the journals and send my stories to as many as I could, I didn’t think about whether I liked the journals. I forgot to think about myself in the equation. I wanted my stories to find homes so badly that I didn’t think about the homes they might move into and whether or not they would like their roommates.

Instead of feeling rushed to get to know a journal per day which turned out to be a maddening pace. I want to take my time. Yesterday, I found a story in the latest Ploughshares that I liked, “The Caller” by Ian Stansel. Ploughshares is a tough journal to get to know because two of the three journals I have from this year had guest editors. But it’s time to try again.

The other problem I have with the journal of the day concept, other than fees and no pay, is the volatility. The information I provide can be incorrect by the time you get the file. However, if I only introduce four or five journals per month, the reader will have time to research the journal themselves and really get to know the journal before submitting. Along with this change, I’ve put only one spot for three submissions per week which feels much saner and doable.

Something I hadn’t included before which I have made the first focus this month if editing. I need to spend more time using what I’m learning from reading all of these short stories to improve my own stories, so I added a daily focus and daily editing goals. I hope we’ll find this change useful and inspiring.

The pages

So here are the last of the free daily planner pages of 2019. I hope you have had a productive and successful writing year. Were you published this year? Please leave links in the comments so I can read your successful stories and poems and promote them here on Experience Writing.

Fourth Quarter 2019 Planner Pages December new style

I had some fun with some fonts. I used Morris Roman and Deutch Gothic. Both are free to download and install.

I would love to hear what you think of the new pages. What do you find useful? What would you change? Do you like the new idea of one journal per week? Let me know in the comments. Thank you to everyone who tried out the pages and followed along with the experiment. I’ll have a wrap-up with my numbers and experiences submitting my stories this year.

Happy Holidays!

and Happy Reading and Writing!!

The Planner Project Returns

fourth quarter goals

I remember why I needed a break from this project: It is incredibly time consuming, which I find stressful. However, I like to finish what I begin, so I have made the opening fourth quarter goal pages and the pages for the whole month of October.

What has changed

As you will see, I’ve made some changes. I reformatted the pages to use as much of the page as possible with two pages per letter-sized piece of paper. I have continued to group my original prompts with the intent to work together to inspire a story per week. The major change, this time around is moving the featured magazine information from the left side to the center top and instead of including an image of a magazine cover, I decided to include my original photography and artwork for inspiration as another writing prompt.

The pages

The pages are made in open office and can be printed or typed in your word processing software. Once you have downloaded the pages and worked with them, please come back and give me some feedback. I would love to hear what you like and don’t like. What parts are useful and what you would find more useful. Thank you in advance.

Fourth Quarter 2019 Planner Pages

Printing as a booklet

I redesigned the pages, so there would be a lot less white space, but when I tried to click booklet printing in my printer properties, it reduced my pages and put large white space around everything negating my efforts. It took some time, but I figured out how to print it (almost) how I want it.

  1. Select File →Print
  2. Select the Page Layout Tab and select brochure
  3. Click the General Tab and click properties
  4. Select duplex printing. Make sure, when you select duplex printing, that you select staple on short side left.
  5. Print

Next Steps

The next steps are to submit stories and poems to all of these opportunities. Remember, the goal is to get 100 rejections by the end of the year. I’m not quite half way there, so I need to get back to submitting at least once a day to reach my goal. And with the response times what they are, I’ll want to get as much out this month as I possibly can.

Good luck with all your submissions!

Get those stories into the world.

The Planner Experiment: The last week of June

Hi all. I had the daily planner pages for the last week of June ready to go yesterday, but I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to talk about. And . . . I still haven’t, so I’ll let the pages speak for themselves.

2019 Planner June week four

It’s the last week of the quarter, so reach hard for those goals and make time to reflect on your achievements so far.

Have a good week.

The Planner Experiment: The Third Week of June

ordeal-for-the-tiny.jpg

How was your week? I hope you got some good writing done, enjoyed a good book, poems and stories and sent out some submissions. I had a pretty good week. I typed up my poems, worked on a story and read a lot.

This summer has already shaped up to be the summer of a house full of water and tiny black ants. It seems like this house is desperate to fill itself with water. Every hose that can bursts, the water tank got a hole in it, and this week I had mystery water creating a damp spot in the carpet that I have no idea where it came from. The ants, usually a creature that hangs out in a line, so you can see where they are coming from, seem to just drop down from the ceiling to appear, one at a time, on this computer, a table top, or my arm.

The Pages

This week, I finally experimented with printing the pages as a booklet. I had to add an extra page at the front for everything to line up. I used the blank page to break down my goals for the week into achievable tasks. I like the idea of leaving the page blank, so I can use it in different ways each week.

I also tried out the writing prompts in my morning pages. I ended up with a good story idea and about a half of a story draft. I’m excited that the prompts I made up inspired my writing. I’ll continue to try them out in my morning pages.

2019 Planner June week three

Happy Reading and Writing!

The Planner Experiment: Second Week of June

the mountain in the morning

This week, I had a tough time choosing journals for the planner. I’m not sure why, but I found it extra challenging. I ended up with an eclectic group of journals ranging from the well established like the Chicago Review which celebrated 50 years in print to the brand new Visions a graphically-oriented science fiction magazine that looks really interesting.

So here you have it. This week’s pages. I hope you have a great week.

2019 Planner June week two

Don’t forget to order your copy of America’s Emerging Fantasy Writers: Pacific Region for some fun summer reading.

The Planner Experiment: First Week of June

Deadly Again This Summer(3)

Looking for some fun summer reading? I hope you’ll check out this new anthology of twelve fresh, fantasy stories from Pacific Northwest authors, including me!

The Planner Experiment

Quick recap: I started the Planner Experiment at the beginning of the year with the intention to find homes for all my stories by learning more about literary magazines and increasing my submissions. I set a goal of 100 rejections this year in an attempt to change my feelings about each rejection and continue submitting through rejection after rejection. Toward this end, I designed a daily planner that organizes the year by quarter and month.

I post these pages as weekly experiments, making little changes as I come up with new ideas to see what works best to motivate me to write and submit my stories. My hope is that you will also try out the pages and share your experience, so that by the end of the year, I can compile the best planner to help writers get their stories into the world in 2020 and beyond. I hope you will join me in this experiment. You can hop in at any time. I look forward to hearing your experiences.

The pages

2019 Planner June week one

This week’s pages have writing prompts that can build on each other. I’m enjoying this idea. Did anyone try them out last month? Did it help you write a draft?

What do you think of the colors, background, fonts? Are you finding that you use all the different sections, or are only a few of the boxes getting filled in? Which ones are you finding most useful? Which ones would you get rid of/replace? With what?

This week’s pages start with a couple of heavy hitters that I highly recommend submitting to: Ploughshares is one of the top literary journals and it is open for fiction and poetry; and Granta is open for poetry for the next four days. Send them some poetry!

I hope you are feeling motivated.

Have a great week!

 

The Planner Experiment: A New Month Begins

June month plan

So here we are. June is upon us. We’re looking at the midpoint of the year and the days keep flying by. How are your submissions going? Are you finding ways to use the daily planner to stay motivated?

Last week I admitted I was having trouble submitting and hoped that I would find that original energy again and I think writing it here really helped. I finished the month strong, entering two contests and submitting to ten magazines.

I received a wonderful, personal rejection with feedback from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. You couldn’t ask for a nicer rejection. In other words, keeping with it is paying off.  As a friend of mine recently said, “You keep pounding and pounding at that wall, eventually you’ll break through.” I can see cracks forming in the mortar.

Contests

As I mentioned, I’ve started looking into how contests fit into my submissions goals. I entered three short story contests last month, paying a total of $47 in entry fees. I won’t know if it’s a good investment or not for a while, but I am still focused on learning more about how to select contests, so I did some searching and found 30 contests with deadlines in June. At an average of $20 each, if I entered all of those contests, that would be $600 in entry fees for only one month of contests! So how am I going to choose?

One way to quickly sort through is by type of writing. Many of the contests ask for manuscripts: poetry chapbooks or story collects, novelettes, or full novels. Since I have stories in contests and all of my stories are out looking for work, I thought I might focus on poetry in June. I saw that one of my favorite poets, Ada Limón, is judging a poetry book prize. The deadline is the middle of the month and I have been wanting to create a poetry manuscript of my work, so I plan to use this as a deadline to get that work done. Then I can adjust that manuscript to fit other contests.

Another way to choose contests is by researching the judges, the journals or organizations having the contest and previous winners. Researching all of these aspects of a contest will give you information about which contests will be the best fit for your work.

When I was reading advice from contest winners in the last issue of Poets & Writers, one of the winners said to look at what else your contest entry fee gets you. Will you get feedback and critique? Will you get an issue or a subscription to the magazine? Will all entries be considered for publication?

All things to think about when trying to select which contests to dish out for.

Getting In On The Ground Floor

Submitting to the first issue of a literary magazine can be a bit of a gamble–you can’t read previous issues to see what they publish, and they may not last long–but it can also be rewarding. My first publication was in the first issue of Five on the Fifth and I enjoyed the experience and created relationships with the editors.

This morning, while looking over my wordpress reading feed, I came across a brand new ezine from Writer Shed Press called Writer Shed Stories. This is a brand new paying market ($20). I felt like I had a story that might fit, so I submitted. We’ll see how it goes.

In researching this month’s magazines, I also came across The Blend a paying market out of Australia. Their first issue comes out in July.

The Pages

2019 Planner June opening pages

Today, I’m only posting the June month planner page with deadlines and these first couple days. I will update the deadlines as the month progresses. I noticed plenty of errors in last months deadlines, but some of them may have been changes that happened during the month. As I’ve said before, it’s better to submit as soon as the window opens, or in the case of Submittable submissions, at the beginning of the month.

I’ve planned weekly compounding writing prompts for each week in June which will start on Monday, so check back again tomorrow night, or Monday morning.

I look forward to hearing from you. Are you submitting to the magazines in the planner pages? Tell me about your submission experiences.

Happy Reading, Writing, Planning, and Meeting Your Publishing Goals!

The Planner Experiment: Final Week of May and Finding Poetry

Fifth Week of May

I prepared the pages early this week and then spaced posting them yesterday, sorry.

2019 Planner May Week Five

Last Week

I finally typed up the ten unpublished poems from NaPoWriMo. I’m letting them sit a bit before I edit them. At the moment I’m not as excited about them as I had hoped to be.

In the meantime, I tried some collage poetry which was a fun and inspiring experiment. I chose two very different books:The Devil’s Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America’s Great White Sharks by Susan Casey and Women and the Law (University Casebook Series) by Mary Joe Frug. I photocopied some pages from each book and highlighted phrased that interested me, creating a highlighter color code as I went. When I had highlighted all of the pages, I cut out the selected phrases and put them in a bowl.

I found a small book I had made from scrap paper and magazine pages in my art supply bin. It was a perfect size. I started selecting phrases and gluing them into the book. Over two days, I turned those phrases into five poems.

This Week

I enjoyed my word collage experiment so much that I’ve decided to continue it this week. I have pulled out seven of my morning pages notebooks and have started photocopying random pages from them. I plan to use the same color-coding I used before while highlighting phrases that grab my attention. I’m excited to see if the creation of the poems and the finished products feel more or less personal when using words from my notebooks instead of from books.

Submissions

I still have not been able to re-invigorate my interest in submitting, even though I get excited about the journals as I learn about them and often think one or more of my stories will be a good fit. Hopefully, my original excitement will come around again. Starting tomorrow morning, I will attempt to make my three submissions my morning priority.

Welcome to Summer

Happy Memorial Day to those of you celebrating. It’s beautiful weather here. I jumped in the lake for the first time this year (late for me). It was tingly and brisk. It’s going to get harder and harder to self-motivate and get work done. I hope these planner pages help keep us motivated and on track to meet our publishing goals.

Happy Reading, Writing, Planning and Submitting!

 

The Planner Experiment: May Week Four

May Week Four

Most of this week’s magazine submission ideas came from New Pages. New Pages Call for Submissions pages can let you know about brand new magazines and other interesting markets. It can be fun to be one of the first writer’s published in a magazine. I’m excited about Alien Magazine, a new literary magazine coming out this fall.

This Week’s Pages

2019 Planner May Week Four

This last week I received my first yes!! I have a short story coming out in a fantasy anthology. I’m very excited. It’s a story that’s close to my heart. I’ll tell you all about it when I have the release date.

I also entered my first literary magazine contest. I sent a short story to Carve Magazine’s Raymond Carver contest.

I did not reach my goal of typing up my poetry and submitting, but I’ll keep working toward that.

I hope everyone is continuing to find useful information and motivation in these pages.

Happy Reading, Writing, Planning, and Submitting!