Writing

Should Beginning Writers Blog?

by Bill Ward on November 26, 2008

in Miscellanea,Writing

Jordan Lapp, co-editor of one of my favorite markets Every Day Fiction, just rebooted his fallow blog with a post that got some people talking. Jordan has recently won the top spot in one of the quarterly rounds of The Writers of the Future Contest, so he’s come back to blogging now that he has [...]

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Get Thee To A Slush Pile, Part Three

by Bill Ward on November 15, 2008

in Writing

In part one of the article I talked about what a slush pile was, and how attaining a position as a slush reader for a small or amateur press editor can be a great learning experience for a writer; helping him understand the submission game from both ends of the process. In part two I [...]

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Get Thee To A Slush Pile, Part Two

by Bill Ward on November 5, 2008

in Writing

In part one of this article I talked about why a writer, especially a beginning writer of short fiction, should seriously consider looking for a position reading slush with a small press magazine or ezine. In this article I’ll look at ways someone with no contacts can go about looking for a volunteer position as [...]

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Get Thee To A Slush Pile, Part One

by Bill Ward on October 28, 2008

in Writing

A recent discussion over at the SFReader forums on developing a thick skin in the short fiction submissions game got me thinking about rejection, and how it doesn’t really bother me anymore. I’m not bragging, I certainly haven’t had nearly the level of success or landed the sales to many of markets that I most [...]

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Zen in the Art of Writing (review)

by Bill Ward on October 25, 2008

in Book Reviews,Writing

Nothing is ever lost. If you have moved over vast territories and dared to love silly things, you will have learned even from the most primitive items collected and put aside in your life. From an ever-roaming curiosity in all the arts, from bad radio to good theatre, from nursery rhyme to symphony,  from jungle [...]

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The Cursed Story

by Bill Ward on October 17, 2008

in Writing

Sometimes it seems as if the laws of weirdness stack up to create the illusion of the unlucky — or, dare I say it, the cursed. I’ve got a story that just doesn’t seem to have even the normal, ‘getting rejected every three or four months’ kind of bad luck that at least keeps a [...]

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