Horrible is Wonderful!

Take the suits and the corporate executives' notes out of the creative process, turn to the Internet and some very talented friends and relatives. Spin out the idea of a musical comedy of a "low-rent supervillain wannabe" and you get Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

I kid you not. It's wonderful, funny, sad and arch all at once. It's 42 minutes long and was made for a budget "in the low six figures" according to creator and co-writer Joss Whedon. The fellow who gave us Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and Serenity TV shows, all which he made kicking and screaming at the TV execs about how much they cost and what the stories should say. (Fox screwed up Firefly so badly in broadcast order they didn't even air the pilot as the first episode.)

Enough of that. Give a creator a chance to cook up a story, without concerns about what you can't do. A death ray that doesn't work very well. A superhero who's not a nice guy. A villain with a crush on a girl he sees at the laundromat. All devised by Whedon, his two brothers and brother Jed's fiancee Maurissa Tancharoen.

But I give too much away. Watch the show at hulu.com or from the drhorrible.com Web site. See what can be done when story is king, and then the demand melts down the Web servers that deliver it to the eager viewers.

In a recent Time magazine article about the juggernaut of movies based on graphic novels, the beautiful creative space of writer Mark Millar — creator of nihilist graphic novel (and summertime movie) Wanted — explains it best.

His next comic is about a 100-year U.S. war in the Middle East, with superpowered soldiers and flying Islamic fundamentalists. It's the kind of idea that would get squashed at a studio meeting, where the poor performance of all the Iraq-war movies would be trotted out. But then, Millar doesn't need anyone's green light. He just needs an artist and a pen.

Now that's what I call a wonderful world to create as a storyteller.

SF (and fiction) basics, books online

Tor Books is giving away free SF novels through Sunday. I am a big fan of Battlestar Galactica (a SF TV series that is more well-crafted war drama than SF). Downloaded the novel that Tor has published, based on the series, to enjoy the story in print. Well written, indeed.

The author of this Battlestar Galactica novelization, Jeffrey A. Carver, has a Web site with great advice on getting over basic missteps in any kind of writing, as well as the specifics of creating an entertaining SF world.

Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy

And don't forget to download your free books. Tor is ending the program, which probably rattled some cages in sales for this Macmillan imprint, on Sunday. Maybe most important is what Tor is doing now: putting everything it sells in electronic format, if the big publisher has online rights.

Tor's Patrick Nielsen Hayden notes: "Tor parent company Macmillan is actively converting all titles to which we have digital rights. It really is just a matter of time before the majority of our library is available in e-book form.... There are issues of workflow and rights, just as there are everywhere else. I think you'll see lots more e-books in lots more formats in the next few months."

What AWA stands for

The Amherst Writers & Artists practices form the foundation for what we do in the Writer's Workshop. The AWA group trained me in leadership, then sent me back into Texas to found my own personalized practices.

Whether you participate in our community as a monthly manuscript member, or one of our weekly Tuesday night series writers, the AWA foundations still serve all of us who gather around the Workshop's table. Pat Schneider is the guru of the AWA, and here's what she reminded us this month:

If you have lived, you have a story. If you can speak your story, you can write it. It doesn't matter who you are; you have been using language since you were an infant, and you already know how to use it to move those close to you. Everybody has a life, everybody has a story, everybody has a natural, internal understanding of craft.

This is a nurturing message no matter where you are in your writing life — learning how to speak out on paper, or polishing craft for submissions to publishers, or searching for the right story to start to tell in your own words. Everybody can write. We enjoy a mix of skill and experience levels among our members, including those who always hoped and knew they could write.

Prologue possibilities

I am taking a good hard stab at a prologue for my novel Viral Times this week. In the process I've discovered how few writing books address the nuances of this pseudo-beginning for a story.

Revision and Self Editing has a two-page section called "The Use and Abuse of Prologues." Good stuff. I found the advice in Manuscript Makeover even more helpful. "Some agents refuse to read manuscripts with prologues," Elizabeth Lyon warns, but the section also explains in significant detail how you can avoid undermining yourself by using a prologue. Also, Beginnings, Middles and Ends has good instruction on the subject.

In summary, a prologue has its mission: Tell parts of the story the reader wants to know before the main story commences. Set a tone with the best language you can craft. Raise questions, too, so readers are motivated to continue.

When smaller is a bigger start

Out on the Writer's Digest blog, a novelist writes a story about his friendship with an agent. Before long it becomes a career prospect. She finally asks when she can read his work.

He decides to give her an exclusive look as his first attempt to land an agent. Problem? She is new at agenting, in the middle level of a small agency. Crazy, says his friend. Get all the money you can. Good business.

Good advice if your writing is a business at its core. Nothing wrong with building a retirement and healthcare nest egg. But at the start of your career — and it's obvious from the blog that our writing hero is just starting, "defending my MFA" in the spring — smaller can be better. More attention, the start of a beautiful friendship.

A writer friend of mine went to the Writer's League of Texas Agents Conference last month. She pitched in a formal 10-minute session, but her most significant pitch came at breakfast. Casual, while she told the story of her story.

"Is is finished?" asked the agent.

"Finished enough, for now." My friend wants to enter her novel in a few contests first. (Very smart, to stand out in the query letters.)

"Send it to me."

Those magic words, delivered over a personal meeting. If your (fiction) book is done don't wait. Send, if you hear those words. And keep an eye on the potential for a relationship when you send. This is like hiring a doctor or a therapist or an accountant. Someone who can make a difference in the quality of your life, business and writing, too.

Pitch, the primary part of a query

In the movie business, scripts are sold by way of the pitch. This is also a tool for writers in other genres, like creative non-fiction and fiction. The Writer's Digest Guide to Literary Agents offers this advice about the pitch — the most essential part of a query letter. And the advice is pitched with examples of movies.

When you're composing a fiction query for a novel, the pitch will be the most important part of your letter. Typically, the pitch is the second part of the query and involves "hooking" agents by quickly explaining the premise or concept of the story. Here are some tips when composing the pitch:

DO:

• Do start with a logline if you wish. Give a one-sentence description of the story to present your hook upfront, before getting into some details. "It's a story about three men facing midlife crises who decide to start a fraternity." (Old School)
• Do focus on the hook. What makes your story different? After all, we're all telling the same basic archetype stories over and over. What makes yours different? Is it Romeo & Juliet except it's a werewolf and a vampire? (That's Underworld.) Is it High Noon set in deep space? (That's Outland.)
• Do talk about publicity and platform if you are writing nonfiction.

DON'T:

• Don't let your pitch run wild. Seven sentences is pretty long. Aim for five.
• Don't spend time on the main characters or tell every character's name. If you can pitch without even saying the name of the antagonist or love interest, it's less confusing.
• Don't give away the end. Pique; do no more.
• Don't pitch agents about poetry or magazine articles.
• Don't use gimmicky stuff such as singing your pitch or presenting your pitch "in character."
• Don't pitch if the work is unfinished.
• Don't hand the agent anything. They will request more if interested, and they will give directions on how to send your sample.

GLA also takes apart a query letter that goes wrong on the GLA blog. It's worth a look to see what not to do in a pitch and query. But that next to last DON'T is important. There's no point in a pitch for a novel if the work is unfinished.

Show spunk about the sentence

Out on the Writer's Digest Web site this week, an article on grammar boils down the writing of a good sentence to four commandments. Bonnie Trenga advises us about what we should, and more often should not, do:

1. You shall not write passively.
2. You shall not overuse weak verbs like “to be” and “to have.”
3. You shall not fluff.
4. You shall make every word necessary.

They are so fundamental that we need to know them like our own faces in order to cast them off. See, breaking rules is part of writing, too. You're working inside rules like these four to be polite, so readers don't struggle to enjoy your writing.

A list of rules, though, can become a rutted road for a reader. You might have this experience if you watch TV on the reality channels and see one episode after another of house flipping shows. The hopeful but innocent flipper introduced. The stern advice from the host. The headstrong ignoring of said advice. The cheerful praise of finished flip work from Realtors, followed by grim assessments from the buyers during the open house.

Read enough such formula and you begin to long for something that tastes different. Learning how to differ is the advice you can read more about in Spunk and Bite, a good antidote for the writer who's lashed to Strunk and White's The Elements of Style.

Write something that follows these four commandments without fail. Then rewrite it so it bends, or even breaks one of the rules. See if you can create something unexpected but understandable. Know the rules, but break them when you can.

Oh, one more bit of advice: Set any intentions or guides like these in positive statements. The brain can only process affirmative statements. It throws away the word "not" or "don't." So,

1. Write in the active voice.
2. Select strong verbs to limit your use of “to be” and “to have.”
3. Choose the best word, the one understood easily and most accurate.
4. And yes, "You shall make every word necessary."

Too old to be published?

One of the diligent and professional writers in my manuscript groups shared advice from Writer's Digest about getting published after age 50. Some people don't have the time or resources to turn to a full time career of writing until they get older. WD's advice seemed to run adrift, to me, once I read the article.

Yes, it's good to see Writer's Digest, which makes its living off of giving advice to us writers, is addressing this topic. Some of the advice seems to apply no matter how old the author is making the query, so it's useful — to a point.

But saying you're retired in a query letter is not so far away from being a retired detective, like the successful romance science fiction novelist Linnea Sinclair. She says in a bio on her Web site that she's "a former news reporter and retired private detective." Frankly, that experience from those jobs lends credibility to her writing.

She's won the publishing derby, having published six books at Bantam and eight in all. Not at all shy about leaving another career to be a writer. But it's clear that she works at being a writer, with appearances at conferences and lots of signings.

The other part of the Writer's Digest article that twanged me was the magazine's usual vanguard of "you won't believe how old these writers were on first publication." Here's how it reads:

And if there’s any doubt that older novelists can succeed, keep this in mind. Anna Sewell didn’t sell the classic novel Black Beauty to her publisher until she was 57. Karen Blixen, the Danish author who wrote under the pen name Isak Dinesen, didn’t publish her first book until 50—and her blockbuster, Out of Africa, hit the market when she was 52. Laura Ingalls Wilder, the beloved author of the Little House on the Prairie series, didn’t have her first book published until she was well into her 60s. Richard Adams, author of the children’s classic Watership Down, remained unpublished until he was in his 50s.

All those WD writers published their first books in a different age. WD reminds us that older writers can sometimes overlook the fact that publishing is a business. Well, the work of these four authors succeeded in a very different business era for publishing.

Sewell's Black Beauty published in 1877
Ingalls' Little House published in 1935
Blixen's Out of Africa published in 1937
Adams' Watership Down published in 1972

Ya know, there wasn't even cable TV in 1972, or TV at all during Blixen's and Ingalls' successes. Sewell published her one and only book before there was radio.

Of all the advice from Writer's Digest in the article, being enthusiastic about self-promoting and making it clear you're not a one-shot-wonder seem to make best sense.

Write a good book. That's what matters the most. The agent who's going to represent it best is the one who can get acquisition editors to pick up their phones or answer e-mails. If they want to know how old you are, it's a good sign that it's time to move on, in my opinion.

Acting in Hollywood is a young person's game. Telling a story well and getting behind it seems ageless.

And you thought newspapering didn't pay

From the heady canyons of the Big Apple we hear of a huge buyout for an icon of a reporter. Okay, you may not have heard of Linda Greenhouse, but she's been writing at the New York Times since 1968 and has been on the Supreme Court beat through five presidents and eight terms, almost non-stop since 1978.

Linda got a $300,000 buyout to leave the Times, which must cut 100 staff jobs and offered generous buyouts to get the ball rolling.

This took 35 years to earn, so you could argue that she's had an $8,500 a year pension growing. Pretty good for newspapering that started in the 1970s. But the buyout is all about newspapers contracting their staffs, especially the top writers. Linda's had the most durable tenure as a reporter covering the most important court in the US for one of the most important papers. There's no glass ceiling on this job for this woman.

In the terrific New York Observer article about her departure, Linda was asked what her favorite Supreme Court story has been. It's probably not a surprise that it came on the night the court decided who would be President, for the first time in the history of America:

On that fateful December night in 2000, when Bush v. Gore was decided, Ms. Greenhouse waited patiently in line in the Supreme Court press room all day. At a little after 10 p.m., when copies of the decision were finally handed out, she grabbed her copy and headed straight for a cab. Back at 229 West 43rd Street no one could make sense of it and TV reporters had already started announcing that Gore was victorious and a recount was headed back to Florida.

The Supreme Court didn’t offer the handy guide that it normally does—the decision wasn’t signed so absent was a small summary with a vote count as it does for most decisions—so reporters were actually forced to read the thing. While on a cab to the Washington bureau, Joseph Lelyveld had an open phone line for her and said, “We’re confused over here. Can you make sense of this?”

She had read a few paragraphs and it was pretty clear, even if the fine details weren’t.

“It’s obvious—it’s 5-4, it’s over, Bush wins.”

“Okay,” he said back. “You have 10 minutes to write it.”

And now, she's got $300,000 to her credit for all those years or writing "literature in a hurry," as they call journalism. She also wrote a book, Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun's Supreme Court Journey. And at the standard 8.5 percent royalty most authors get after an agent's fee, the $15 paperback of this fine account of the Court she covered for three decades must sell 234,375 copies to equal her buyout.

A fellow has to wonder how long that kind of sell-through will take, compared to three decades of work that was paying $140,000 a year when she retired. She could make it; two of the top five current best sellers (other than the Bible) have covered George W. Bush.

Those best seller numbers don't matter to this scribe. She loves academic work, so she's headed to those ivory towers to study:

She said she wouldn't disappear when she retired and had a few things lined up, though it's mostly academic work, which she actually really loves. One piece will be for a journal named Constitutional Commentary.

"I'm not going to disappear. I'm going to keep writing and thinking and talking about Supreme Court," she said.

If you're newspapering, keeping writing those leads. It can lead to a big exit paycheck after, oh, 30 years or so.

Nine writing tools

Mostly free, these pieces of software come by way of lifehack.org. Dustin M. Wax says

Since I’ve been eating, drinking, breathing, and sleeping "writing" all week, it seemed natural to pull together some of the tools, sites, and Lifehack.org tips I know of that can help make writers more productive, organized, and creative.

If you like tools and sites to help you get creative or solve your writing challenges, check out the lifehack posting for The Ultimate Writing Productivity Resource.

It's not you, it's your books

A very funny and insightful essay of the above title is out on the New York Times Web site. I enjoyed it because it poked some fun at some towers of traditional good reads. It's also got a link to some great Web sites and literary blogs.

But at its core, the essay talks about detecting affinity for love through a reading list. Ever been to a new friend's house and looked over the bookshelves? Ever browsed a Facebook or MySpace page just to see what's in the Favorite Books section?

It's a funny read, but has insights you might already know. For example, that women read more fiction than men. Or that men are far less likely to write off a pretty woman just because she's ill-read. Then there's this, from a woman who cast off a devotee of Ayn Rand:

"I just thought Rand was a hilariously bad writer, and past a certain point I couldn’t hide my amusement.” (Members of theatlasphere.com, a dating and fan site for devotees of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead,” might disagree.)

Just because it happened doesn't make it a story

Based on a true story. The relentless lure toward so many movies. Film is an art form where the story's structure is tantamount to bedrock. But veracity, the truth of reality, is a flimsy foundation for good writing.

A recent book arrival in my library, So You Want to Write, speaks to this. I've seen writing that wants to be compelling by being complete. A thorough accounting is the bedrock of this writing. That approach can be a mistake. Marge Piercy and Ira Wood, both novelists and authors of this book, explain.

For those who choose to fictionalize their life's adventures... even a life full of incident however close to the truth, need to know something about plotting. Plot is the element of fiction most often in disrepute.

Not so for some readers. My beloved wife, an avid mystery reader whose tastes also run to non-genre literature, is my plot guru. She draws my eye to an element that "you dispense with at your own risk." And a severe risk, too, especially in the view of Robert McKee in his screenwriting structure book Story.

But plot structure makes a life full of incident into a story we are hungry to read. Plot needs a spark, though. The characters' inner lives are what makes writing sing a memorable tune. And characters, dreamed up and lived in your imagination, can lead to a fundamental plot, much better than Based on a True Story.

One basic plot is The Quest... the main character wants something and sets out to get it. What does your main character yearn for?

Yearning is essential to the practices of Robert Olen Butler's Writing from Where You Dream. Yearning is a wonderful word to write next to your monitor or tape up next to your notebook while you create characters, people whose inner lives are a story's bedrock. What is your character yearning for during your story? Even a True Story needs yearning.

What merits come from critique?

A little while back I offered up an opinion about whether a Master's degree in writing will produce that book a writer pursues. It will not, and I have two comments to that post which concur.

But the second post from anonymous (we'd love to know who our readers are, by the way) says that

I fail to understand why a writer would develop better critique habits outside of an MFA program than inside one. I've taken many workshops with non-MFA writers, and plenty of them have no idea how to critique work. And there are enough MFA programs out there to conclude that there is diversity to the workshop experience and no monolithic approach to critiquing.

The ideal of developing "critique habits" is at the heart of this failure to understand. In fact, developing better critique habits is just the opposite of what my workshops do — and any workshops based on the Amherst Writers & Artists methods. (That's what Cary Tennis of Salon uses to lead, as do I.) The practices state that our workshops handle revised, second-draft work offered as a manuscript this way:

A thorough critique is offered only when a writer asks for it — after the work has been distributed in manuscript form. Critique is balanced; there is as much affirmation as suggestion for change.

Many MFA graduates share stories of the painful sessions when "my writing was up." Just as many, perhaps, as writers in critique groups which meet with no clear process for how to suggest changes to writing. Balance in these sometimes-grim classrooms proves to be a scant commodity. In "Narrative Design," Madison Smart Bell tells the story of being a visiting teacher for two semesters in the Iowa Writer's Workshop, known as the bellwether of critique-based workshops.

Within the limits of law and propriety, we were free to do what we pleased... However, there were enormous, crushing pressures to conform in those Iowa fiction workshops. The pressure came not from any teacher but from the students themselves. It was a largely unconscious exercise in groupthink, and in many aspects it really was quite frightening... Fiction workshops are inherently almost incapable of recognizing success.

We always ask in our workshops, "What was working well in that writing?" And we ask it before we move on to suggestions for change.

Bell's comments that will not hearten many an MFA applicant. Only one point of view, yes, but maybe being driven by critique is the highway to revision hell. Bell goes on to say that when he was a student in such a program, he considered 90 percent of the critique he received on his writing to be worthless. He would still be noodling a first draft if he considered matters of detail. Now, he tells his students in workshops to consider themselves fortunate if just one workshop member understands what the writer intends. "Your job," he says, "is to become the best judge of your own work."

Our anonymous commenter reports they are aiming at an exclusive MFA program, adding that "I have to produce that work, and it will be much easier for me to do so with mentors and peers, the resources of a large university, and fellowship money that will free me from the household drudgery and round-the-clock childcare that take up most of my time now."

That's a good course for the 2 percent of applicants who can clear the walls of these elite programs. For the rest of the world's hopeful writers, including some MFA aspirants, we offer practice toward publication, dedication, and community without an emphasis on the need to polish critique habits. We suggest, based on our individual reading of the writing. Our goal is to recognize the best in a writer's authentic voice, and then suggest how they might follow their own practiced voice when they succeed.

Elimination of household time and childcare can be an option for some, but the line for these fellowships is long and filled with talented writers. Yes, apply to win such money. Send your best work. Hope for the best — but remember in the meantime that art does not spring from critique, but in your expression of voice, mentored by suggestions for change. I believe everyone can write, and together we can be better.

An MFA won't produce writing

My brother Bob sent along this link from Salon.com. In a letter to the site's advice columnist, a recent MFA grad struggles with the task of getting the words onto the page after attaining an MFA.

Read the Cary Tennis column here

Graduation from an MFA program leaves a writer with plenty of bad critique habits, the need to stay within that MFA style, and sometimes no better writing discipline than when they were accepted.

Better just to keep on writing. An auto-didactic approach, to get specific.

Winners, but unpublished

Many things can get in the way of getting a book published. Contracts, rewrites, desire, editorial shifts. But having a contest victory in hand should give an author a better chance, right?

Right? Well, maybe not. A few summers ago I collected business cards at the 2006 Agents and Editors conference, presented by the Writer's League of Texas. The League was once an Austin institution. Now it's a statewide organization. The conference holds a manuscript competition. The winners in a half-dozen categories get applauded in a public presentation. In 2006 they were ushered off to meetings with agents.

I was filing business cards today and saw one from Beverly Bryant, whose card reports she's the 2005 Mainsteam Fiction winner in the WLT Contest. I figured Beverly might have published her book Don't Make Me Dance someplace by now.

I'm sorry to say not so, if Google and Amazon searches are reliable reporters. Same to be said for the winners in the overall category (Cold Dogs, by Richard L. Dutton) and Science Fiction-Fantasy-Horror (Travelers on the Smoke by Marjorie A. Stewart & Betty W. Hall).

I report this not because I wish any of these authors bad luck in their quest to publish. (And believe me, if you've been to the WLT A & E conference, plus submitted MS pages to the contest, you want to publish your book.) No, my point is that a contest victory is just one more hilltop on the mountain range of making your story into a book.

Few contest sponsors will portray their victors as the authors of ongoing projects. But you win a contest with a chapter at most. A publisher will want to see three, if your summary and synopsis will pass the eye of the editing needle.

I'm in rewrite purgatory now for Viral Times, so I've got less to show than even Beverly's business card. But a contest entry (at $50 by now, for the WLT) up against several hundred other 10-page manuscript excerpts just doesn't motivate me. Maybe you'll find that finishing your book, then offering it to agents and editors, with a prize of being published, is the contest which you'd really like to win. Keep writing and get into a good manuscript group.

Writing great sentences

Francine Prose wrote a fine book about writing, Reading Like a Writer, which includes a chapter on Sentences. (Chapters are titled with names such as Words, Paragraphs, Narration, Character, Gesture, Dialogue, and more.) In her book she celebrates the sentence and crafting wonderful ones.

To talk about sentences is to have a conversation about something far more meaningful and personal to most authors than the questions they're most often asked, such as: Do you have a work schedule? Do you use a computer? Where do you get your ideas?

Prose goes on to show an example of what a writer can do while ignoring the advice of writing craft books. Not just any writer, but Virginia Woolf, writing in her essay, On Being Ill. Not just any sentence, but one 181 words long, which appears at the opening of the essay. (It's shown at left; just click on it show a full-sized, readable page). Woolf's sentence is something I share with our weekly workshop members during our eight-week sessions. "It's not the sentence's gigantism but rather its lucidity that makes it so worth studying and breaking down into its component parts," Prose writes.

A good sentence is the meat on the bones of good writing. Prose writes, regarding the revision of sentences

Writers need to ask themselves

• Is this the best word I can find?
• Is my meaning clear?
• Can a word or phrase be cut without sacrificing something essential?

Perhaps the most important question is, "Is this grammatical?" A novelist friend of mine compares the rules of grammar, punctuation and usage to a sort of old fashioned etiquette. He says that writing is like inviting someone to your house. The writer is the host, the reader the guest, and you, the writer, follow the etiquette because you want your readers to be more comfortable, especially is you're planning to serve them something they might not be expecting.

Prose adds that she revisits Strunk and White's The Elements of Style from time to time. But most craft books like this tell a writer what not to do. Learning from reading is a way to enter a new league of writing, once the fundamentals of grammar are in your toolkit. Literature shows us what kind of great sentences are possible to write.

Submissions, Part 2

Some literary publications never make it to paper. The Web world hosts untold numbers of what are sometimes called "zines." It may not be any easier getting your writing published in an online lit mag. But there are more of them out there than the printed versions — and getting a look at the finished editions happens much faster. The lag between reading time and publication is shorter when there's no printer or distribution in the process.

One of the pieces of paper from my 2006 AWP tour:








Just a simple business card, instead of a postcard printed in four colors.

Carve is named after the short story titan Raymond Carver. You can read their magazine online at carvezine.com. They have a yearly contest, judged by a PEN Award winner, with a top prize of $1,000. Unlike paper lit mags that are run by college students, Carve and these online pubs don't have a formal reading period.

The odd part of the story: Carve Magazine doesn't accept online submissions yet. Yup, postage and paper to get you in the door. For now, as most of the lit mags say.

Submissions, Part 1

I'm doing some reorganizing of my office studio this month — so I'm chucking out a lot of paper in the process. A lot of what's going made its way into the office after the 2006 AWP conference, held in Austin. Much of the departing paper was printed to inspire submissions of more paper.

Imagine a space the size of two football fields, side by side, lined with 10-foot-long tables, each representing a small press or smaller lit journal. Each has a stack of books or issues to sell. Sycamore Review was one of those. I scraped up the details on the twice-a-year fiction and poetry journal that prints just 1,000 copies for each issue. It's pretty typical of the lit mag submission dance.

Sycamore has an eye toward what it calls "stories that have a ring of truth, the impact of felt emotion." Its entry in the 2008 Novel and Short Story Writer's Market uses the word "emotion" several times. You can offer up your writing to the publication only by printing paper and mailing it, but at least the Sycamore staff has let go of the No Simultaneous Submissions commandment.

They have an annual contest, the Wabash Prize, which accepts fiction entries until March, and Poetry entries in the fall. Don't forget to send along your $10 reading fee. (By the way, some lit mags don't charge a submission fee, like Farfelu here in Austin.)

They also want "fiction that breaks new ground." On the pub's Web page, the sample story Exposure begins thusly:

Wednesdays and Saturdays are my days off at the pharmacy, but Saturdays my wife is off too, so I do my flashing on Wednesday afternoons.

Edgy, as they like to say in Hollywood (a place where not much writing is going on for TV, since the writer's strike remains unsettled. But I digress). Exposure was also this year's Wabash winner. The Sycamore editors read until March 31, and they just put an issue to press this month, so they're reading for their first 2008 issue. You can submit to

Sycamore Review
Purdue University
Department of English
500 Oval Drive
West Lafayette, IN 47907

And if you wonder why Sycamore Review, like most literary magazines, demands the paper on ink plus stamp and envelope ritual, the answer is: they're a little magazine, with old computers, and they read paper. Oh, and taking the trouble to submit through the mails, um, that's part of the weeding-out process. It eliminates the riff-raff, according to the world as one editor described it during 2006.

There’s something about having to actually print out submissions, write a cover letter, get stamps, and go to mailboxes that weeds out the dilettantes. With emailed submissions, every high school student whose creative writing teacher praises him would be sending submissions. (I’ve seen this happen, the hordes of emails not hardly worth reading…But I’m not knocking high school students, creative writing teachers, or you in any way.) You can’t just walk onto American Idol—they have a screening process. Similarly, you can’t just write your way into Sycamore Review—there’s a built-in screening process called “submitting” that allowing emailed submissions takes away.

Computer budgets and tiny staff aside, the handsome postcard at the top of this entry is part of the Sycamore Review budget, one of several hundred printed for the AWP show. Paper for the journal issues is even more dear, apparently: there's only enough pages for five stories and eight poems in the most current issue. The good news? There are thousands more publications out there to send your paper to, including a $10 check. A couple of football fields full of them.

But a lit mag with two issues per year, payment of two copies to successful contributors, and a yearly contest with a $1,000 first prize? That's about what you can expect. Do the math. $200 a year will get your five of your stories considered by four journals. Or you could spend the money on a good editing job for a novel. That kind of work sells here in Austin for about $800 for a novel.

But that's another kind of submission, one that puts you on your way to being in print.

Just off the press: Austin's own lit journal

Just tonight I heard beautiful writing, a first chapter of Donna Johnson's in-progress memoir about growing up under the largest revival tent in the world. The Utter Reading was at our biggest independent bookstore, Bookpeople. So I was really not that surprised that the creators and editors of Austin's own literary journal, Farfelu, were in the appreciative, rapt audience.

I met Elisabeth McKetta and Kim Pyle afterward, and they have just put out Farfelu Issue 9, their latest in a quarterly publication of poems, short fiction and art. It's all done in a cozy undersized format, to make it stand out. Best of all, it's got color or monochrome art in each issue, so it's not one of the literary journals that "look like a socialist manifesto," to quote the creators of the lit mag Tin House.

Elisabeth and Kim have this to say about their latest:

Issue 9 features eight black and white photographs by Clayton Cusak. In his own words, Cusak photographs “the rich visual subject matter of dilapidated, obsolete, and otherwise transformed structures and the relics they contain from previous inhabitants.” This issue is heavy in poetry, featuring work from five poets: Marcelle Kasprowicz, John Grey, Brian Brown, Misti Rainwater-Lites, and Erin Feldman. The two short stories in this issue, written by Ann Hillesman and Liliana Blum, depict two conflicting archetypes of Father: father as hero, father as villain.

As they point out in a friendly e-mail — coincidentally, sent today — books and magazine subscriptions make great holiday gifts. Their Web site makes it easy to order, and yes writers, there are submission guidelines there, too.

If you write in the Austin area, or even if you write much father afield, you ought to send Farfelu an offering, either of your writing or of a subscription. And a tip of the hat to the small journal, birthplace of many a burgeoning career. Harrison Cheung, who wrote in a Workshop series with us, had a funny short story published in Farfelu. These are the places you can stretch the wings of your writing.

Big lit mag makes big submission change

We've just heard that Glimmer Train, one of the Cadillacs of the literary magazine world, has come around to the good sense we advise to short story writers. Submit simultaneously, to several publications at once. Life is too short to wait for a reading.

Glimmer Train is changing things to read more stories, a rare and positive move in the lit journal world. The publication is already the home to thick sheaf of contests, which now have tighter deadlines to free up your stories faster. You learn much sooner if you've won, or can move on.

Details on the submission changes are at the Glimmer Train Web site. There's also a nice little interview with award winning writer Roy Parvin, talking about place. Don't forget, the Glimmer Train folks publish a couple of Guides to Writing Fiction — Building Blocks and Inspiration and Discipline.

The magazine's Fiction Open closes December 31. $20 to submit, but they do good work for writers.

Contests open up, want your words

Writer's Digest is running a short story competition with a $3,000 prize. Deadline is Dec. 3, so polish up that story and get it out, along with your $12. Twenty-five winners in all. It's interesting to note that the First Prize winner also gets a FREE "Best Seller Publishing Package" from Trafford Publishing. It's an on-demand publishing deal, good for the writer who can't invest the $3,000 for 500 copies of a book.

By short stories they do mean very short. No more than 1,500 words. If you do the math, that's probably less than 10 pages. But if you've been in one of my Writer's Workshop evening sessions, you might have a good start on a story that's the right length.

Contests like this are a good spark to get your writing out there. Even chapters of a book, if they're written a la short story, make good entries.

Glimmer Train, a top-notch Cadillac of a literary journal, runs lots of contests. The Short Story for New Writers contest wraps up on Nov. 30. It's $15 an entry, which the founders remind us help to support the journal. (Really, if you haven't seen one of these, just check out the newsstand at Borders or Barnes & Noble.) Not easy to get in, but the New Writers contests give you an edge.

Glimmer Train will take up to 64,000 characters, something Word can report, for a Short Story. I like the journal a lot; it has a wide range of stories, and few that are as experimental as the ones in Zoetrope. The journal is run by the two sisters, Linda Swanson-Davies and Susan Burmeister-Davies. They've been at it for 17 years, a long time in the lit journal world. Submissions are online-only, too, because as they say, "we had to consider the strain on our backs after lifting postal bins full of stories all those years."

Gestures, or not?

I was surprised to learn today that Evan Marshall, a former agent who is now a writing coach, advises against using a lot of gesture in scenes.

Use Body Language Sparingly

New writers sprinkle their dialogue with a lot of gestures and mannerisms. Characters smile, grin, frown, shake their heads...

Most of the time the readers don't really care, unless the gesture or mannerism is important for conveying meaning. Keep body language to a minimum in your dialogue. Many aren't necessary because the words have already delivered the message.

Marshall, whose Marshall Plan for Novel Writing has a companion workbook, says that sometimes a gesture is useful to show us a pause.

"I couldn't leave Belinda. not after all she's done for me — medical school, raising our kids." Frank looked down at his cigarette, studied it a moment, then gave Susan a frank look. "I love you more than anything in the world, but I can't marry you."

Pencils down, and keyboards rise up

It's a very strange confluence of writer's energy we see this month. In a few days at most, 12,000 of the best writers for the screen, TV and movies, are going on strike. Pencils Down is their rally cry. It's been almost 20 years since the last prolonged strike by writers. All they want is another 4 cents of residual money for every DVD sold.

They won't be working by the start of the week. If you watch TV, you will lose your shows for awhile, maybe forever if it's a long strike. The talented stuff, the shows you want to watch because HBO can be the new novel, those are going on strike.

There's a wonderful, powerful discussion of the strike on the Web site of WGA writer John August.

At the same time, thousands more writers are picking up pens and lighting up keyboards in National Novel Writing Month. Their goal is to finish writing 50,000 words of a novel by the end of November. These are fledgling writers, for the most part, or some who are polished but just stuck and want to blow out the lead from their minds' engines.

I'm not sure if NaNoWriMo ever took place alongside a Writer's Guild strike. But it's strange times indeed. And if you are writing for print, take a little refuge that your business aspirations for your work don't require a union membership. Not yet, anyway, although many of the most successful writers are members of the Authors Guild.

The Four Character Levels

Peter Dunne, movie and TV writer who's won Emmys and a Peabody award, has a great book in Emotional Structure to let you explore and define and show your characters' emotions. Dunne talks early on about the Four Character Levels:

1. Individual: The outer layer, what is shown to the world
2. Familial: The belief system, secrets, seat of guilt
3. Social: Cultural, other-oriented, obligations and changeable
4. Emotional: The real deal, what the character really feels — whether they are aware of it or not.

In 11 pages which Dunne writes very early in his book, he breaks down how these levels show how your hero relates to the world. You can work on these things using the book's exercises. Great stuff.

"Trust your growth," he says to inspire us. "Every time you create a character or write a scene you grow, too. Just as you ask your hero to trust his process, you must trust yours."

As I polish Viral Times in its extensive revision, I keep these levels in mind for my characters. Dorothy Bezder shows up in Chapter Six, to introduce a character she loves who is capable of great violence, all in the name of a vengeful god. What happens to Dorothy after Six? What are her levels?

Artist's choices for me.

Synopsis help from a great group partner

My friend Laurie, hard at work drafting her novel Claire's Run, served up a great synopsis links site awhile ago. My other writing group partner, Larisa, is now doing the heavy lifting on The Gender Game to create the synopsis to show how great her novel has become through her writing and rewriting.

Writing a synopsis is hard, so you should practice. This document sells your book. It also shows you, as you revise the synopsis, what needs to be written or rewritten, as you create your book.

Laurie's main link is www.charlottedillon.com/synopsis.html

Inside that page is a wonderful link to a Beth Anderson's synopsis how-to, presented by way of the Chicago Crimewriter's Web site.

Laurie posts to her own writing life and lessons blog. I recommend this tool. A blog is a place to talk out your writing process, expose and examine your log, as Eric Maisel advises in his book Fearless Creating.