Posts tagged ‘writers’
STRUGGLING TO GET IT PUBLISHED: MARKETS AND AGENTS
This piece is a sample of upcoming posts to this blog.
The following is a list of websites to help writers find markets and agents. In the future I will discuss each site in more detail, but I thought I would offer this piece for writers to explore these sites, if they want, on their own.
First, I am sad to say that one of my favorite sites to explore the validity of markets and agents no longer exists. The site is Preditors & Editors, a site I have looked to over the years for their opinion about markets and agents. They will be sorely missed.
Now let’s deal with markets.
To my mind, Duotrope is the go-to site for seeking markets for fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Once free, it now charges 50$ a year to use it. Although there are some that argue about the fee, I think, for the service they provide, it is well worth the cost. This site is a fantastic search-engine to find markets specific to your work.
Here is the site:
https://duotrope.com/index.aspx?bp=search
Here is a site to find markets for science fiction and more. I have yet to become acquainted with it, but I will before I report on it.
http://www.ralan.com/index.htm
Now for agents.
In my opinion, this is the site to first visit when seeking an agent. The site is for the Association of Writers Representative. You can search the site for your specific genre and be connected to the agent’s site. You should never have to pay an agent to read your work. With the agents associated with this site, you never will. They have taken a pledge of honesty.
Here is the site:
Next is a site devoted to the writer to query other writers about their experience with publishers and
agents. Great place to check on honesty.
Here is the site:
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/activity.php
Finally, here is a site to use to see an agents background. I will discuss this site in greater detail in a later post.
Here is the site:
http://www.agwentquery.com/default.aspx
I hope this helps my fellow writers on their journey to publication. As promised, a more extensive look at each site will follow. I want to help my fellow writers to be where they want to be.
POEMS & FLEETING THOUGHTS: MAINTAINING LIFE’S WORTH
CREATIVE IMMORTALITY
Those who create,
Who pour their souls
Into life
Should not age,
But continue
To create
As their strength
Provides power.
POEMS & FLEETING THOUGHTS: A WRITER’S PLIGHT
A WRITER’S PLIGHT
You sweat,
You agonize
To provide words,
At some point after submitting
Time past with no response
You ask yourself,
‘Is anyone fucking listening?’
A writer’s life
Is a lonely one,
You may have friends
Others involved
With the same mission,
But when it comes
To work
You are alone,
STRUGGLING TO GET WRITING APPRECLIATED
Why do you write?
If you’re young, it’s to begin and establish a career, and along the way, perhaps make a living. If you are young this article may not interest you for it’s coming from a different place in life. The place is old age, but the need, perhaps not the reason remains the same. But then again, you will not be young forever.
My first and only novel published thus far appeared while I entered my sixties. Now, at the ass-end of that decade, when maturity infiltrates my brain, I still have a need to write as demonstrated in these mumblings. Do I enjoy it? Hell no!
I should not be working now. I should be enjoying ‘the golden years’. But my personality has always had a strange quirk, the need to accomplish something meaningful. This disease began while I was a teen and has pursued me ever since. Someday soon I may write of how this change to my personality began.
But for now, to the point of this article.
At the end of last year I receive an email from Books To Go Now, a publisher of e-stories telling me I had made 16 cents for the year. This notification brought me joy in a year of a publishing drought. I don’t know and will never meet the person who put down money to read my work.
In my mind, my friends, that is what it is all about. Not fame or fortune which is rightfully sought by the young, but appreciation of our efforts in writing. The bottom line is that appreciation and recognition, no matter how minimal of your work is important. It means someone finds your work worthy of buying. The buying is not the important part, the desire to read your work is.
That is why I write, and perhaps your reason too.
CARIBBEAN BY JAMES A. MICHENER
Reading a James A Michener novel returns the reader to a time of innocence, and provides an engrossing story. A time when writing a novel was more than flash and sex, when story and content were of prime importance. These are the feelings I came away with after reading Michener’s novel, Caribbean. The amount of research he puts into his novels is truly astounding. He uses these fact and weaves a compelling story around the backbone of history.
It’s been a long time since I read one of Michener’s works. My favorite, which I read in my youth, was The Source. This novel follows the excavation of a well in the Middle East, recording the civilizations and people who existed in the area of the well from the bottom-most layer to the present, the present at least at the time of the writing of this novel.
Caribbean, published in 1989, employs Michener’s standard method, using a vast amount of research to describe the civilizations and populations, the hopes and horrors of the people involved with the area. At the same time creating a story and characters that will hold your interest and provide knowledge of the area.
Returning to the first line of this article. I must say that I am guilty of using more profanity in a short story than Michener uses in a 600+ page novel. How times have change and continue to do so, rapidly.
If you haven’t read any of Michener’s works, give yourself and treat and do so.
RANTS & RAVES: SCIENCE FICTION MOVIES WITH NO BELIEVABLE SCIENCE
This may be the rants of an old man, or the product of age and wisdom. Age and wisdom, really.
Anyway, whatever it is, it is not a commercial for Netflix. But if they want to pay me, the income would be welcome. But I doubt they would see my comments worthy of pecuniary rewards. (There goes three years of high school Latin.)
I have been, of late, watching a great deal of horror and science fiction using Netflix’s instant viewing option. Just a side comment. While watching horror, both American and international, I find that Japan, in my opinion, produces the best horror after my limited sampling. The Ring, The Grudge, both remade by U.S. studios, are Japanese movies. I have viewed other Japanese horror offerings that will scare the hell out of you, not through gore and special effects but through story and setting. Some movies had twists I did not see coming, or circumstances that make you think after the movie is over, and experience which stay with you.
Now, back to science fiction.
I’d like to discuss two recent viewings, The Ring of Fire and 500 MPH Storm, both Netflix offerings and both, I’m sure, originally from a cable channel, but I could be wrong. It has happened before.
The first, The Ring of Fire, takes place in Oregon focusing on a corrupt oil company executive and his daughter, an environmentalist, locked in combat over a drilling venture in the state. The premise has the oil company drilling a well far deeper than they were permitted, and instead of tapping a huge dome of oil, headed for magma. Puncturing the magma dome could set off an event, tied to the volcanoes surrounding the Ring of Fire, triggering an event that would destroy all life on the planet. For those who don’t know, the Ring of Fire boarders the Pacific Ocean and is the most geological active area in the world.
I must be open as to why I found this movie lacking. My published novel, New Moon Rising, involves a catastrophic event also involving the Ring of Fire. First, as I point out in my novel, scientists insist that geological events occurring in the Ring of Fire are unconnected. The movie assumes that every volcano is connected to a source which would cause them all to explode because of the drilling in Oregon. Finally, the method the characters in the movie use to solve the end of life on the planet left me chuckling. View it yourself and see if I’m wrong. Just a side note, in my novel, all is not remedied.
The second video, 500 MPH Storm, makes Plan 9 from Outer Space, a classic in its own right, worthy of Oscars, looking like well thought-out science. The science in this film is nonexistent. The scientific logic escapes me. The special effects were poor, at best. The last comment brings me to the inspiration for this article.
In my opinion, some of the science fiction movies produced today have little to do with science. I know it is fiction, but the inclusion of science fact, not just make it up to fit the story, adds enjoyment to the work. Today’s science fiction movies are ruled by special effect and lack any scientific redeeming qualities.
I enjoy including science fact in the science fiction I write. I feel that it allows the educated reader to become more involved with the story.
What do you think?
Here are some links where you may purchase my work.
Melange Books
http://www.melange-books.com/authors/walttrizna/index.html
Barnes & Noble.com
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/walt-trizna?store=book&keyword=walt+trizna
Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=walt+trizna
RANTS & RAVES: IS TOO MUCH GOOD OR BAD?
This piece will be about blogging and self-publishing, and some observations I have made.
I have been blogging for some time now; have bloggers I follow and some that follow me. I’ll begin with the negative. In blogging, I fault blogs that merely regurgitate other’s thoughts, ideas and creativity adding no insight or constructive thoughts. I’m turned off by quantity and not quality in what is presented.
Now for the good, and there is a great deal of good. I read the work of a host of talented writers posting on blogs about writing, their experiences in developing their craft along with blogs posting excellent poetry. If anyone out there is interested in reading great poetry for free, leave a comment and I’ll post links. Here’s the kicker. In my daily blog reading, I’ve found too much that is lacking in quality, and at the same time, too much that is excellent. There’s just too much to absorb. The lacking dilutes the excellent and conceals work that is worthy with the flood of work which is available.
How could too much excellent work be a bad thing, you might ask. The growing technology in publishing allows everything to be published with no gatekeeper. I remind you of the add I mentioned in the past which stated, “Write anything. Publish everything”. You can create a blog for free, a website for free, self-publish at minimal cost; all whether or not you have talent or something to say. I feel that the ease with which you can publish allows marginal writers a means of exposure, diluting the efforts of talented writers for gaining a public. In the past, there existed the means to self-publish using vanity presses. The cost limiting the volume. Technology has changed all this, and I feel not for the best. Of course, who is to say what is good and what is bad. But with the volume of work presented, the good is sometimes lost in a sea of the bad.
When I read a great piece on a blog or a great poem I wish more could enjoy the author’s work. Some of the bloggers I read also publish, rarely through traditional mean. The bottom line, I feel that the rapid growth of technology enables the marginal and dilutes the excellent. I see no way to remedy this problem and sure that it will increase as technology progresses.
Here are some links where you may purchase my work.
Melange Books
http://www.melange-books.com/authors/walttrizna/index.html
Barnes & Noble.com
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/walt-trizna?store=book&keyword=walt+trizna
Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=walt+trizna
STRUGGLING TO GET IT PUBLISHED: THE SMALL PRESS
Between major houses and self-publishing there lies an alternative which is the subject of this piece.
As far as the major publishing houses are concerned, most cannot be approached unless you have an agent and the agent makes the contact. But acquisition of an agent is not an easy task. An aside, for those writing in my genre, science fiction and horror, the major house, TOR, does accept unsolicited manuscripts. I read an article not long ago in which writers talked about obtaining an agent. In almost every case it was ‘I know someone, or I have an agent. Let me talk to them.’ You get the idea. Yet I’m still naïve enough to feel if your work is good, something good will happen. I could be labeled either a dreamer or an idiot, been called both by those who know me.
The far-end of the spectrum from the top houses is self-publishing. I’ve dealt with this topic in past posts, and will surely again in the future. What typifies my thoughts on self-publishing is an ad I see constantly in Writer’s Digest. In the photo accompanying the ad is a middle-aged woman with short gray hair sitting cross-legged on a mound of earth in the middle of the great outdoors, I can only assume there must be a Starbucks within Wi-Fi distance. She has her arms raised triumphantly while gazing at her laptop nestled in her lap. The ad proclaims, ‘Write anything. Publish everything.’
Really?
I don’t know if this woman is supposed to have just finished writing a classic, or just sent off the classic to be published. ‘Write anything’ I have no problem with, but ‘Publish everything’, give me a break. Does everything written need to be published, especially by someone unencumbered by the process of discovering if what they write is publishable? If you feel everything you write, that is not exposed to scrutiny, is publishable, you can stop reading now.
If you are still reading and feel the product of your mind should be self-published, please, please, please have someone other than your mother or your spouse read your work with a critical eye and who will be gentle, yet honest, with their opinion. Join a writer’s group or seek an online critique. I’ll these options in future pieces.
The purpose of this article is to discuss small presses, and now I will focus on that topic. There are a multitude of small, legitimate presses you are able to approach directly. I was fortunate enough to be accepted as an author by Melange Books. They provided help in editing, designing a book cover and distributing my book to online sellers, Barnes & Noble and Amazon, all free of charge. There are a host of publishers out there that want to publish good work, but do your homework. As with any industry, there are those that are less than honest.
My favorite source of publishing opportunities, Duotrope, https://duotrope.com/, is one place to begin your research. There are many other resources, but I find Duotrope the most complete and easiest to use.
At the same time, I must caution you that all small presses may not have the best interest of the writer in mind. As with any business, there are the unscrupulous and the scams abound.
Do your homework!
In past articles I have discussed Preditors & Editors, http://pred-ed.com/pubagent.ht, and Absolute Write Water Cooler, http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/. Both are fantastic and constantly update their information. Preditors & Editors provides information on publishers, along with agents. This is a site you must use if you want to publish your work and do not want to be taken due to an ego trip. The site provides recommendations and warnings of the unscrupulous.
Absolute Write Water Cooler offers writers’ experiences with publishers and agents. This site is a must if you plan to publish. If you search the internet for a specific publisher or agent, often some of the first references will be from Absolute Writer. Always check these comments by writers who have used these sites and provide first-hand information on their experiences. Both Preditors & Editors and Absolute Write Water Cooler and places you should investigate while seeking to publish your work, and they are FREE.
Good luck fellow writers.
WE REMEMBER
I came across this piece in my email and thought I’d pass it on for the benefit of my writer and reader friends. Here are a list of writers, having completed this journey of life, leaving us with their words and thoughts.
We are all on this identical journey with the same destination. Let us hope that we leave behind a life’s work worthy to be remembered, if not by the world, at least by those we love.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/danieldalton/i-began-to-exist#.op8AzP88M
STRUGGLING TO GET IT WRITE: ONCE AGAIN, A WRITER’S OBSERVATIONS AND THE POTENTIAL STORY
Once again, I shall visit the importance of the power of observation in a writer’s life, and once made, to lock it into your memory for future reference. Come to think of it, here’s a question. Does the power of observation form the writer, or does the need to write develop the power of observation? In other words, which came first, the writer or the observer?
I’ve been walking our dog, Millie, taking advantage of the pleasant autumn weather before they’re replace by the harsh days of winter, and in the process, reviewing memories.
My family enjoyed tent camping, and one of our favorite destinations was Rickett’s Glen State Park located in the middle of northern Pennsylvania. A large man-made lake (a site I used in a horror story) is set in the park amongst the campsites and trails. We always brought along our canoe or Folbot (a collapsible kayak) and set up camp at a site right on the lake’s edge so that a short walk had us in the water.
The park is a popular place for families, and the occasional group of teenagers, to enjoy nature and bond. I distinctly remember one camping trip when, as usual, the park was full of families, mostly with young kids riding their bikes along the dirt and gravel trails and enjoying the vacation. The campsite next to us, however, gave off distinctly different vibes. Occupied by a solitary man, perhaps in his fifties, with a modest tented campsite along with a kayak for one. I watched him one morning as I cooked breakfast. His breakfast consisted of a couple beers, then he carried his kayak to the lake and was gone. The rest of the campground was filled with laughter and the sounds of children at play.
I often think of that lone camper, for observing him provided a wealth of story possibilities. All the other campers seemed to enjoy their time in the park – nothing there.
Here are some links where you may purchase my work.
Melange Books
http://www.melange-books.com/authors/walttrizna/index.html
Barnes & Noble. Com
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/walt-trizna?store=book&keyword=walt+trizna
Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=walt+trizna
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