Failing Well

Hello Again,

I've been ignoring the call of my computer all too well recently. Life takes my attention elsewhere, but that's not really a valid excuse. So why exactly am I failing to make my own deadlines? Linda Formichelli at The Renegade Writer's Blog asks us how well we are failing, and chimes in with another inspirational post encouraging us to fail as well as we possibly can. Must fail better.


Also, here's an unusual contest tip from Poets and Writers for the next couple of weeks:

Symphony Space
Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize
A prize of $1,000 will be given annually for a short story on a theme. The theme for this year's contest is "Are We There Yet?" The winning story will be read by an actor as part of Selected Shorts, a literary performance series at Symphony Space in New York City. Amy Hempel will judge. Submit a story of up to four pages by March 14. There is no entry fee. Send an SASE or visit the Web site for complete guidelines.

Symphony Space, Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize, Selected Shorts, 2537
Broadway, New York, NY 10025. Mac Barrett, Contact.
shorts@symphonyspace.org
www.symphonyspace.org

Over at the Writer's Resource Center, the last several short story posts have been questioning some of the conventions of the the form and I'd love to know what some of you think -- particularly about the Twilight Zone ending.

That's all I have for now. If anyone has any tips or questions, let me have 'em.
Darlene

Writing Group this week and a couple of links

My writing group is this week and I'm debating what to bring. I'm often shy about bringing work to the group. The irony here is gross -- I lead the group most of the time and try to put other people at ease to read their materials on a monthly basis and yet I find it really intimidating to bring my own writing to workshop. Theirs is truly okay, but mine is truly crap. It's a mental trap that I have to work myself out of. Certainly I have brought work in the past and all was fine, and it will be fine again. I'm just nervous. [Addendum: I took in 6 pages of Shelter and it went just fine. They didn't laugh me out of the room after all.]

Given the recent Cassie Edwards scandal, we all need to know what is and isn't plagiarism, but we also need to know about copyrights.
Here's a link from Writing.com with several articles dealing with different aspects of the matter.

A few links for today

Hello again,

Today I have a couple of recommendations of useful links.

The first comes from a colleague from my writers group, Lee Lyons. Here's what she wrote to me: Writingformoney.com
"Take advantage of this website and writing guru, John Clausen, who runs it. (Clausen wrote the book "Too Lazy to Work, Too Nervous to Steal" about freelance writing several years ago) Helpful tips and intros to different forms of freelancing are available always. A very nominal membership fee ($7.95) enables writers to post their own Portfolios to attract freelance work. It's a great site and I highly recommend it!"
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I'd also like to plug a contest for our local Romance Writers of America chapter, so here are the details straight from the chapter president:

"February 14th is the deadline for NW Indiana Chapter 89 Romance Writers of America's annual Grand Beginnings Contest for unpublished authors. Trained judges will critique the first five pages of a participants manuscript. Entrants need not be RWA members, but submissions must be women's fiction with romantic elements. Entry fee is $20 and we accept electronic submissions as well as hard copy. All entries are critiqued by two judges and will be returned, along with those judges' comments, by April 30th.

The top 5 finalists will be ranked by published author and Wild Rose Press editor, Michelle Witvliet.

For more information and a look at the score sheet, go to our website at www.nwinrwa.org

Joanna Waugh
President
NW Indiana Chapter 89 RWA"
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Finally, as promised, the Indiana Writers Consortium Yahoo group is now up and ready for business. If you're interested in joining this group, head over to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indianawriters

That's enough for one day I think. Happy hunting.

I'm back

Hello again.

It's been a long seven months or so. What have I been doing? All sorts of things, but not a lot of writing. Only in the last couple of weeks have I been cracking open Word again. There are lots of reasons, most of them inadequate, but sometimes we just need a break, and a few months ago I decided to stop beating myself up about it and just take my rest. I had faith that the urge to write would come back and slowly it is.

Among the other things I've been up to, I've been involved in the creation of the Indiana Writers Consortium -- a sort of umbrella group spanning seven counties which hopes to act as a resource for writers to network and support one another. There will eventually be themes and programs but for now we're just working out the details. I'm on the web committee, and we're just putting together a Yahoo group for now. As soon as that's set up, I'll post the link. Shouldn't be but a few days.

One other midwest resource I wanted to mention is the 14th annual Poetry Center Juried Reading and Awards out of the Poetry Center of Chicago. There are some lovely prizes and there were only 266 entries last year -- so there's relatively low competition.

I'm hoping to post once a week or so again, but bear with me if that's a bit out of reach right now. I'll do my best to ferret out some useful and interesting writing links for you every week. If anyone has any tips they'd like to pass along, I'd love to have them, so feel free to email me or post them in a reply.

Thanks for your patience, everyone.
Darlene