I’ve been teaching writing workshops for a year now. I have found them to be enlightening, fun and empowering for everyone, including myself. Over the past year, I’ve noticed a few things that have helped my workshops be successful. To be honest, when I first started teaching workshops, I had no previous experience. It was ...
James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” is a story of two brothers living in a segregated Harlem during the late 1950’s. It is a story that tells of how each one reacts to the “blues” and how each one handles his own inner turmoil. It is a story that tells of the suffering they shared, the ideas ...
Many of us make a career in writing non-fiction, whether it’s articles for Associated Content, for magazines, or books. Short fiction is an entirely different animal. Usually short fiction is harder to get published than non-fiction, but it can be very rewarding. Before you give up on writing altogether, try submitting to smaller markets and ...
Learn from the professionals. It’s very simple advice, but rarely taken by the short story writer who could benefit first by reading the work of his or her peers. It’s something I didn’t learn until I was in my mid-twenties and took a college course in short fiction. In that class we did several exercises ...
Maybe you’ve considered two types of stories: a parable and modern realistic short stories. But short fiction comes in more than these two varieties. Other popular forms we might know include fairy tales and mystery stories, science fiction stories, and popular romance. While we need not rehearse all of short fiction’s various guises, it will ...
Another great resource when seeking markets for your writing is Duotrope’s Digest. This website is a compilation of writing markets and is described as “a database of over 1700 current markets for short fiction, poetry, and novels/collections.” Duotrope’s free service includes a search engine that allows you to find the most appropriate markets for the ...
