Are You Published?

I wrote for Tahoe Quarterly magazine for about a year. It started out as an internship in my senior year at uni, and then I worked there for another two semesters as a staff member. When I left, I was the assistant editor -- what an honor! I didn't have too much creative liscence, though. The editor was notorious for completely rewriting articles submitted by his writers if they weren't going the direction he wanted. The only exception was with very established science writer who he always bounced edits back and forth with, in order to get this person's full approval for any changes he made. Also, the style of magazine writing is necessarily short and information-based (journalistic), not literary. The highlight of my time there was a feature article I was assigned for another magazine we were working with called California Snow about avalanche patrol dogs. The only reason I got feature was because they wanted an excuse to put a puppy on the cover of the mag, but it was totally fun! And such a learning experience -- my editor made me do seven complete rewrites before we got to a copy that he felt met the needs of the publication. Working one-on-one with such a great editor was an invaluable experience. Otherwise, I've only gotten published for writing reviews on local shopping, garden clubs, and that sort of thing. That's why I'm planning on going for my MFA in creative writing -- I want the degree, and I want to be in a peer group that'll give me feedback. I want to be able to write something stand-alone. Also, to get a masters you have to write a masters thesis, which in a MFA (masters of fine arts) program is a book-length novel or collection of short stories, essays, or poetry... a good way to launch into publishing, I think, because you learn how to write and polish something up for two years before sending it out. (Though I wholly intend on trying to get published in the New Yorker in the meantime. Talk about reaching for the moon!) Congratulations on getting two poems published since December! I'd be chuffed, too. It's really hard sometimes to take that last step and just submit something. (I've never done that!) What kinds of publications did you submit to? A lot of the time, university literary journals or local publications are a great place to start. -Elaine. [%sig%]

Congrats on your publications! I just started writing in September on a series of novels and am suprised I am still working on it. My ideas have actually stayed fairly consistent with my plot and this keeps me going. I really don't care about my works being published I write the types of stories I like.

Yep. I had a book published and have another one coming out. My website is here . Having stuff read and appreciated on abc has been as rewarding as seeing the stuff in print. That's fairly anonymous.

Cam, There's nothing like that special story that's your own world, one that nobody else can understand. I have a few of those tucked away. Right now I'm fascinated by the idea of audience, though. I think it comes from having to write for my professors at uni for four years. I got so bored with the standard essay that I started throwing in prose introductions just to see what they thought. Then I wrote my final term paper for my history of the English language with characters and a plot... Strangely, the prof really liked it. So I guess it was a worthwhile experiement. Now I want to see what I can do with a broader audience. It's a strange balancing act between writing what's important to you, then revising it so it'll catch an editor's attention, so that it'll get published and a wider range of people may be able to get a laugh or a cry out of it. Wow... I write long posts... sorry! Drew, thanks for sharing your site! You got some wonderful reviews of your work. So thinking about how I've never submitted a query before, I decided last night to finally do it. I grabbed my Writer's Market 2004, found a couple publications for an essay I've been holding on to, and started sending it out, from the biggest publication to the smallest. I doubt the big guys will take it... but maybe the little ones will give it a chance! -Elaine. [%sig%]

i've had a short story in a local writers anthology and some poems published in a couple of college magazines. I have bundles of untyped writing in various places which i'm going to type up when i get my pc back.