Mini-Scoop! Three Upcoming Writing Deadlines

If you are lucky enough to sneak away from the kitchen or the mall this Holiday-- Be Thankful you can submit your writing to one of these contests. Click on the links for more information.

Deadline 11/30/09

• Essay contest for Family Caregivers and Home Health Professionals
• Theme: What makes caregiving rewarding
• 1 page essay
• ShieldHealthCare
• Win up to $1000 worth of AMEX gift cheques
• No Entry Fee

• Flash Fiction Contest
• Open Theme
• 250-750 words
• WOW! Flash Fiction Contest
• 25 total prizes-- Top Prize includes $250 cash
• $10 entry fee

Deadline 12/1/09

• Fiction/NonFiction Humor Contest
• max 750 words
• Mona Shreiber Prize for Humorous Fiction or NonFiction
• Prize Range $100-$500
• $5 entry fee-- Snail mail entry, deadline is postmark date

These are 3 contests that could be written and edited over a few days if you really put your mind to it. I plan on submitting to at least one, how about you?

Best Wishes for you and your Writing!

P.S. These listings are just a few that are available in the monthly Scoop. This month's has listings of over 40 contests/markets requesting your writing.

Today's Excuse: Virginia Woolf was right, I don't have what I need to be a writer

It's been almost one hundred years since Virginia Woolf said, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write...". We still fall back onto this antiquated excuse. We don't allow ourselves to write because we focus on the material things we think are necessary for a writer: a desk, the latest computer, maybe even an MFA. Getting all of those things cost money, so we focus on making the money so someday we can buy the things we need to write. So we work for money, but we don't write because we feel that our time would be better spent doing "real work". That way, we can save money for an extended vacation where we will sit on the beach, writing our Great American Novel longhand, or we will rent a cabin in the mountains and our poetry will be inspired by the majestic trees reaching to the sky. After all, everyone knows we need a big space and a fat bank account to write, right?

“Everybody knows it because Virginia Woolf said it... But I’ve written five books, edited three anthologies, published hundreds of articles and short stories, and put out thirty-five issues of my zine without either one. If I’d waited for money and a room, I’d still be an unpublished welfare mom…” --Ariel Gore

Excuse Editor Tips: Print your Own Money, Break in to your New Room

• Be your own Mint: Your writing has a worth that transcends money. By creating more and more, you are becoming wealthy with words. Focus on the creation, the fine tuning of your own currency. Print out your writing as payment for a job well done. Edit your writing with a counterfeiter's precision so that others will see your creation's true worth. Be generous with your Written Currency. Send it out often so its exchange rate becomes comparable with the money in your wallet. You will feel better about spending your time writing if you give yourself a chance to earn money from it.
• Breach your own Borders:  Your room is unlimited, every place you find yourself is your writing space. The busy library, crowded bookstore or energetic coffee shop can become a room of your own, just with visitors. Feed off the energy of these real-life characters if today's writing area happens to be standing room only. Tomorrow, your room could be at your kitchen table, with only your cup of coffee to keep you company. Claim that room as well. Your pen and notebook bestow titles to a constant stream of Writing Properties. Now you are a Writing Room Mogul.

Have you ever resisted writing something because you were waiting for the perfect conditions? Have you ever had the "perfect conditions" (time, money, place to write, brand new computer) and still had trouble? Or, have you been surprised by your creative muse showing up in the worst circumstances you could imagine? Tell me about it...

Do You Want in on The Scoop?

From the desk of the Excuse Editor:

First, I decided I wanted to write. That was easy enough. I'd kept a diary since I was a little girl. As a grown up, I attended a few journaling, fiction and poetry workshops.

Great, my interest was peaked, my pen desperate to start moving.

But, what kinds of writing should I start with? How long should it be?

My workshops focused on self-expression, and I was rightly told: write whatever you want to, write what's in your heart, write what's on your mind. Write until it's done.

OK. I agree. But...

What if I want to share my writing?

...if I want to get published?

...and of course, what if I want to make some money?

I started to research writing markets and writing contests. Sure, I could focus on writing the Great American Novel and send it off to Oprah and hope for the best. Or Ellen. Or maybe I could get the "Colbert Bump". Instead, I kept my head out of the clouds and put my butt in the chair. Using the Internet, I found dozens and dozens of different places looking for written words ("submissions", they called them). Literary magazines, Online magazines, Newspapers, Blogs, Consumer Magazines (and more!) were looking for short stories, essays, memoirs, poems, articles (and more!) of all shapes, sizes, genres.

The all-you-can-eat-buffet was laid out in front of me, and I wanted to dive in. Ooo, maybe I could try writing for this. Hey, I can see myself writing for that. Hours and hours later, I stepped away, my mind too full. I could barely even move, much less write.

When I found myself back at the computer, I would work on some of those submissions that intrigued me the most. But in times of writer's block, or procrastination, or just plain laziness, I would wander back into the numerous websites and blogs with writer's market information. I would search for new ones.

I was hooked.

Even away from the computer I wasn't free from my market searching addiction. Some days, I would be missing for hours, only to be discovered in a well-lit corner of the library, hunched over the latest copies of the Writer's Market book or Writer's Digest Magazine.

I began to hoard all of these special snippets of information. I printed out lists to stare at, imagining all the possible publishing credits that were within my reach.

Well, they would be. If I quit adding to the seemingly boundless list. And spent more time Writing!

Instead, like a TV addict rationalizing her TIVO purchase, I came to terms with the need to plan my writing life around this habit. Now, I schedule my writing time, and my research time. The running list continues to get longer. I continue to add markets I'm pretty sure I have no interest in,  just in case.

But no matter what, I can't write to them all.

This is where you come in. I'm not going to stop collecting markets, because I'm not going to stop submitting. Somebody should benefit from the cultivation of these listings. There are so many listings I won't write to. What a waste if that market or contest doesn't get seen by the right writer! Before I started the Scoop, I released about 10 upcoming market deadlines from my own list, just for that reason. A reader may have been looking for JUST that market.

The thing is, I spend hours developing the Excuse Editor Market & Contest Scoop. Now, you don't have to waste any of your writing time searching for markets. Because I've done it for you.

You don't need to procrastinate about what your next writing project should be. I've found it for you. Let my procrastination work for you.


What could all of that additional writing time mean for you?


Time to get to that 80,000 word mark in your novel? Time to breath life into a new batch of poems?

Time to submit to a contest with a prize of $5000, like one in this month's Scoop?

How much is that worth to you?


Well, this month, set you can sign up to the newsletter to order The Scoop, and see where it takes you.


You'll get:

• Over 40 contest and market listings emailed to you in minutes!
• short story, poetry, novel, essay, memoir, more...
• Listings arranged in a coherent and convenient manner-- Deadlines for the next 4 months! 
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  Best Wishes for You and Your Writing,
  
  Tina Haapala 
  
  Excuse Editor
  
    
  
  P.S. When you get something published from a market you learned about in The Scoop, email me and I will share your experience on www.excuseeditor.com, along with a link to your blog or website. Good Luck!  
  
  Tina
  
  
  

Today's Excuse: My writing is just plain BAD

-- so why bother?


Why bother? We are driven to write. We want to tell some kind of story, to share our knowledge with the world. Wannabe writers are usually avid readers. Our eyes devour beautifully crafted words that others have written. They make it look so easy, don't they? As readers, we only see the final product. George Carlin said, "The caterpillar does all the work, but the butterfly gets all the publicity." Writing is a process, it doesn't just arrive ready to take flight. We need to allow ourselves the wonderment of a "sloppy copy" and cultivate our work into swarms of butterflies.

Excuse Editor Tip: Write like Nobody's Reading

So, you think your writing may not be very good? OK, prove it. Write anyway. Pick a topic you would want to write about, if you could write well. Make an effort to write it badly. Make sure it really sucks. Read over what you've written. Does it stink to high heaven? Well, good. You've accomplished the assignment. Look outside your window. Did locusts start falling from the sky? Did the sun go dark? Don't be scared about writing badly. It happens every day, and the world keeps turning.

Read it again. Be the critic you are afraid of. Pick out five things you could change to make this awful piece better. Go ahead and make the changes. Notice how changing just a small amount of this purposefully badly written piece makes it read like an actual draft. You've just been editing. Many writers, especially beginning writers, expect that writing should appear on the page ready to go. But that's not the case. It needs to stay in its cocoon, with you, the writer, nurturing it. It doesn't have to stay in the cocoon forever. Nurture your writing for long enough, your own butterflies will emerge.

The next time you start a writing project, resist the temptation of unrealistic perfectionism. Let your first draft flow, secure in the knowledge that if it is "bad" when you are complete, that's the way it is supposed to be. Remember you are the writer and editor. You have the ability to change it. Honor the process.

NaNo, NaNo

It's that time of year again, when thousands of wannabe novelists challenge themselves to write a whole book in 30 days. NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, started 11 years ago and now has a worldwide following. The general idea behind NaNoWriMo is to encourage writers to achieve a lofty word count goal: 50,000 words. The aspiring authors blow the dust off their calculators to forecast their daily targets. As they write, the NaNoWriMo site gives them a visual representation of their work: a bar graph showing them how close, or far away, they are to completing their "NaNoNovel".

50,000 words. If that goal is reached, you would have written a 200 page book! In one month!

Sounds out of this world? Well, consider this:

A journey of a thousand sentences begins with a single word.

Any writing, whether it's War and Peace or a simple tweet, starts with a blank slate. The mystery and the joy of composition: pulling words out of the air, one by one, to give birth to your own creation--your story, your message. NaNo participants not only have their printed words to remind them of their ability to create, they are also rewarded with a growing graph. Who doesn't want some kind of recognition for capturing those fleeting words?

Is this the month you'll draft your novel?

 

Excuse Editor Tips:

• Excuse your Inner Editor-- There's a story in your mind, and you have to let it out. Your characters, plot lines, settings, and dialogue will be pushing their way onto that page. Don't make them jump over a gatekeeper of negativity: That's not the right word; Does anybody even want to read about a rainbow colored alien?; I don't know how I'm going to get that character back on the island (or whatever). If this rough draft is going to see the light of day, your Inner Editor has to step aside. NaNoWriMo is about free-wheeling creativity. Embrace that. Play with it. Have Fun. You can invite the Inner Editor back later.
• Ignore your Word Count-- ...while you are writing. That may seem like a strange hint for a challenge based on reaching a word count goal, however, focusing on the Numbers gets in the way of all those Letters you need to write. When your hands are on the keys, honor your work by staying present. Don't worry about the end of the day. Don't waste your mind's energy beating against the waves of what ifs. If you do, you'll find yourself drowning in doubt rather than sailing through your story. Resist clicking the Word Count button until you have finished the day's writing. Concentrate on your own creation, not that of the software engineers. Hopefully, you will get so absorbed in your story, you'll fly way past the 1667 word minimum you MUST get each day to "win" (or 1724 a day, if you start November 2; 1786 a day, if you start on the 3rd). If not, that's fine. At least you'll know what your number felt like. Besides, you still have 29 more days!

Please leave a comment: Have you participated in NaNo before? What obstacles did you find? Are you going to go for it this year?

 

 

P.S. I know that Mork really said Na-Noo, but I couldn't resist.