| JJ White, author of Prodigeous Savant is featured under “Success Story.” Scroll down to get all the news!
SPONSOR OF THE WEEK
Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest – No Fee! Last Call! 13th annual free contest sponsored by Winning Writers. $2,000 in cash prizes, including a top prize of $1,000. Submit one humor poem by April 1 deadline. No fee to enter. All entries that win cash prizes will be published on WinningWriters.com and announced in the Winning Writers Newsletter, with over 50,000 subscribers. Final judge: Jendi Reiter. Winning Writers is one of the “101 Best Websites for Writers” (Writer’s Digest, 2005-2013). See guidelines, past winners, and enter online at www.winningwriters.com/wergle Editor’s THOUGHTS
Read newsletter online at: http://www.fundsforwriters.com/fundsforwriters === ONE MORE THING Lots of books, lots of classes, lots of conferences. You have so many tools out there for your writing. And with them come so many excuses for you NOT to write. With so much advice out there, you may hold off writing for fear of making mistakes. What if you don’t quite know how to plot? What if your character isn’t three-dimensional? What if you don’t understand commas and have no idea what point-of-view means? Even if you think you might get this writing thing, you don’t know what to do with the material once you finish it. And how do you know when it’s finished? How many times do you edit it? Many writers are afraid of stepping out with their work because they aren’t sure they’ve mastered all the lessons. So they grab every how-to book on the shelf. And they attend six conferences each year. They sign up for classes and ponder whether they need an MFA to be taken seriously. Then there are those who think that they need uninterrupted time to write. That they aren’t doing it justice if they are squeezing paragraphs in between commercials, social obligations, feeding kids, tending parents, or working the other job. So they wait for the weekend or the holidays, after their daughter’s wedding or when summer vacation arrives, or worse, when they retire. I’ve felt both ways. And it’s all bunk. Over time I’ve learned that I need very few how-to books, need only one serious conference a year, and don’t need much time each day to write. Through trial and error, I’ve come to realize that the best way to learn to write is to: 1) Read a lot 2) Write a lot 3) Repeat 1) and 2) a lot. So I read books in which I respect the writing skill. I write every moment I have. And every day I get better. Practice never makes perfect, but it sure makes it a heck of a lot better than if you wait until the stars are aligned. Because they never are.
~HOPE
Listen to Hope’s latest podcast! “Trying to Self-Publish” – It’s a rant you might find entertaining. http://chopeclark.com/2014/03/trying-to-self-publish/
WEBSITE – http://www.chopeclark.com
WORDS OF SUCCESS Discipline allows magic. To be a writer is to be the very best of assassins. You do not sit down and write every day to force the Muse to show up. You get into the habit of writing every day so that when she shows up, you have the maximum chance of catching her, bashing her on the head, and squeezing every last drop out of that bitch. ~Lili St. Crow
TOTAL FUNDSFORWRITERS TOTAL is the paid subscription to FundsforWriters. 70+ grants, contests, markets, publishers and more for the serious writer. $15 annual subscription for 26 biweekly Friday issues to your email. www.fundsforwriters.com – Or receive a free subscription with the full-price purchase of a Carolina Slade Mystery or The Shy Writer Reborn – ebook or print.
Success Story Hope: In 2012, I read in your FundsforWriters newsletter that you would be featured in the Killer Nashville conference. It had been awhile since I had submitted a novel to Killer Nashville for entry in the Claymore Award, so I entered my novel, Prodigious Savant. It was not selected as a finalist, but they passed it on to interested agents. Jeanie Loiancono of the Loiancono Literary Agency liked the book and signed me on to her agency. Soon after that she was able to negotiate a two-book deal for me with the Black Opal Books. My book, Prodigious Savant is scheduled to be released in the Fall of 2014 and my second book, Deviant Acts, should be released mid-2015. If not for your newsletter none of this would have happened. As a side note, my short story, The Nine Hole League is scheduled to be published in the Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine at the end of 2014. I submitted to that magazine because you had listed it in you FundsforWriters newsletter in the Freelance Market section. So you can see your good intentions and hard work do indeed help in the success of your readers. Thank you again. John J. White Pseudo: J.J. White
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