Tag: how to get your work published

This is the fourth in a series on How to get your work published–you can find all episodes here.

In case you missed them, the episodes in this series are:

• An overview of paths to publication – the paths that are typical (in my experience) for fiction and nonfiction writers, with a bonus bit about bloggers.
• How to submit short stories – with commentary on each of the lit journals I’ve submitted to, plus the results I’ve gotten.
• How to submit (pitch) nonfiction articles – how to write a query letter to pitch a research-based article to a magazine or newspaper, with anecdotes from my query letters and replies.
• This episode, on how I got my agent

In this episode, I talk about how I found my agent, who is the reason my novel is on submission (woo!). Finding an agent took me a long time, many query letters, and two tries in Pitch Madness. But eventually it happened and it was a total thrill.

Want to read more? If you’re in email, click on the image below! You can also subscribe in iTunes.

Show notes:

Reading update: Thinking about rereading Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. Still lacking in the reading department.

Writing update: I am working on a new novel! I am too superstitious to share details! And sometimes it’s hard to write in coffee shops.

Links:

• I found my agent through Pitch Madness, a.k.a. #PitMad. It’s an event on Twitter and is AWESOME. It includes every. single. genre. that I know of, and it’s an amazing opportunity. It has changed a bit since I participated, but it’s coming right up – February 24, 2017! Details here.
• You can look at my tweets for Pitch Madness if you are interested–here is my Twitter feed (I’m @likesoatmeal).
• My nonfiction manuscript didn’t get picked up, but I did write for the Patheos network on a blog called Surprising Faith.
• Nathan Bransford’s blog is a treasure trove for query letter writing for novelists and nonfiction book proposal writing.
• Ann Patchett, “Writers need great swaths of time,” comes from her amazing longform piece “The Getaway Car”

Come back next week to find out if my daily hour-long limit on the Internet has worked!

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Hello, listeners! Scratch Paper Podcast has resumed.

After a break filled with winter cheer, I’m here to continue the series I started back in Episode 12 on How to get your work published. You can find all the episodes in this series here.

If you’re reading this in email, hi! Click here or on the image below to get to the podcast on my site (it’s the only way to listen).

In this episode, I talk about how pitching a nonfiction article–as in a heavily researched, non-personal essay–is different from submitting a short story. For one thing, you don’t have to have finished your article to pitch it! And for another, the publication itself is really important.

I share some of my own experience pitching to The Wire in Seacoast New Hampshire (RIP), a local weekly, and to Sojourners Magazine, a national publication.

Show notes

Writing update: My agent liked my revision of Finding Lucy and is sending it out to publishers.

Reading update: I love Elinor Lipman’s The Inn at Lake Devine and My Latest Grievance. I checked out Judy Blume’s In the Unlikely Event.

Links:

• Episode 12 gives an overview of paths to publication, both fiction and non-
• Episode 13 talks about how to submit short stories
• Ooops! Nathan Bransford’s blog does not have great pitch-writing advice; it has great query-writing advice. More on that next week when I talk about finding an agent. And sorry for lying!
• Here are my publications and my story about faith healing that was published in Sojourners (which was an excerpt from my thesis, which was about my year in an evangelical church)
• Here is Sojourners Magazine and their submission guidelines
• I wrote for a year for the Patheos network; my blog was called Surprising Faith

What has your experience pitching nonfiction been like? What other resources do you have for fellow pitch-ers? Please click through and share in the comments!

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Welcome to Part 2 in a series on How to get your work published! Part 1–a general overview of paths to publication–is right here. Find all the episodes in the series here.

Getting published used to seem like a weird, opaque process to me. Luckily, I had friends and teachers demystify it for me at UNH. Here is what I’ve learned from them and from my own experience.

If you are trying to get your first novel or short story published, this episode is for you. I share some resources for finding literary magazines to send your work, a basic overview of how to send in your work (including what to put in your cover letter), and then give you a rundown of the publications I’ve submitted to.

**This is also relevant if you are a writer of lyric or personal essays–the same rules apply! A lot of these journals accept fiction and nonfiction, and some are even nonfiction only.

Links!

• I enjoyed Isabel Wolff‘s A Vintage Affair.
• Episode 12: Paths to getting published
• Duotrope
• Meetups are a great place to meet writers
• AWP is a big annual writers conference and unfortunately the book fair is not free.
• Yet another shout out to Meredith Hall for telling me where to send some work.
• Here is a link to download the spreadsheet I use to track submissions.

Numerous publications:

• Here is where my short story was published. It won an Editors’ Choice Award, part of the Eric Hoffer Awards.
• Brevity – short essays
• Women only: Calyx and AROHO
• Prairie Schooner
• Nonfiction only: River Teeth and Narrative
• Ruminate
• The New Yorker
• The Paris Review
• Tin House
• Zoetrope
• One Story
• Glimmer Train
• Missouri Review
• Pleiades – another women-only pub
• The Southeast Review
• Cincinnati Review
• Alaska Quarterly Review
• Lowestoft Chronicle
• The Sun
• Barnstorm

What publications have you submitted to? What questions do you have about sending out short stories and/or personal/lyric essays? Please share in the comments!

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In this episode, I kick off another series: How to Get Published.

You might like this episode if:

• You have written something–a novel, a short story, an essay–but you don’t know what to do next.
• You would like to embark on a big, research-y project that would turn into a book, but you don’t know what to do next.
• You have always wanted to be a published writer, but you don’t know how to get your work published.
• You have questions like “Where do agents come from?”

Listen in here for a general overview of how fiction and nonfiction writers “typically” get published–based on my experience, that of my friends, and my observations of bloggers and the like online.

This episode is a map that you can look at and figure out what track you are on, or which track you might want to get on. In the next episodes, I’ll dive into specifics like writing query letters, pitching nonfiction, and submitting short stories.

Links!

• Finding Lucy is the novel I am still. working. on.
• Pomodoro method timer
• I can’t read anything violent, even if it’s terribly well written and by my all-time favorite author
• Bless Meredith Hall for teaching me how to get published
• I’ll get into this more next week, but Duotrope is a good resource for finding literary journals
• Here is an article I wrote for Sojourners while I was working on a book about the same topic (evangelical churches in America)
• Rachel Denbow’s blog Smile and Wave is cool
• Adulting started as a Tumblr by Kelly Williams Brown
• I got my MFA at the University of New Hampshire and I loved it

Please post questions in the comments!! As I say in the episode, I feel like it is a mystery how to get published and I would like it to not be.

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