confused
fosteronfilm and I had a lovely evening last night with yukinooruoni. He introduced us to Sports Night, a short-lived television series comedy-drama. It's excellent (which is undoubtedly why it was canceled). The dialogue is superb, lightning fast and keenly clever, and the story lines are poignant and moving. It's a good blend, humor and drama. Like humor and horror, it's a formula more writers should really try to tap into. Humor is an excellent tool for undercutting tension as well as for making characters sympathetic. We only made it through the first disc and a half (or so), but
yukiooruoni kindly left the DVD boxed set with us so we can watch the rest of them. I'm quite looking forward to it.I've been doing some overhauling of my eugiefoster.com website--mostly adding GoogleAds (if folks want to help out a struggling writer for free, gimme some clickage or download Firefox) as well as sprucing up my Amazon.com "buy" links. While testing my pages, I noticed a recent guestbook entry: "A great site where one can enjoy the thought of a great mind long departed. Cheers for the good work!" Um, did I miss something? "Long departed"? Last I checked, I was still pretty lively, up and kicking and all.
Writing Stuff
Well, I finally did it. I've received so many submissions from seriously misguided writers who are under the misapprehension that Tangent is a publishing house (the amount of clueless that that denotes truly boggles) that I've composed a form letter to reply to them. I did my level best to maintain a professional tone and not let my extreme incredulity come through:
Dear Mr. XXXX:
May I respectfully suggest that you reconsider your marketing strategy? Tangent is not a fiction publisher. We are an industry publication that specializes in reviewing genre short fiction.
As such, I am going to pass on your proposal, unread.
I highly recommend that you peruse professional writing organization websites such as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (www.sfwa.org) in order to gain a better understanding of how to identify appropriate markets for your work, as well as to familiarize yourself with the industry-accepted method of submitting your work to editors and publishers.
Sincerely,
That doesn't come across as snarky, does it? I tried really hard to reign in the snark.
Editing:
A couple passes and a rewrite (a la fosteronfilm's first reader input), and I culled nearly 400 words from "Honor is a Game Mortals Play." First draft loaded up to Critters. Rah!
|
Club 100 For Writers
5
