Writing Show

I did it! Do you see this. I took these photos from the back, without using a flash, and they're both clear and normal colors! I've been doing a lot of softball photography at night. This is hard, the girls are moving fast, I'm having to swing my camera around to catch the action and the light is low. So I learned various tricks to make the camera at least get half decent photos. Still haven't mastered the whole action shots at night part but at the Writing Show they're moving at a slow pace so the tripod and shutter speed settings work! Yes. I'm happy because the flash for my camera is $225.

The Writing Show this month was about education. Getting a creative writing degree verses an MFA. I think MFA stands for Masters Fictional something? I don't know. The way people talk about it though is that it's pretty close to a college degree. Often the people who get one end up being published not because they got the degree but because they learned to write.

The panelists were: Colleen Curran, Thom Didato, and Mary Flinn.

Anyway, the question was, should an unpublished writer seek out an MFA program or enter contests, that kind of thing. Most of the people on stage thought so. The thing is though, it isn't a guarantee. Mary said, "you don't want to dump money and not get the return for your investment unless you're doing it for the love of writing." This isn't like a college degree in the sense that you now have a piece of paper you take to a job interview. There aren't any job interviews for writing. You submit the story you've written and if the story is good then it gets accepted. It isn't accepted because you have a MFA degree therefore it must be good. She did say however that if she met you at Suwanee or Breadloaf or some other intense workshop environment and you mention this when you submit your work it goes to the top of the pile. It may not get published but the fact that you went means you have potential so it moves you up.

Colleen talked about how she worked on a short story a long time before she decided it was perfect then she went and worked on it some more. When she decided it was time to send it out she would research publications. The number one reason stories are rejected is because they aren't right for a publication. She would go to Barnes and Noble and comb through the different magazines to look for stories that were like hers. She used Jeff Herman's book Guide to Literary editors and publishers. She would read a story in a journal and ask, "do I write like this?" Also she made notes, so and so was published here or there so she would have an idea what kind of places took what kind of stories. She cycles 15-20 short stories and keeps track of her submissions so she doesn't duplicate her efforts.

Mary and Tom both said there are online trackers now so that you can keep up with what you've submitted where. These are New Pages and Duotrop.

Tom said that they get so many thousands of submissions for their 16-20 slots that the editors are looking for a reason to reject a story rather than a reason to publish it. The one thing that is important for you to understand though is how subjective this process can be. "There have been stories we rejected that went on to make headlines or win prizes somewhere else. We ask ourselves did we miss something?" The problem is, it's so subjective that they just have to move on and not spend endless time worrying over this. It's going to happen, that is the nature of publication.

Do short stories ever lead to movie deals? Yeah, but that is so incredibly rare that it isn't worth attempting. There was a man who wrote little article for an obscure magazine about being a cutter. He was the man who dealt with boxers and their injuries and he wrote about this. A literary agent suggested he make this into a short story collection which was eventually published. Still it didn't go anywhere fast. Eventually though Clint Eastwood made the movie Million Dollar Baby and it was based on these stories. This man didn't set out to write a movie. He simply told the stories he knew and sold them to the magazines that were interested in them.

Quote:

Mary was told by her daughter regarding writing workshops. "Oh Mom, this is just sleep away camp for old people."