Blogger of the Month
Marcella Hamman | Thoughts of a Clumsy Girl
This month's online blogger is Marcella Hamman. Each month we surf the net to find the most interesting blogs, other than the ones that we provide. This month our eyes have been attracted to Marcella's. Her blog is very emotional driven by the events and attitudes of the world around her. Be sure to check it out!
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Some People are CRAZY! | Monday, December 8th, 2008
Its the holiday season, this is true actually the holiday season started around just before Thanksgiving. So yes it is the holiday season and I'm guess that since its that time for doing nice things and earning karma points, people think they can just submit stories that, well for lack of a better term, bite. They apparently think that because its that jolly time of year I'll be nice and decide that these stories deserved to be published. Well I'm here to tell you that holidays do not = free publishing for crappy work.
The phones have been ringing off the hook, asking if I recieved their works, and the truth is that, yes I do have experience as a literary agent, but I'm not really signing people anymore. More than that I'm doing the whole magazine thing now. I'm not a writer, but my insight and helpful hints are helping young minds out there, and the agents that have to suffer through crappy work as well. I'm helping them too. So what is it that I DO at WritersINK. Well I have my own blog that usually I pick a topic and just write about that, and I also am the lead content editor for the getPublished section of the magazine. Along with several other writers, we sit down each month, around the beginning of the month and decide what topics and issues we are going to discuss and use for next month's issue. Usually there is always at least two articles, and then the competitions. I would have to say thats my favorite part. I get to read through the submissions and choose which ones I feel hit the target dead on. Keeping and open mind is always the hard part.
What Makes a great Short Story? | Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008
Each month we hold different competitions for our readers to submit their writings to us, and it gives them a chance to get published. And every month, my team decides what the competitions will be and what the themes are going to center around. This month, well last month but its being published this month, the competition was a short story. Many readers thought that this was page among page, of a novel composed into a smaller version and that isn't always the case. We got everything from excerpts from longer stories to narravtive poems. So this leads to the question of what is a short story or better, what makes a great one. This is why they hired me to clue you all in:)
This month's winner turn in a short story called Coffee House Living. I choose this story due to the character development and the diaolog that was included. Alot of young writers feel that the best way to set up a scene to tell the reader what is going on and what things look like. But better yet is to show them, show us characteristics of the characters with out spelling it out. For instance one of the main characters in the short story, was just a total clutz. We know this because of actions that went on during the scene, and the words that the two characters exchanged. To me diaolog is the most interesting way to describe a character because if you read it closely you will find out that the writer is really telling us, with out really telling us. Take a look at this month's winner and see if you can see the parts that are being told without actually being said.
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