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Topic: Pitching Fiction
| Author | Message |
| bellybelle_2000 | Posted – 5/12/2006 12:42:07 PM | show profile I have some great fictional work, and a great idea to pitch it to magazines. However, I don't have any contacts, or any way to get my work read! Does any one have any ideas for who I can contact, and how I can get paid to write fiction? |
| overthehillwriter | Posted – 5/12/2006 12:55:02 PM | show profile | email poster Might start with a Writer's Market guide. It's updated each year, and listings include word length guidelines, what kind of fiction they're looking for, how they pay etc. |
| gnarls | Posted – 5/12/2006 1:42:40 PM | show profile Understand that the magazine market for fiction is worse than miserable right now. There probably aren't a dozen fiction slots a year for unconnected writers. Everything else you see in the new yorker or atlantic is spoken for. And to meet this yawning market demand there are hundreds of creative writing programs in the US of A. just my incredibly negative two cents worth. |
| bellybelle_2000 | Posted – 5/12/2006 2:22:35 PM | show profile No, it's good advice. It's like I said, I think there's a lot of potential to make a good living from my writing. I just can't seem to get it "out there." The magazine thing was a suggestion. |
| gnarls | Posted – 5/12/2006 4:09:00 PM | show profile good. keep plugging. The people who have successfully broken into New Yorker have often spent years doing it. Apparently once they think you're starting to get good, they offer little morsels of encouragement. |
| catlondon | Posted – 5/12/2006 4:51:04 PM | show profile Fiction writing I don't want to rain on your parade but I do want you to be aware that writing fiction and literary nonfiction is a different writing life altogether. Teaching at all those creative programs are talented and respected working writers who publish regularly in the most respected literary magazines, maybe even the Atlantic and the New Yorker, and who run workshops at BreadLoaf, and perhaps have published wonderful mid-list books. They teach because that's their "day job"-- their writing doesn't pay enough to make ends meet. Here are two things to know about fiction. If you want to submit your story to a contest, you'll be charged a reading fee. This is not a scam. If a small mag wants to publish your story, you might be paid in contributor's copies. This is not a scam. Nobody is making money on fiction, including the small mags dedicated to it. Your work probably is wonderful and deserves an audience, so good luck. Money will have to come second after building your reputation unless you're looking to be Danielle Steele. Then all the others will sit around at BreadLoaf and bitch about the low-brow taste of the reading public, but you'll be published and rich. Not a bad thing. |
| gnarls | Posted – 5/13/2006 4:14:28 PM | show profile here, here! |
