A few pieces of good news today, all leading up to some additional news about my writing life that I’ll announce later this week: ♦ Living Arrangements was named a category finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. ♦ I will be heading to one of my favorite places — Portland, Oregon — for a week [...]

In the course of one week, I received some rather encouraging news regarding one of my writing projects that was followed, only a few days later, by a surprise rejection from elsewhere for the very same project. Let it be known I usually don’t consider any rejection a “surprise,” but this rejection was for something [...]

I attended the AWP session “So Many Submissions, So Little Time: Editors’ Strategies for Equitable and Efficient Submissions Management” to get some ideas for a side project I may be working on in the future, but in the end, this discussion just seemed to drive home how difficult it is to get something (particularly fiction) [...]

When I approved the galleys for my article “Life (and Work) After Rejection,” which appears in the January issue of The Writer, I included this note to my editor at the magazine: “I’m simultaneously looking forward to this coming out and also a little mystified that I have decided to publicly write about my miserable [...]

This cartoon reminds me of the puzzling rejection I recently received from a journal I very much respect. I submitted to this journal twice last year and have long since received my rejections –  including a very kind and detailed personal rejection and a request to see more work. But I haven’t sent them anything [...]

Long-lost writing group member from the olden days, to Peter: So what’s it like, being married to a famous writer? Peter: Famous? Who’s famous? Accomplished, certainly, but I wouldn’t say famous. Long-lost writing group member: Well, she’s got pictures of her cats with journals all over the Internet! Famous. Peter: I don’t think that word [...]

Thanks to a reader suggestion, you can now subscribe to this blog via email, if that’s your thing. You can enter your email on the right (scroll down past the Archives list). How would you like some links for your Friday afternoon? Like Creepy Query Girl’s 10 Sucky Things that Would Still Feel Better than [...]

If I could just say a few words…I’d be a better public speaker. But seriously, I had a great time presenting to West Side Writers over the weekend. Everyone seemed engaged and asked lots of questions, etc. While I don’t think I can recap everything I talked about, I’ll give a brief overview here. The [...]

I will be speaking at the Cleveland West Side Writers general meeting this Saturday at 10:45am. The meeting is held in the Dover Room at the Westlake Porter Library and is open to the public. The topic of my talk is “Submitting to Literary Magazines and Entering Contests.” I’ll share some of my own submission [...]

Ever see the movie Funny Farm? Where Chevy Chase’s character gives his novel-in-progress to his wife? Who proceeds to burst into tears after reading it and orders him to burn it? There has to be a word for the fear of handing over your new manuscript to your spouse and having said spouse hate it [...]