Just realised yesterday in the Take a Break Fiction Feast I bought the other day that the December issue was out today so rooted around the womags in WH Smiths in my lunch hour and grabed TABFF and My Weekly. I'm leaning more toward subbing to TABFF because I seem to prefer the stories in there. I feel more comfortable reading it - not sure if thats because I love the stories, the layouts or because I recognise some of the names of the writers. I would eventually like to sub to a variety of womags but thought it best to stick to 1 or 2 for now just while I'm starting out. So as I was flicking through TABFF I saw 3 more of Karen's stories and 1 from Cally Taylor. I'm a huge fan of their writing and their blogs. There were also 2 from Della Galton who's book I am currently reading and LOVING 'How to Write and Sell Short Stories'. I'm learning a lot and the more I read the more confident I feel to write something worth sending out there. Rejection I can handle (she says now) - its happened to the best of writers, but sending out crappy work I cannot and so I won't no matter how much I want to do something I promised myself I would. I'm fairly happy with my work so far. Last night I wrote 609 words of my short story (didn't watch a morsel of telly which is like cold turkey for me - just goes to show how much I love writing once I get going). Not sure if I'm aiming for 700 words but its not really a twist in the tale so not sure if its needs to be longer or I need to get a twist in there if I'm to keep it to one page.Question: Is there a limit to how many stories I can send to TABFF at one time? I only plan to send one but for future reference would be handy to know in case I'm on a roll and want to save on stamps!
I'm hopeless at writing short stories, but shall have to keep working on them to improve.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you are restricted re the subs to TABFF, but best of luck anyway.
There's no limit, but I would only put one in each envelope and spread them out a bit - eg post them a few days apart. Don't overload the poor readers! Also if you spread them out and find out what works and what doesn't, it might help you target subs better.
ReplyDeleteDebs - Thank you! If you haven't got it already I can't recommend Della Galtan's 'How to' book enough. I love it and its really helping me - although I already do prefer writing short story writing to novel. It helps with all the unrelated ideas I seemed to get. Good luck with it.
ReplyDeleteWomagwriter - thank you so much for the advice which is most definately being taken. I've been round your way for the last few days getting loads of info so double thanks for that.
I forgot to update your address on by bloglist, so missed this!
ReplyDeleteI agree with womagwriter though, don't bombard the editors and if you want any more advice or someone to run an eye over your stories before you submit, do let me know :o)
Karen - just replied to your other post. the advice means so much to me as its scary preparing to send your work out to a womag for the first time so for that I really do thank you. I have practically chewed your hand off in my other reply but if you really don't mind reading my story I hope to have it finished Sunday for me to send you.
ReplyDelete