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Apr. 1, 2007 Erskine Caldwell, best known for his controversial novel, Tobacco Road, was primarily a short story writer and he was paid $350 for the first story he ever published. This was in 1930's dollars. Twenty years later, John D. Macdonald was able to support himself writing sometimes good, sometimes mediocre short stories. Television killed the short story market and the number of paying markets for short fiction is fading still. Playboy and The New Yorker won't even look at a short story unless the writer has a literary agent. Literary magazines that only pay in contributor's copies are flooded with submissions and can only publish 1% of the ones they receive. Moreover, I suspect a connection is required to get published, despite what some so-called writing experts claim. Literary magazines have college professors on their board of associates. I'm sure stories they like from favorite students have a much better chance of being published than a story submitted by Joe Shmo from Hicksville, Kansas. Contemporary magazines favor writers with recognizable names and will accept stories from them no matter how formulaic and dull. The preference for these formulaic stories may be one reason some of these magazines suffer from declining subscriptions. I won't mention which ones I'm referring to because I still hold out hope that I'll one day be published by them, but I'm honestly not impressed with the caliber of work they publish and feel that my writing is better--much better. I love to write short stories. Obviously, it's not the money that motivates me to write them. I want people to read my stuff. Thank goodness for webzines like www.pensonfire.com This month they've published a neat little story I wrote entitled "Too Slow." I reread it today for the first time in a couple of months and found one unnecessary comma in the first paragraph (I took an untold amount of grief for the unnecessary comma on the back cover of Talk Radio), but other than that it's well written. It's not as exciting as "The Executioner's Store" which is scheduled to appear soon as an Amazon short but that one'll cost 49 cents to read. "Too Slow" is free and I'm proud of it. I'm proud of almost every story I've ever written though my work has improved a great deal, and the material I wrote two years ago isn't up to my current standards. Most of the reviews for Talk Radio were good, but one anonymous flamethrower told me my prose was execrable. Frankly, I think the writing of anyone who uses the word, execrable, is (and I promise this is the last time I'll ever use this word) execrable. The fiction writers who peruse Useless-Knowledge might want to submit a story to Pens on Fire. They respond quickly. This will be my last column for about a month. A born again Christian is paying me to edit a religion book he's written. It's not my cup of tea but it's a paying job, something short story writing is not. ------------ About the author Mark Gelbart: My book, Talk Radio, is a black comedy about a radio talk show host who gets kidnapped and psychologically tortured by a loser. www.mark-gelbart.com Email: agelbart@aol.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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