Looking
for writing classes?
Want to write for publication or for personal growth?
Want to sharpen those professional skills?
WritersCollege.com is
the place!
I
mentioned, last week, the 2008 Writer's Market being available
now. Time for more information about the optins
and prices:
The
Writer's Market is an annual book and gets
dated
quickly.
I would
say
that two years old
is
about as old as you can use. Do not expect any of the editors
to be the same (though they might be) and some of the publications
will be out of business and you won't know about the new publications.
There
are alternatives to buying the book.
Check
your local library. Libraries usually carry Writer's Market.
They likely will not
have the 2008 yet.
Almost
all magazines today have web sites and those usually list writers
guidelines somewhere within
them.
My
favorite Dirty Little Secret: Join the Writers
Digest Book Club. You
will have
to buy one book and get one at half price, and two
free when you
join. But the Writer's Market is usually one
of the books listed that you can get for free. There
is no obligation
to purchase
after that and you may cancel at any time. (You do
have
to remember to cancel—or to send back those postcards
each
month—or
they send you another book.)
As
for Writer's Market itself, there are three versions:
The
thick book. $30
I like this book and make it my bedside reading for months after
receiving it. I read it with highlighter, pen and sticky-notes
in hand and note interesting potential markets. But, as important,
the
descriptions
of what the various markets want also stimulates me to think
of
new ideas. It's worth the cost of the book to me each year to
think of new ideas. If I sell one of those, I earn back the cost
of
the
book
ten-fold to a hundred-fold.
Of
course, I have to actually use the book. Fail to do
that and I have bought an expensive doorstop.
The
printed book also has feature articles in it, advice on writing
and marketing your writing. For me, this is rather basic stuff.
But for begining writers, the advice is invaluable.
The
web-based version. An annual subscription to the online
service costs $30. Monthly subscriptions
are $3.99 per
month. http://www.writersmarket.com/
This
web site has articles too, and all the books listed in the
printed version. It is updated with
changes, additions, deletions, as soon as the staff knows
of those, so it never goes out of date. There is a search and
sort capability to help you locate the perfect market for
your
idea. To me, this web site is not, however, as good of an
idea-generator as the printed book. It can work that way but
is more complicated
to use for that purpose.
The
book AND web-based versions. $50.
Got money burning holes in your pockets? You can have it all,
and at a discount.
FEATURED
COURSES (visit our Course Catalog to
see ALL of the courses):
An
introductory course for mature students who want to explore
their writing potential. We will fuel the fire already
smoldering within your own life experiences.
Something
not working in your fiction or nonfiction? Here's your
chance to examine the seven most common problems that keep
a manuscript from being publishable.
Short
fiction is unlike longer fiction in more ways than length.
This course will help you understand the basic structure
of the short story, how to develop your own style when
writing one, and the importance and process of revision.
Adding
speechwriting skills to your writer's toolkit can make
you more marketable. Public relations firms, businesses,
local government officials, nonprofit organizations, etc.,
need people with this skill.
Also
available as an Extended course option
SCHOOL
NEWS: De nada this week.
WHO's
DOING WHAT: Also nothing. you guys all got broken
fingers and cannot tell me about your writing lives? Send
me e-mails.
USEFUL
STUFF:
FEEDBACK: Got
a response? Visit our message baord at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/writerscollege/
Or
write to me with:
Your
news about your writing
Suggestions
for the school
An
essay to be featured in the newsletter
Whatever
else I need to know
The
above might be printed. I usually use first names. If you wish
something different, or want a web site mentioned, tell me.
Stephen Morrill, Director
ESSAY:
The "Media" by Stephen Morrill
Someone waylaid me at a party last week. Asked me the usual
two questions designed to assign me a place on society's pecking
order: who are you and what do you do?
I don't respond well to the latter question because I have learned
that telling people I'm a writer only stimulates more questions
and I'm not much interested in the conversation and they're standing
between me and the shrimp cocktail platter. In fact, these days
I often I tell people that I'm retired, which seems to be sufficient
to place me, if not above or below them in the social strata,
at least off to one side and irrelevant.
But I admitted to the low status of being a writer. This means
I then have to explain WHAT I write. I have a set patter: Did
magazines and wire service news articles. Did corporate stuff.
Still do a little now and then. Run a school for writers on the
internet. That latter usually gets the conversation into an area
I love to talk about, and away I go.
But if you write nonfiction, and especially news,
you sometimes get the other question. The dreaded Media one.
As I reached around
my interrogator to grab a fistful of shrimp, he asked it: "So
what do you think about The Media?"
The Media. The implication is that The Media
is one monolithic Great Satan of Scandal bent upon deceiving
us about the Liberal
Agenda. Now, I know you are saying, "Whoa! Steve's overreacting.
He's gone off his lithium." No, I'm not. The questioner
almost always thinks The Media is liberal-controlled and lying
to him. This one was typical and he started in on the liberal
thing while I was still thinking of an answer that would satisfy
him.
Here's the answer I would like to give but never have time for:
There is no 'media'. Lumping news dispensers as diverse
as Foreign Affairs magazine and Penthouse, The
New York Times and The National Enquirer, as diverse
as Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern, is impossible. Might as well
have asked, "So what do you think about mass production?" Kind
of depends upon the item being produced and who's doing it and
why.
Nor is The Media something imposed upon us. We buy it, folks,
and they sell us what we have told them we want to buy. No newspaper
survives for long when the customers stop putting their quarters
into the slots. No magazine lasts long by advertising products
the readers do not buy. No book publisher produces books it thinks
will not sell. Even Rush Limbaugh has to take a break every few
minutes to sell soap and, if he were to offend his core audience,
the soapmakers would withdraw support. It's a business and it's
profit-oriented.
The Liberal Agenda part of the question is simple demographics.
Actually, most media outlets are owned by conservative corporations
and operated by older, wealthier, conservative publishers. But
the reporters researching and writing the stories tend to be just
out of school, idealistic still, and paid slave wages. Oh, and
they all want to get a Pulitzer for last Friday's writeup of the
school board meeting, so they get carried away at times. Nevertheless,
both young reporter and aged publisher usually try to do a good
job of delivering unbiased news. They do not always succeed. And
people who own media outlets have this odd notion that they should
be allowed to control what they produce. And, yes, they sometimes
impose a subtle slant on the news they deliver. But any slant imposed
from above would likely be conservative. The reporters get in their
liberal licks only because publishers are laissez-faire about what
gets printed or told on a day-to-day basis.
One notable exception—the Fox ("fair and balanced")
news channel was actually created with the express intent to distribute
conservative news. Any resemblance to actual news is coincidental.
Further, recent trends in TV journalism cause a
lot of confusion as to what is actually news. We are all familiar
with the editorial
page in a newspaper. We know that this particular item is the opinion
only of the newspaper staff, generally some member of an
editorial board. Newspapers run those opinion pieces on the editorial
page and keep that separate from the news. Visiting columnists
may also spout off in the editorial pages.
But television networks, all of them, have taken
to running shows that are mixtures of fact and opinion. A commentator
holds forth
on the news—his or her take on it at any event—and
interlaces fact and opionion and, sometimes, fiction. At that point
a yawning chasm opens before us and we need to watch our step.
It's safe to say that almost any "news" show with a person's
name in it is suspect. The only exception to that I can think of
offhand is the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer.
Now when a guy wants to hold forth on his opinions, that's fine.
the problem arises when the networks either withhold the fact that
this is not truly a news show or, as likely, are just so sloppy
in their presentation as to leave it vague. They fail to make the
same distiction between news and editorial that a newspaper routinely
does. And most people never notice the difference.
So is there some evil Media? Of course not. There is no Media.
There are hundreds of thousands of mediums. And they're all different,
different in audience, advertisers, delivery systems and, yes,
ownership and reporter biases. You pay your money and you take
your choice.
Let me know your thoughts. Click on the Message
Board link to share your opinions.
Stephen
Morrill,
when not freelancing magazine articles and running the WritersCollege.com
school, teaches five courses
for WritersCollege.com:
