Publish or Perish with Steve Weddle - August 2013

Fiction magazine editors aren't normal readers—so what are they looking for? One of the gatekeepers—Steve Weddle of NEEDLE—is here to tell you in this two-week course.

Your Instructor: Steve Weddle, editor of NEEDLE: A Magazine of Noir

Where: Online — Available everywhere!

When: This class is not currently enrolling. To be notified when it is offered again, Click Here

Enrollment: 16 students

Price: $150

Class Description

If you’re writing short stories and you’re not sending them out, you’re doing it wrong.

Writers cut their teeth on short stories. It's where you learn the importance of good submission practices. It's where you build your name and your reputation. It's where most writers get that first taste of holding their own words in a bound, printed format. 

But getting your stories published in a quality literary magazine takes more than just emailing 2,500 words to a dozen email addresses. A successful submission must hook the reader, but people who read for writing magazines aren’t normal readers

While you can find blogs and books devoted to creating characters and showing instead of telling, it's harder to find advice on the elements of story that get them past the gatekeepers.

So we've recruited one of those gatekeepers: Steve Weddle, editor of NEEDLE: A Magazine of Noir.

NEEDLE has published new and established talent over the course of seven acclaimed issues, and has been called a "virtual black hole of morality" by the Barnes & Noble blog. It even sent a story to The Best American Mystery Stories 2011 (Chris F. Holm's "The Hitter").

Not only does Steve publish short stories, he's an accomplished short story writer himself. His work has appeared in Beat To A Pulp, Crime Factory, and A Twist of Noir, and in The First Shift, Off the Record, Round Two, and D*cked anthologies. Country Hardball, his novel-in-stories, will be released in November from Tyrus Books. So he knows how it feels to be on both sides of the coin—rejecter and rejectee. 

And he's here to give you an insider's view of the short story submission process. 

What This Class Covers

Week 1: Submitting stories

Steve will discuss the qualities that make a successful submission: What the story needs to do, how to hook the submission reader—and the kinds of sins that will get you cast aside.

Students will also submit a story for feedback and critique, both from Steve, and from fellow students. You'll discuss what works and what doesn’t, as well as what your particular story might need to make it attractive to an editor.

Week 2: Behind the scenes

Steve will provide an insider’s look at running a literary magazine, including a discussion of the typical pitfalls in a submission letter, how to choose the right magazine at the right time of year, and other “business side” considerations.

Steve will also post his critiques of the submission stories, so that students can view, discuss, and comment on them. He'll also pick five strong entries to use as teachable examples. 

Throughout the course of the two-week class, Steve will also be available to answer you questions about writing and the submission process. 

Goals Of This Class

  • Learn the best practices for submitting short stories
  • Learn what fiction magazine editors are looking for—and what turns them off
  • Learn the most common pitfalls of a submission letter
  • Learn how to choose where you should submit your work
  • Get an insider view of the submission process
  • Get your questions about the process answered by the editor of a fiction magazine
  • Leave the class with a polished short story, ready for submission

Additional Info

As an added bonus: Three students will be selected, at random, to receive a year's subscription to NEEDLE: A Magazine of Noir.

That's a lot of noir!

Learn more about the magazine at this link

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