Happy New Year from The Weird Circular

^{New Year, New Tentacles}

Dearest Weirdos,
It’s me, Holly, I’m the ghost, it’s me.
You may notice that things look a bit different around here. One of my goals for 2024 is to be more intentional in my communication and what I provide for y’all, my favoritest of Strange Folks^TM . To that end, I’m consolidating my blog and my newsletter.
In previous years, my blog has mostly been on Medium. But posting to multiple places hurts my brain, so to simplify, I’m moving all of my articles, as well as my newsletter, The Weird Circular, to my website. Throughout 2024, I’ll post new articles and revamp some of my most popular articles. The best part? NO MEDIUM PAYWALL!🎇🎆 You can read everything I write, all in one place, for free.
What does this mean for you? Well, if you love being a part of my writing journey and enjoy my articles, you can sit back, relax, and read. This change means you will be subscribed to my newsletter and semi-regular articles (about 2-3 a month). If you don’t like that much communication, you can always unsubscribe by scrolling to the bottom of this newsletter.
If you want EVEN MORE weird writing advice, you can now upgrade to get extra-weird perks:

• At least 1 subscriber-only post per month

• Support me, your corporeal host, for less than a cup of coffee

• Bragging rights on being an absolute angel sent from heaven who loves freelancers and supports indie writers

• A 20% discount on any of my editing services

I’m also offering a free trial upgrade that gives you these perks for 90 days for FREE. Don’t worry, I won’t be annoying about it. If you don’t want to pay $, rest assured things are pretty much going to be the same, just with more awesomeness than before.

I want to thank everyone who has been following along with my writing since the beginning of this newsletter for the past six years. This year, more than any other, I’m really grateful for my writing community. 2023 was a complex year for me. I had a lot of personal stuff happen (foundation repair, getting over some chronic illness stuff, tackling and hugging my mental health until it improved), and a lot of fantastic new career stuff happened, too. In 2023, I had my first solo art exhibition. I published my 3rd book of poetry. I published my first novelette (I’m a notoriously short writer!). All of that was amazing, and I couldn’t have done it without y’all.

—Your Corporeal Host, Holly Lyn Walrath

Without further ado . . . let’s get back to our regularly scheduled, untelevised, beamed-in-from-an-alien-spaceship program.

Every Weird Circular, I list upcoming opportunities to publish your writing geared toward writers of the weird (sci-fi, fantasy, horror, speculative!) I prioritize PAID opportunities by markets that I trust and try to vet as much as I can.

Upcoming Submission Windows:

• 1/14/24: Solarpunk Magazine: Short fiction (up to 3k words), Poetry (up to 5 poems), Pays .08/word or $40/poem

• 1/15/24: Gigantic Sequins: Fiction (up to 3500 words), Poetry (up to 5 poems). This is an unpaying market, as far as I can tell, but I have seen their issues in person, and they are very pretty. I’m a sucker for aesthetics.

• 1/16/24: Button Poetry Chapbook Contest: Poetry Manuscripts (35 pages or less). Pays 50 contributor copies and $500. $15 fee with 20% discount. While this has a fee, it is a big name in “literary” circles, and IMHO, it is worth it if you win. Plus, I love their YouTube Channel.

• 1/31/24: Augur Magazine/Tales & Feathers Magazine: Short Fiction (varies up to 5k words), Poetry (up to 10 pages), Pays $.11 CAD or $60 CAD/poem.

• 2/1/24: Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award: Short fiction about near-future manned space exploration (up to 8k words). Pays up to $.08/word, plus free entry into the 2024 International Space Development Conference and a year’s membership in the National Space Society. (I know one of the readers for this contest & it is very worth entering, no fee to submit.)

• 2/4/24: Flame Tree Publishing Anthologies: Short fiction on the theme of Medusa or Odin (Up to 4k words). Pays .08/word.

• 2/14/24: Cast of Wonders: Short Fiction for Young Adults with a Halloween theme (up to 6k words). Flash Fiction (under 1k words). Pays .08/word.

Need more submission ideas? Check the Grinder's newest markets, Duotrope's calendar, Submittable’s Discover Feature, Heavy Feather Review’s Where to Submit, SFPA's Speculative Poetry Markets, Horror Tree, Moksha's Open Publications, The International Writer’s Collective Blog, or Literary Mama's Blog

Prompt #1: A New Genre

Try writing in a new genre, which could be trope-based such as sci-fi, fantasy, or horror, or structure-based like poetry or essay. You can learn a lot by attempting to write in a different genre than you're used to. Take note of the conventions of the genre and its successful writers. Trying something new can be an experiment in patience. You can also apply what you learn from this genre to the one you're most comfortable writing in.

Bonus Round: Extra points if you can figure out how to “nest” a fiction story into a new genre. For example, a story that "looks like” a personal essay but is actually fiction. Or, a poem that looks like something else (a recipe, a sewing pattern, a to-do list).

Prompt #2: Meditation on the Word “New”

Write a piece that describes newness without using the word “new”. Here’s a little poem example:

Everything fresh and bright
The morning as the sun rises
Baby birds hungry in the nest
My heart seeing you again

Bonus Round: Find a way to work the word “new” into the title of your piece, after you’ve written it!

Prompt #3: Meta Writing for the New Year

In your journal, spend about 5-10 minutes writing to yourself in the new year. What do you wish for your writing self? If you could be the best writer possible, what would that look like? What are you afraid of as a writer? What are your goals for 2024? Don’t be too prescriptive—let yourself dream without too many constrictions.

Bonus Round: Write a letter to your writing self dated with today’s date. Include reflections on the previous year, almost like a time capsule for your writing. You might print out pictures to include or else make a list of your successes for the year. Put that letter in an envelope and squirrel it away somewhere. In a year, come back and read the letter.

📖 Weird Book of the Month: I’m currently reading Kelly Link’s short story collection, White Cat, Black Dog. I absolutely love the story “The White Cat’s Divorce,” which is a perfect example of a contemporary fairy tale retelling (from the French tale, “The White Cat”). Curiously, the story was originally a part of the Weatherspoon Art Museum exhibit, “Dread & Delight: Fairy Tales in an Anxious World”. Below is a photograph from the exhibit by Xaviera Simmons.

🧵 Craft Article of the Month: “What AI Teaches Us About Good Writing” by Laura Hartenberger in Noema. Hartenberger’s article touches on something I’ve been thinking about lately in the AI discussion. It’s clear to me that the Tech Bros of the world don’t see copyright in relation to the AI discussion as an issue. But they also don’t see why AI-written pieces are so, well, bad. They see writing as work, not a work of the heart. As Hartenberger says, “Generative AI tools like ChatGPT offer the seductive possibility that we can optimize this laborious process [of writing]”. In my workshops, I often focus on the importance of building emotion in writing. This is one thing that so far, AI can’t do. It also can’t create that beautiful, exciting, energetic spark I get when I write. “Perhaps the time spent writing matters as much as having written; there is a vague sense of being, in the moment of writing, the most authentic version of yourself.”

🎵 Music to Write by: In 2023, I finally gifted myself a music streaming subscription. (I know, I was woefully Luddite in my desire to actually give artists $. I still buy a lot of albums and vinyl.) I’ve been loving the Pandora station “Lo-Fi Indie”, and in particular, the work of girlhouse. Former Broadway ginger Lauren Luiz is the lead singer who (IMHO by sexist-probably-male writers) has been called “bedroom pop”, but the music is KILLER to write by. There are lyrics here, but they don’t interrupt my writing process. On her new EP “loaded gun”, Luiz says something I really love: “I feel like forgiving people from your past for abuse or neglect that happened to you when you were young and vulnerable is so important to start forgiving yourself, this song is a moment when I recognised inherited bad behaviour and wanting to take control of my future” (Wonderland). Start forgiving yourself.