Weird Circular #4 January

The January Weird Circular

January 01, 2017

October's Weird Circular is live with submission ideas, prompts, and more!

Welcome to the Weird Circular

Dear Fellow Writers of the Weird:

IT IS A NEW YEAR. This month's newsletter is resolution-themed and chock full of goals to get you inspired and writing again. 

Here's the thing. Writing is hard. The only way to keep at it is persistence. Want to get published? Persistence. Want to write a novel? Persistence. Want to make new writing friends? Persistence. And to be persistent, you gotta know where you're going, right? This month I encourage you to take stock. What are your writing goals? How are you going to achieve them? Make a plan. Commit. Celebrate the new. 

I wish you hope, love, and kindness for the new year.

- Holly 

January Submission Calls

Zetetic: A Record of Unusual Inquiry: Rolling Deadlines. Poetry. Themed: January: Classical Elements. February: Speculative Fiction. March: Seasons. Many markets are so focused on finding daring new forms and unusual voices that they deliberately eschew storytelling, which leads to venues aimed more at writers than at the average reader. We want this to be a space where readers can find unique writing that they can connect to, that will make them say, “This was quite unusual, but I loved it.”

Liminal Stories, Deadline Jan. 15th: Liminal is searching for stories of a particular tone and tenor, regardless of form.  We like stories that are strange and unsettling, sharp-edged and evocative.  Although we will consider any genre, we have a soft spot for weird fiction, magical realism, soft science fiction, and those uncategorizable stories that straddle the line between genres.  Liminal stories should linger in the mind and evoke emotion in the reader.

Other Upcoming Submission Windows: 

Need more submission ideas? Check the

newest markets, Duotrope's

, or Literary Mama's

.

YOU SHOULD BE WRITING

Prompt #1: Take stock of the last year. Go through your binders, notebooks, and computer and look at how much writing you accomplished last year. Was it more or less than you wished? Why? Make note of this, but don't be hard on yourself. Celebrate your accomplishments. Organize, discover old stories you haven't finished and ones you did that make you proud. Look how far you've come. Bonus Round: What are your new years writing resolutions? Make a list of all of the writing goals and dreams you have for the new year. What would a successful writing year look like for you? (Not for that person you follow on twitter - for you!) 

Prompt #2: After doing Prompt #1, did you find an old story, poem, essay, or start of a novel that intrigued you? Go through that piece and find the most powerful image in it. Perhaps it's the old man's hands, or a child's toy, or the sunset, or a lost ring. Take one sentence from the paragraph where the image appears and using that sentence, begin writing a new story/poem/novel/essay with that sentence as the first sentence. Freewrite for as long as you can on that sentence. Bonus Round: Work the new content you've written into the old, juxtaposing it in new ways. See where it takes you.

Prompt #3:

 Writers are always being told "don't do this". What are some of the "wrong ways" to write that you've heard? Make a list of all the "no-no's" of writing. Here's a few to get you started: 

  • Never use Adverbs

  • Never start a story with a description of the sunset

  • Never switch POV's randomly without indication to the reader

  • Never write about writers

  • Never use cliches 

Bonus Round:

Pick one thing from your "never" list. Figure out how to write around that never and make it work. Think about how to flip the trope and make it interesting. 

Editing tip of the month: Take your poem/essay/novel/whatever and print it out in double-spaced type, single-sided. If you're working in fiction, cut each scene up, literally - cut the paper into sections. If you're working in poems, you might do this with each line. Lay the scenes/lines out on the floor or a table and then start rearranging randomly. See if there's a new approach that works better. 

Inspiration from the Ether

☢ Weird Inspiration from the Real World The Top 10 Weird News Stories from 2016 ☢

News From Your Corporeal Host

  • My erasure poem from Moby Dick, "Loomings" is up at Ghost Proposal. 

  • Read my blog for a list of my awards eligible poems from 2016.

  • My poem, "Sea Fog," will appear in Apex Publications' Undead: A Poetry Anthology of Ghouls, Ghosts, and More! due out in 2017. 

  • My poem, "Pine Song, Robin Song, Star Song" will appear in the March issue of Liminality. 

  • My poem, "Spring Will Come Again" will appear in Abyss & Apex in 2017. 

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