The April Weird Circular

Author

Holly Lyn Walrath
March 28, 2022

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

Welcome to the Weird Circular

Dear Weirdos,

Happy national poetry month! It's amazing how fast this year has flown by. Have you been writing? I hope so. If not, I hope you're doing things that enrich your life and make you happy. I'm sending you poem vibes from across the universe. 

In poetry news, I have a book of poetry I published in 2021 - The Smallest of Bones. It's eligible for the Elgin Award. If you're a SFPA member, keep me in mind when

! 

Also, I'm teaching a

starting in April. If you've enjoyed my prompts in this newsletter, you might want to sign up! It includes 30 prompts and is probably my most ambitious workshop yet. 

Your corporeal host,

Holly 

Submission Calls

Upcoming Submission Windows:

April 

  • Cast of Wonders, deadline 4/14: Theme: Banned Books. YA flash and fiction (up to 8k words). Pays .08/word. 

  • Translunar Travelers Lounge, Deadline 4/15: Fiction (up to 5k words). Pays .03/word. 

  • A Coup of Owls, deadline 4/30: drabbles, flash, fiction (100-8k words).Open to writers from marginalized communities only. Token payment.

  • It Was All a Dream Anthology, deadline 4/30: Theme: Flipped horror tropes. Fiction (1500-4k words). Extended deadline for marginalized writers May 7. Pays .03/word.  

  • FIYAH, deadline 4/30: Theme: Food and Cuisine. Fiction (up to 15k words). Poetry (up to 1k words). Limited demographic: "speculative short fiction by authors from the African continent and diaspora that reject regressive ideas of blackness, respectability politics, and stereotype." Pays .08/word. 

May

Need more submission ideas? Check the

newest markets, Duotrope's

,

, SFPA's

, Moksha's

or Literary Mama's

.

My book of poems is eligible for the

YOU SHOULD BE WRITING

Exercise

: Write a poem using enjambment. (Breaking the line in the poem at an unnatural pause in the sentence.) You can use enjambment in any part of the sentence: Syllable, word, phrase, sentence. Try to come up with different meanings depending on where you break the lines in the poem. If it helps, start by writing the poem with no line breaks as a prose poem, then go in and play with different breaks. How does this structure change the poem?

Bonus Round

: You can also try this with revision. Take a poem that has no enjambment and rearrange it so that there are unnatural breaks. What impact does this create on the reader? How does it change the meaning of the words?

Exercise: This exercise is from Lauren Russell. It works best with a group of writing friends. 

  • On an index card, write a one-sentence description of the body as monstrous, grotesque. Use no more than two adjectives or adverbs. Try not to use any.

  • Pass this sentence to your left. On a new index card, take your neighbor’s monstrous sentence and make it pleasurable.

  • Now write two secret shames on separate index cards. Bear in mind that you will have to part with one.

  • Now write two secret pleasures on separate index cards. Bear in mind that you will have to part with one.

  • Now pass me one secret pleasure, one secret shame, and your neighbor’s monstrous sentence.

  • Someone, shuffle the cards.

  • Everyone pick three cards and use this material, combined with your other three cards, in a new poem.

Bonus Round: If you're on your own, try writing a series of "secret shames" on a set of index cards. Shuffle them and write a stanza to go with each one. Then arrange the stanzas randomly and see what you come up with. 

Exercise: Write a poem where the Em Dash is the lead character. Consider the Em Dash not just at the end of lines, but at the beginning, in the middle, in the title, and as a cliffhanger ending. As a reminder, in Microsoft Word, the Em Dash is made using two hypens and generally does not have spaces before or after. 

Bonus Round:

 Remove all the em dashes and replace them with commas. How does the piece read now?

Editing tip of the month: Don't be too hard on yourself. Your work doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to excite your ideal reader. 

Inspiration from the Ether

News From Your Corporeal Host

This newsletter brought to you by writers sitting awkwardly at conventions since...basically forever. 

Join the conversation

or to participate.