Does anyone know of a reputable place to submit a short horror story that's 10.8k words? I have a polished story that I'm ready to query but I've been struggling to find a place that wants a story of that length.
Most places I've found are looking for 5k or less or 15k or more. I am not ready to chop my story in half nor do I think it needs an extra 5k words. I'm proud of it the way it is so I'm hoping someone out there knows of a place that would like to publish it. For now, I am wanting to go the more traditional route rather than self publish but that's my own preference.
Your friendly neighborhood barkeep would like to ask your opinions.
TLDR: What would help foster a more active community in my virtual tavern?
I want to start by saying I am not coming at this from a "social media clout" standpoint. I want to foster a community of engagement and encouragement but here's what I've noticed.
There's getting close to 300 taverngoers! My notifications generally consist of taglist tags (THANK YOU keep adding me please!) and the occasional reblog or heart. Most of the latter are on the posts about writing advice. Totally understandable, a lot of the advice is spot on but... how can we encourage and interact more with our fellow writers?
I've tried a few posts asking for people to share/talk more about their work or show off another writeblr they like but those got pretty much zero engagement. What can I do to help writers connect with each other, interact with other work, and become a closer community?
I've been hesitant to share too much about my work/writing experiences because I don't want it to feel like I built this place as my stage but should I lead by example? I'm not super great at the 'social' part of social media lol.
I would love for my little tavern to be full of chatter and friendship!
I have been toying with the idea of making a discord for all of us little writers but I am sure there are several that already exist and are established. Is there anyone interested in having their writing discord promoted here for more writers to join? It would seem silly to attempt to reinvent the wheel especially with my minimal experience in running anything like that. Feel free to DM me @hellishhin
I would like to start off with a heartfelt apology. I have a habit of doing things ‘all or nothing’. I start off doing it all then get overwhelmed and do nothing. Well… not entirely nothing. During my absence I finished my masters degree, got a job in my field, and recently received a promotion. I participated and, for the first time, completed NaNoWriMo. Writing made me miss the community so here I am.
I promise I never truly forgot about you all, I have been seeing notifications for all of your work for the past several years and I’ve been quietly cheering you all on. I finally feel I have the space to give others the support that I had needed for myself. I hope you all have been well! Keep tagging the Stag and I’ll work through all of the posts I’ve been missing.
Don’t forget, it takes a hundred times longer to write a scene than it does to read one.
Starting to feel like this scene is dragging on and on? Feel like you’re hammering it to death? Give it a few days and reread it. Your pacing is probably way better than you think it is.
Related story below the cut if anyone is interested
I am rewriting my nano project. To give me a better sense of pacing, I put both the old draft and the new draft into roughly 9x5 page size (about the size of a general fantasy novel). When I was writing my original draft my pacing felt awesome. It was action packed and stuff was happening!
Well come to find out, I went from status quo to here’s my character’s big world changing event in 10, yes TEN pages and was ready to move onto the second act.
Is that a viable story structure? Sure but I had rushed into the action so much that there wasn’t much world to change. It took away from the impact of it.
Now it feels like I’m slogging through scenes and people are going to get horribly bored. After a reread? I realized my pacing is actually pretty spot on for a draft, it only feels long because it takes a writer 10 minutes to craft a lovely sentence and less than 10 seconds to read it.
Don’t let the bog get you down. You are crafting. Let it take time.
