How To Start Kicking Your Way Along the Writer's Path (Emily Harstone's Author's Publish)

 

Anyone who wants to write should go to https://authorspublish.com/ and subscribe.  

This magazine offers a free download of Emily Harstone's 2023 edition of Submit, Publish, Repeat for free and will tell you this in the first email you get. This book will tell you everything you need to know about choosing a place to send your work, editing tips to make your work better, words of encouragement--there's even a link to an article for more sensitive writers to read. Anyone could start a career just with this book. I believe that. I better believe it because that's what I've been shooting for this entire fucking time.

Holy fuck what a shit pic. But you get the idea.

The links you can almost read in this pic will take you to the magazine in question. Most of these are E-Zines and take e-mail submissions, but many of them require Submittable or another submission engine. All of that is explained in the book. Also, Harstone explains the ethics of engaging with editors, which is to say--do not do it unless asked to. Be boring rather than flippant, etc. Cover letters and bios are explained. If you want to write children's books, those are also represented.

For myself, a lot of the information was things I dipped my wick into ten, twelve years ago when I first tried rocking at this. Anyone reading knows how that went; we know drugs became more important to me than anything else for a long time. But this was like waking up and going back to college. Or maybe a second year of college because I wrote about 220 thousand words of stuff not counting this blog as I dug back into my brain for my buried skillsets. I'd forgotten everything. A while back I found this book and the light went on again in my head.

What I've been doing is picking a 'zine, reading a number of the published stories therein, and searching my memories for concomitant tales of my own to tell (when I'm not writing stories about rat pegging and Mangliks, that is). Tales from my life mostly--stories of chaos and love and the street and the infernal dope and all the shit that goes with said lot. Who'd want to read that, you say?

Get this book and find out. Quite a few. And I've sent to quite a few of them. Ghost Press Review wants to see more, and that's cool. I will send more. And to other places, fucking more. Until I kick down this door, I will do it. From five to ten to twenty and a thousand and blast like the shards from a Molotov. If you want to do it, you should do it like that. To hell with everything. If you mean something, you fucking mean it.  

A tip--if you use ChatGPT most places will ban you. Not just reject you but forbid you. I myself do not care what another person does to write; it isn't me. A few places also don't. If you use it, make sure you check before submitting. You'd be surprised what sort of fruits hang on the editorial grapevine. Harstone will tell you the same thing, so take care.  

Read the sub guidelines thoroughly and create a fresh file, then format it according to the magazine before you get started. I do that. It isn't hard. It sounds a hell of a lot harder than it is.

Editing tip from me--other than know your words and how to use them--read your work out loud numerous times. If you're writing ghost stories, pretend you're in a cemetery. Put a dark instrumental on and begin. Let it flow. Do big cuts and big polishes on your PC or laptop's Word program and then send that bastard to your OneDrive and use your phone to shove your own story in your face to get the rest of the dings out. This will make each word in the sentence pop at you. Read it out loud on the phone and your mind, I fucking promise your mind will give you the words you want after a while. 

Since I've begun the fight is on--I've taken rejection, oh ho ho. I don't talk about that. It's like Fight Club. You just keep doing it without talking about it. But I just figured out this business with using the phone (fuckin jigsaw puzzle mind) and I know it's going to shoot me up like dope into the skill vortex I seek for a badass career. 

I hope to help the severely fucked up find hope and help. I mean that. It is Hell and no one gives a fuck. Well. I give a fuck.  

And when you give a fuck, you make it work. Author's Publish is a great place to begin. 

Bit of self-fluff--I was going to kill this blog until Extreme Horror Sensation John Bruni said something like, "No, you bastard. That's practice! Do it despite the numbers. And oh. Did you see the news about the mutant turtle that crawled out of the Chicago River?" 

He's right. It is. I ripped this out in a one shot and only had to read for typos. Not bad.