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Cathy C. Hallhttps://cathychall.wordpress.com/I write, write, write. Then I rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. THEN I submit all those polished-up words out into the world and sell 'em. It's a plan that's worked pretty well.

Finding a Winning Story!

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I sat down to write about the winning story a few hours ago…but I wanted to change my photo in the Finders and Keepers header. That was simple enough. Then the new header looked so fine, I decided to tweak the appearance of F & K. And then I saw that Flickr thingie and thought, hey! Why not add a few photos?

Um, time passed. Mostly because I have RSS issues. Just when all was lost, I figured it out! (Yeah, I broke down and went to the Support page.) And I learned a little something something about RSS. Totally made my day. Not as much as winning a contest. But it was pretty awesome.

DSC00554So, the story. The White County Creative Writers had TONS of categories in their 2009 writing contest. Including a Children’s Fiction category (How fortuitious!) I’d written a fun science fiction story called The Problem with S.H.E. but I couldn’t find anywhere to send that story. At least, not anywhere that might consider financial remuneration for services rendered. Off the story went. And back it came with a check!

And it’s not published. So, it still belongs to me. Wheee!

Here’s my tip for the day: Consider a contest if you have a great story but no paying market for it. A contest check  in the hand is worth more than a handful of non-paying publications!

Finding Something Friday on Dogs, Agents, and the Holidays

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I’ll bet that’s a group of words that doesn’t show up in a search engine very often.

Today, I was going to wax poetic about building blog stats, and Sparky, and burning a feed, and search engine-y things. But the truth is, I do all this stuff (like burning a feed of my blog) and I’m kind of hazy on the whole business. So, that would have been a very short Finding Something Friday. Instead, let’s take a look at Dogs and The Women Who Love Them (2009 True Story Contest).

We’re not talking about a crazy dog like Sally Hall ( notice how I found a pic of Sally wearing a holiday crown? Or at least wearing a crown, Sally-style.). We’re talking about a contest where the “stories should demonstrate the benefits for a woman who fulfills a life purpose by partnering with a dog to perform extraordinary physical, emotional, or spiritual service.” That kinda leaves Sally out. But maybe you and your dog fit the bill. Write the story, keep it under 2,000 words, and get it postmarked by September 30th. I still love my Sally dog, you know. But we’re kinda lacking in the “life purpose” thing.

Now, agents. I found Litmatch a few months ago, and made a note about it. But like many notes, it got sorta lost in the shuffle. Since today was a “clean up that mess over there” day (according to the Beneficent Mr. Hall), I found Litmatch again. Whee! It’s a free service which lists agents and agencies and allows you to track submissions to such (and gives information about all things agent-y, too). I haven’t signed up for it yet, but I made a note about it.

Now, on to the (Thanksgiving and Christmas) holidays. I found an email in my Inbox from the editor of Girlfriend to Girlfriend Magazine. She’s looking for articles about the aforementioned holidays, and she’s looking for pieces with a female slant. Oh, and she’s looking for a family slant, too. She has another magazine called Simple Joy, so I think she has lots of slots to fill. And she’ll pay you a small honorarium. You know, it was a very l-o-n-g email, so I might be forgetting something. Well, you can email me if you need more particulars.

And if you know all the particulars on that business I was going to write about (like “why do I burn a feed of my blog and check subscribers, and what exactly does RSS stand for, anyway?”), you can email me about that, too.