Tina Haapala, Excuse Editor

The deadlines are coming up super-quick, but you may have something that fits the bill for one of these contests or submission requests. All of these are paying markets. Isn't a chance to collect a few dollars (or more!) for your work better than your work collecting dust? Here's the format for this list, Good Luck! Deadline date Quick Description of Contest or Market Word count or page requirements Link to site for more information on how to submit Entry Fee Payment or Contest Prize Range 10/29/09 Under 30 Contest for writers between 18-30 years old 15000 word max http://www.narrativemagazine.com/node/915  $20 fee $100-$1500, eligible for $5000 prize in 2010 10/30/09 Short short story; dark/macabre fiction 1000 word max http://leapfrogpress.com/contest.htm $8 fee $50-100 10/31/09 Unusual Essay 10000 word max http://www.thediagram.com/contest.html#2009essayguidelines $15 fee  $1000 + publication 10/31/09 scary short stories in a ...

We use this excuse so much, that if we added up the time we spent making it, we'd surely have added a few hours to our writing time. Look, we have to live our lives-- pay the bills, feed the kids, mow the lawn-- but if we want to be writers, our lives need to include writing. Stephen King wrote much of his first work during his lunch breaks. J.K. Rowling headed to the cafes and wrote there as a single mother. The cafe trips apparently helped her baby sleep. It was a win-win situation. Excuse Editor Tip: Log-in to your writing Dieters identify their consumption of excess calories by keeping a food log. Writers struggling to find time to write need to keep an activity log. Track a few days of your life, hour by hour. Examine the choices you are making with your time. A day with no writing-- but with two hours of TV, or a half hour of Facebook stalking? It may not have seemed like a time waster, but it put you that far back on your writing. Just as the dieter becomes aware of the...

Excuse Editor Tip: Start with 100 words. That's not much. You could write a whole story. People wrap up their days with 140 characters on Twitter . You'll probably find that it is more difficult to ONLY write 100 words. That's great, because then you will know the joy of shaping your story; you'll be cutting away anything unnecessary to get at the essence of your art, just like a sculptor. In this case, you'll have to be as precise as those calligraphers who write on the grains of rice. 100 words is short. This post has already gone WAY over. There's a reason behind this tip: A Contest Deadline! You only have a few more days, but that just be enough for you to write a short, short story and submit it! Click here for more information. There is a $15 entry fee, but the top prize is $400! Good Luck. Let me know how it goes!   (Use market information at your own risk. Excuse Editor recommends researching any market you decide to submit to. Excuse Edi...

"Thinking is the enemy of creativity. You must simply do things." --Ray Bradbury For years, I thought a lot about writing. In grade school, I allowed myself to be immersed in my craft. I wrote stories, poems, songs, and even jokes constantly. My elementary school allowed us to write and bind our own books, and the books were given a place in the library where our classmates could check them out. A writer-in-residence came to my 4th grade classroom and asked us to write poems. Mine was one of many published in an anthology. I placed in the "Young Author's" contest. And then, right around the same time I quit swinging in the playground for the pure joy of it, I became shy about my writing. I almost stopped completely. Sure, I kept a diary for all of those years. And although I remember the struggles of my family, my own straining self-esteem and all of the memoir-worthy happenings that took place in that time, those diary pages hardly reflect any of it. Ins...