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If you're looking for a real challenge for 2011, you might want to consider joining the Write1Sub1 project in which we'll be writing and submitted a story per week for a full year. This is what Ray Bradbury did when he was starting out. Even if you're not up to the challenge this year, you may want to follow the site, which will have weekly blogs and progress reports.
We're also considering another participation track (1 story per month).
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Yes, it's for personal growth. We'll likely give an "award" to those who complete the challenge, but it's an honor system and token award. There will be weekly blogs from the admins with an open invitation to comment on your own progress (successes, failures, tips, etc).
If you're able to follow blogs (subscribe to them), you should see a Follow button above a list of Followers in the right navigation pane. The link below offers some info on following in case that helps.
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Of course, Bradbury had options not open to us in these latter-days---lots and lots of magazines to submit stories to.
Even the SF / fantasy markets of his era (early 1940s was, I believe, when he did this) would have numbered, oh, about a dozen, I think---probably a dozen more might have slipped a fantasy (or SF) story into their lineup---and probably Bradbury didn't limit himself to only SF and / or fantasy---there were even weekly fiction magazines, creating an even-greater need.
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There's lots of markets. I think at last glance at my own markets sheet I had about 28-30 semi-pro and pro markets listed. And I'm being picky.
At worst you'll do this challenge and make sure that no pro-zine lacks for a sub from you at any time (at least for spec fic zines, right? Depending on what you're writing). That's not a bad thing. The chances of getting published go up a lot when you've got 50 things out instead of 5
Forgive me for being still a little ignorant on how all the different tech stuff ties together but I have a question -
Are we submitting the stories to your blog - our own - are we just sending updates on progress? I guess even after reading the instructions I didn't understand the submission process. Could you please clarify.
Sounds like a heck of a challenge, and might be what I need to push my writing to the next level. I'm in - I just need to understand how will be submitting.
No, you're submitting stories into the marketplace. The idea is to emulate what Ray Bradbury did back in the day: write a new short story (any genre, including literary) and submit it to a market each week for a year (we're also doing a Light Ray challenge, which involves a new story per month). Basically, it's a way of encouraging yourself to practice your craft, to research new markets, and to habituate yourself to inevitable rejection (develop the thick skin people speak of).
Our blog simply provides you with a place to write about your efforts each week, should you choose to (it's not a requirement). The moderators will post weekly on our own progress. I, for one, am taking the challenge very seriously. You can read about my strategy on my first blog posting, scheduled to appear this Sunday on the site.
Hope that clarifies things. No angles here, no profit motive, just writers encouraging writers to stretch themselves.
I like this idea, And it's not just Bradbury who did it. I know of one other pro writer who did something similar, probably been a few others.
I would have to have an internal debate on doing it though. A few months ago I would have loved to do it. Maybe every two weeks, I have to be different, but now I seem to be stuck on my novels. I still want to write short stories, I have two that still need to be cleaned up, so maybe I might decide to do the once a month level. I would have time to do some work on both novels and stories.
But without going to the web site is there a word count? Like only so many flash stories? I don't know if I could come up with that many, but some people might be able to.
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Nope. Two of the moderators plan on doing a twitter fiction, one or two microfiction/flashes and one full short story every month. I'm being more ambitious, but it's really up to you. Mainly we're hoping to encourage people to push themselves a little out of their comfort zone, but schedules vary, ambitions vary etc. It's a community of writers writing. It's great if you want to set word count goals and report progress each week, but it's not a requirement.
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While reading Dean Wesley Smith's blog I came across this post about challenges. He was one of those pros who did the one story a week thing which he mentions but he goes on to talk about another challenge that led to another one that lasted for years.
He references the one story a week challenge only in one sentence but I think that sentence says a lot.
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