July

For our July meeting, Ian McHugh took us to market, to market to buy … well, to sell our short stories.

Ian provided insight on the short story market for speculative fiction, and the process of getting our work out there, and published. It all boiled down to a simple three step process:

  • Write the story (and edit it to goodness)
  • Submit the story
  • Repeat

Simple, but harrowing. Nevertheless, we persisted…

Here are the links to the two genre-focused submission lists which Ian mentioned:

and submission savvy members also recommended Submission Grinder.

Ian spoke from experience on the practical, and important, aspects of being professional, and checking for fit, response times, pay, status, and more. He talked about Helsinki buses (it’s a metaphor for persistence in creative endeavours) and about keeping things real when dealing with rejection.

And even though submitting your short stories to market meets Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity (doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result) Ian recommended it, to general acclaim.

August

What’s coming up next month? Well, they say every dog has his day, but every thoroughbred horse has its birthday on the 1st of August, and for our August meeting we’re talking horses.

Is it time to send in the cavalry on your WIP?

  • Does your writing include fictional horses which you don’t know how to whip into a shape which resembles something believably horse like?
  • Is your story languishing in the hard drive because your protagonist is riding around on a horse which currently has the personality of a grass-eating Skoda? (I’ll just park that over here, shall I?)
  • Have you always wanted to know more about a unicorn’s fetlocks?

Our panel of experts will be on hand to answer your questions about all things horseful … horsish … steedly – OK, let’s run with equine.

Best of all, if you ask your questions early, in the comments here, or on the group chat, our panel members will be able to give more thought to providing you with the details you need to make your fictional horses prance off the page.

Don’t miss our August meeting:

7.30pm, Wednesday 16 August

We’ll again be in the Metis Room, upstairs at the Canberra City Hellenic Club – it’s warm, it’s got fantastic food and coffee, as well as the bar, so you can have dinner before the meeting, or order something to be delivered to the meeting room.

See you there!