Sauce Seeks More Food Essays From St. Louis Area Residents

Photo by Dahon from Creative Commons

Sauce Magazine , the St. Louis Metro Area's Restaurant Guide, is seeking food essay submissions for their new column.

So if you live in the St. Louis area and can carry on about cheese, wax rhapsodic about rutabagas, or write drool-worthy prose about your favorite food experiences/memories, write an essay and submit it to Sauce. Essays should be around 900 words and 12 will be featured in their monthly column. The stories can take place anywhere in the world, but must be unpublished.

If you were accepted in the original call for submissions last fall, their current submission guidelines say you can submit another essay but no author will have more than one essay published in a calendar year. I have one appearing in May, so that gives me time to work on another for next year. I'd still send your submission in as soon as you can, so they have time to consider your essay.

Here some advice from editor Katie O'Connor on what they're looking for:

"The essays can be about *anything* (really!), as long as food factors in somewhere -- either directly, as a main character or the main focus of the story -- a description of the first time the author ate an exotic ingredient, for example, or perhaps a story about experiencing the food in Italy -- or indirectly, as a component of the story or as a background element. A look at a family's kooky dynamic as told through a typical family dinner hour is an example; so is the chapter in Ruth Reichl's "Tender at the Bone" where she hints at her mother's mental illness by describing her mother's "quirk" of serving dangerously old food to guests. Absolutely any story is fair game here, as long as it's personal, real and original."

• So get eating - and writing.

Live from Novels in Progress Workshop

Wow, what a week. I'm immersed in a week-long workshop called Novels in Progress in Louisville, KY. So far, I have boiled my novel down to 3 sentences. No small feat. But I did it. I've have my first 50 pages critiqued and received great feedback. I've attended workshops on dialog, POV (and I learned the POV that I'm using is spot-on for my novel), rewriting strategies, and plotting essentials. WHEW!



This afternoon I'm off to a workshop on writing query letters and synopses and tonight I have a peer critique with three other workshoppers and our faculty mentor. Plus we're having a pizza party tonight to get us past the mid-week hump.



AWESOME stuff. And I have to hand it to Jeff Yocom, the Conference Planning Chair--they know how to do it right.



This is all leadng up to a pitch session on Saturday with agents and editors.

I'll check in later.

Is this the Future of Magazines? Free Content from Readers?

Photo Creative Commons by SunFox


Newsweek has a thought-provoking article on a new online magazine that pulls content from internet denizens rather than freelancers.

The magazine publishing company, 8020, has readers submit content to magazines like the travel publication Everywhere and then vote on the best stories. The winners are then featured in the print magazine. This generates extra traffic when submitters ask friends and family to check out the site and vote for their submission. The winner gets $100 and publication in the print magazine. It's a trend that may not bode well for full-time freelancers.

If many netizens are giving away the chocolate freelance milk for free, why buy content from a better bovine? I'm guilty too. I just entered a contest at Journeywoman that asks for inspiring travel stories, and I didn' t really think about the implications. First place gets $100 and some runner-ups get $25, and they get people to submit full essays without a kill fee or specific assignment.

I'm sympathetic to new publications who are starting out and need to move toward a profit, or at least breaking even. But what is the likelihood they'll start paying freelancers what they're worth if the model is working for them? Will they do it out of the goodness of their hearts and a sense of fair play? Not.

I may have to reconsider future contests. While it might be a good way for new writers to get first clips, it lets the magazines get off cheap. And cheap doesn't pay the bills at my house.

America Essay Contest - The Case for God

America, The National Catholic Weekly has an essay contest focusing on the theme, "The Case for God." No entry fee.

From the website:
"The winning manuscript will approach that topic or the various issues surrounding it with creativity, precise argumentation and literary flair. Essays should be written with a general audience in mind, but can be from any perspective, including personal, professional, academic, apologetic or devotional."

• Length: Entries should be unpublished works up to 2,500 words


• Prize: $3,000


• Deadline: June 16, 2008

Bookhabit.com's Unpublished Writing Competition - The Contest that Pays You to Enter

Photo by Ian Wilson Creative Commons


Bookhabit.com is a website that partners with authors to sell their books online. The website keeps 60% and the author gets 40%. All books are priced between $2.50 and $5.00, with sale price determined by the popularity of the novel.

Now they are hosting Bookhabit.com's Unpublished Writing Competition. From now through May 5-11, writers can upload their book to the website and the 5 most popular books of the week plus one wild card go through to a 2nd round of the contest. Ten books from Round 2 go on to Round 3, where the winner is selected by a panel of judges. The books earn points during the first rounds from reader ratings and number of downloads.

The best part - you get paid.
All readers have to pay to download your book, and you share in the revenue. Is this an attempt to drum up more downloading readers for Bookhabit as you beg all your friends and family to download your book? Plus get the website a double serving of publicity from every author who promotes bookhabit.com on their blog or website? I'm pretty sure it is. But the prize is $5,000 and depending on your book, you may earn yourself enough for a nice steak dinner - or at least breakfast at Mickey D's.

What should you enter?
So if you have a manuscript that you think is too quirky, too long, too short, or too niche for the publishing world, you might want to consider entering. They're taking both fiction (any genre) and non-fiction. Manuscripts must be at least 50,000 words long.

For example, one winner this week is a romance novel, and one is a how-to book for new motorcyclists. Self-published books can be entered as long as they sold less than 500 copies. I wouldn't enter a book you haven't shopped around first to agents and editors, but if you feel your baby was misunderstood when you sent it out into the cold, cruel publishing world, you might want to bypass big publishing and go straight to the people - at least those willing to pay. Power to your peeps! Uh, not the yellow, sticky ones - your people. Good luck to everyone who enters.

Query on.

9th Annual Tupelo Press/Crazyhorse First Book of Poetry Contest

Notes on the Writing Life has info on the 9th annual Tupelo Press/Crazyhorse poetry contest for poets who've never published a book. You must submit a collection of poetry for consideration.

Prize: $3000 and publication of your book

Deadline: April 15, 2008.

Entry fee: $25

All unpublished poems are considered for Crazyhorse.

Congrats to Alice on Cup of Comfort for Breast Cancer Survivors

Coffee and Critiquer Alice has not one, but two stories under contract with Cup of Comfort for Breast Cancer Survivors. Her two essays were also submitted to Redbook's essay contest in conjunction with the Breast Cancer Cup of Comfort collection.

Good luck, Alice. We love your essays!