Happy Friday, writer friends!
It’s easy, in a creative life, to be pulled all over the place, in 759 different directions. It is my biggest flaw, this lack of focus, this damaging belief that I must do it all, ace it all, and somehow have it be effortless.
For now, I’ve decided that in addition to the day-to-day of my work (freelancing + this daily newsletter), I can only work on one additional creative project at a time.
Next week, that’s finishing up an old essay.
Cheers,
NEWS & VIEWS
America’s next great author
Something light and fun today to end the week with.
Calling America’s next great author.
That’s right. This week a call appeared on social media for contestants to apply to be on the pilot of a new show called America’s Next Great Author (ANGA).
On their website, America’s Next Great Author is described as “the groundbreaking reality television series geared toward anyone who loves drama on or off the page.” Six finalists will enter a “Writer’s Retreat” for a month of challenges. They’ll be expected to start their books on day one of the retreat and finish by the end of thirty days.
For now, though, the producers are looking to film the pilot in San Francisco this fall. Writers will be asked to pitch their book ideas and one winner will receive a $2,500 cash prize plus a prominent role in the pilot episode.
Being an Indian who lives in England, I’m out.
But could you, yes you, be America’s. Next. Great. Author? Apply if you dare.
SEE ALSO:
What I’ve learned through hosting a writing podcast: “In planning my show, I knew I didn’t want to interview authors and simply ask the standard stock questions. Rather, I wanted to have free-flowing conversations and hear about the experiences of other writers on their own terms,” writes Carter Wilson.
Foreshadowing: A revision skill to love: “Every element in a story must be necessary, suggests the dramatic principal known as “Chekov’s gun”: If you put a gun on the wall in the first act, it should be used before the end of the play. That’s equally true for any unusual detail,” says Kathryn Craft.
WRITERS WANTED
We’ve added 13 new travel markets to our markets list this week. These include:
Matador Network (Reported pay less than $0.10 a word)
Rova (Pays flat rate of $200 per article)
Outpost (Pay unspecified)
Travel + Leisure (Reported pay $1 a word)
Canadian Geographic (Pay unspecified)
World Nomads (Pays 50 cents a word)
Hit the Road (Pays $50)
Cruising World (Pays $800-$1,000 for feature articles)
New Worlder (Pay unspecified)
International Living (Pays up to $150 for web and $350 for print)
Lonely Planet (Reported pay is 30 cents a word)
Backpacker (Reported pay 50 cents a word)
Via (Pay unspecified)
There are now 160+ markets on our How to Pitch page with links to detailed writer’s guidelines for each publication. Find them here.
WORDLING PARTNER
The Sample
was designed to amplify small, independent writers who don’t already have large followings.
You can set a few topics you’re interested in, and then each day The Sample picks a different article to send you. When you get one you like, you can subscribe to the author’s newsletter in a single click. Easy as pie. Sign up here.
WORDLING INSIGHT
Five things to do today:
1. Write something, anything, for an hour. Just get words on the page and figure out what to do with them later.
2. Send out a piece of work. Anything, anywhere.
3. Dust off an old project and decide what you’re going to do with it—put it on the back burner, start working on it, delete it and move on with your life?
4. Approach someone—a writer, an editor, an agent, anyone—and start building a relationship.
5. Remind yourself why you do this.
GLOBAL REPORT
SWEDEN: “Sweden is among the nations most willing to pay for online content. According to DNR 2021 , 30% of Swedes have paid for digital content at least once in their lifetime.”
SYRIA: “One year ago my Syria-based outlet Tiny Hand, which reports on children living in war and crisis zones, teamed up with another independent media agency I founded, Frontline in Focus, which covers human interest stories in similar settings, to help journalists better report from the frontlines of conflict. Using a combination of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) — both of which fall under the umbrella of “extended reality,” or XR — this June we launched Frontline in Focus XR.”
INDIA: “The Indian publishing industry has also seen some other perceptible trends over the last few years: advances to authors have reportedly gone up; midlists (books that are between bestsellers and failures) have declined; frontlists (a publisher’s sales list of newly published books) too are falling. Crucially, the social media boom has dramatically changed the manner in which books are discovered, marketed and consumed.”
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