March 2009 - Posts

Fmylife, some say entertainment, I say a goldmine of story ideas
Wednesday, March 18, 2009 11:34 AM

The site is http://www.fmylife.com/ and while it is occasionally depressing it is mostly hilarious. Fmylife allows users to post a few sentences of something terrible that just happened to them. The format is always as follows: "Today, <several sentences of the story>. FML" Its an excellent way to observe how to tell a story, beginning middle and end, in the briefest amount of time. I'm not saying they're all great, a lot of them aren't, but the good ones are worth a second glance. The site then allows you to say whether you think the person deserved what happened to them or to agree that there life is f*cked.

 The main reason I felt this was worth pointing out though was for Mary who asked a long time ago how I get ideas for stories. I answered in length in my post "Ideas for Capturing Ideas, the Conundrum of what to Write" but this is worth adding to it. Each of these brief clips from fmylife.com are story ideas and many are ripe for the beginning. They could be a main plot, a subplot, or just a small portion of your story and you can change them to work for your particular story or leave them more or less whole and just expand to fill in the blanks.

 Until next time, I'm Eric and I'm an unpublished fiction writer.

by DMI | 3 comment(s)

Filed under: Ideas

A Taste of Success
Tuesday, March 03, 2009 5:36 PM

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone that viewed and commented on my blogs and helped me get to the finals in this competition. I couldn't have done it without you. Through my internship, my nonfiction is now published! I had a very short piece in the March/April issue of Tallahassee Magazine, and there will be more to come. I'll have some work in the forthcoming issue of Emerald Coast Magazine and longer pieces in the next issue of Tallahassee Magazine and 850 Business Magazine. This will be great for my resume and instead of putting that I am unpublished on my cover letters to fiction magazines I'll at least be able to say that I have had my nonfiction published. And I'll get to say that I've had it in four different magazines! It isn't my fiction, but it's a step in the right direction and will definitely help me as I apply for jobs with newspapers and magazines after I graduate. Also, as an update on the porn submission post, I got back my manuscript from the more hardcore magazine with a post-it note that said they no longer accept fiction. Damn you, Writer's Market, you led me astray! Until next time, I'm Eric and I'm an unpublished fiction writer.

by DMI | 2 comment(s)

Filed under: Publication, Porn