| WEEK #4: The Business
of Writing Note: Hyperlinked terms let you click through to
the site's Writer's Glossary.
DISCUSSION
Review. We discussed how everyone
did with their "most-hated genre" stories.
Review. We reviewed how
working on stories went. I asked several questions of the class.
- How many people scrapped their ideas
and started over?
- Why did you scrap?
- Did you stick with your planned
protagonist?
- Did anyone have challenges beginning
his story?
- Have you remembered to focus on the
title That Amazing Green Toy?
Submission. We covered the basics
of the submission process.
- Adhering to standard manuscript format
– download example
and download a template
- Writing a cover letter – download example
- It used to be mail only; now, it’s
mostly email
-
Rejection and acceptance:
learning from criticism
- Most editors do form rejections
- Some give reasons
- Don’t argue with rejection unless the
editor invites it
- Editors are known to change their
minds, although usually not with form rejections
Contract basics
EXERCISES
Writing stories. Students will
continue in-class work on their stories.
ASSIGNMENTS
Writing stories. Continue working
on your stories. You MUST have the first draft of your story completed for next
week, as students will be proofreading each other's stories and offering
feedback.
NOTE: YOU SHOULD BE
USING THE MANUSCRIPT TEMPLATE FOR YOUR STORY!
If you aren't,
download it here and copy
your story over. One of the requirements for this course was that students
should have an understanding of working in a word processor, so when the
formatting gets mucked up during a paste, you should be able to convert it to
standard manuscript format.
If you are lost, I will reformat it for you in class next week. For an example,
download the example PDF and
read it. It explains it in easy-to-understand terms.
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