I can’t believe it’s April already! Where did March go? I turned over my calendar yesterday and simply couldn’t believe it’s spring. It seems as if winter went by in a whoosh and soon, it will be 100 degrees and we’ll be smack in the middle of a steamy summer.

Today’s topic: literary journals. I’ve never submitted essays or personal experience pieces to journals before. I only write for magazines and really don’t know much about the journal business. My writing teacher at school was encouraging us to submit the essays we wrote for class to journals that published nonfiction. I searched for journals and was surprised that there are thousands of journals and I’ve never heard of 90 percent of them. Am I missing a good market with journals? The categories are as vast as the titles and range from fiction to creative nonfiction to romance to horror. The short story journals certainly sound like a good place to try your hand at shorter fiction that could be expanded into a novel.

Has anyone submitted to a lit journal? Would you submit to one?

The poor blog has been neglected as of late. School has completely taken over my life! I have three weeks of class and then finals, so I’ve been swamped with papers, studying and projects. I’ve been reading so much for school and eyeing my YA books. I can’t wait to start reading for fun again. The weekend is already half over and I’ve yet to tackle a few major projects for school that are on my list.

I took a few hours this afternoon and realized that my writing magazines are out of control! I’ve got large plastic trunks filled with The Writer, Writer’s Digest, Romance Writer’s Report, Poets & Writers and newsletters. I refuse to throw away any of them, so I plan to start putting them in plastic sleeves and then into binders.

What do you do with your writing magazines? Keep them forever or let them go? Any suggestions on organization?

My Website has been updated with a complete (almost) list of my publishing credits and a new background. 🙂 Check it out and let me know what you think.

I don’t know if anyone else uses PowerTracker, but I got the program as a limited version when I ordered a writing magazine a few years ago. I popped it and got hooked. I’ve been using that limited version for a couple of years and when my computer malfunctioned about 4 months ago, (Thank God for Gateway customer service!) I was no longer able to reload PowerTracker onto the computer so I had to store all of my data on the CD. For those of you who aren’t familiar with PT, it keeps track of every query, article, agent query, idea, partial, etc that you write and/or send out. It stores the editor’s names, addresses, the date the piece of writing was sent, alerts you when it’s time for a follow up and does many other wonderful things. Anyway, this morning I inserted my PT CD and it wouldnt’ work. It skipped and skipped and refused to load. I cried, threatened, screamed and begged the CD to work. Yes, it’s all my fault for not backing up this data. I know, it’s stupid.

I tried the CD a dozen times and a little while ago, by some miracle, it worked. I saved all of the data and ejected the CD. I tried it again to see what would happen and it now will not work. I’m thanking my lucky stars that I was able to get my info off the CD. I would have lost so much data and I’d probably send magazines queries I’ve already sent just because I can’t remember all of the queries I send. So, the moral of the story: I need a new PT and I promise to back up my data at least once a week. I always backup my book and articles, but I never thought about that data. Scary.

Ah, it has been a nice Sunday so far! 🙂 It’s about 87 degrees here today, so I washed the car and hosed the porch, all while trying to come up with a new pitch for my agent. I think I may have one, folks! I wonder if I’ll try to pull a NaNo and write it in 30 days and then go back and edit before anyone ever sees it. I’ve been meaning to e-mail Chris Baty at NaNo and share my news with him, but haven’t had the time yet. Does anyone listen to the NaNo radio addresses each week? I haven’t in a while, but I did today. It’s all about e-book publishing, for those of you who are interested.

My girl Ella told me that Gossip Girls is becoming a pilot for The CW. Anyone else hear about that? I Googled it and found that Josh Schwartz (creator of “The OC”) is set to produce the show. I’m incredibly curious to see how that goes. Apparently, there was supposed to be a movie with the amazing Amy Sherman-Palladino (“Gilmore Girls!”) writing and Lindsay Lohan starring, but it fell through.

Now, I’ll spend the rest of the day on school work. I spent about ten hours editing on Friday and sent off a few rewrites on Sat, so it’s back to school now. 3 more weeks of classes…gotta keep reminding myself! 🙂

So, about two weeks ago I sent a query to Guideposts Sweet 16 about a great teenage girl doing some amazing charity work. I got an e-mail today from 16 agreeing to take the piece! Woo hoo! It’s only my second acceptance from 16 and with each piece I write, it becomes a bigger project. I’m writing the piece for their “Positive Thinker” column and soon, I hope to get a full length article published in the mag. I’ll be writing the piece this weekend and hope to get it shipped off to 16 on Monday or Tuesday.

The weekend plans are shaping up like this: article for 16, edits on manuscript, lots of homework and reading and trying to add more miles to my exercise routine.

What are your weekend plans? If anyone wants to match experiences with Gaby, she’ll be downing sushi! 🙂

Oooh, the weather has been simply lovely this week! Spring has definitely began in Florida as it has been in the lower eighties all week and I’ve been itching to visit the beach. (Contrary to popular belief, Florida DOES have cold weather. A few weeks ago, we were 18 degrees!) I’ve been dragging my laptop onto the back porch and have to fend off tiny lizzards while I type. The occasional tree frog pops up and I spend fifteen minutes holding it. I then place it back on the house and try to grab a lizzard or two. I always manage to catch them in a dark brown stage instead of when they’re a vibrant green. As you can see, I’m a complete nature junkie and the weather has been distracting me from my writing.

What’s your biggest distraction?

Big thanks to everyone who e-mailed me with suggestions for MFA programs! I truly appreciate your e-mails and suggestions. 🙂 In particular, a big thanks goes out to Jessy and the writers on the Verla Kay forums. I’m getting info and insight into schools ranging from NYU to Seton Hill. Keep ’em coming if you have MFA advice.

This week, I’m swamped with school papers. I’m trying to read Obi, or, The History of Three- Fingered Jack, Adam Bede and a book for my humanities class all while trying to get ahead and write a few papers early. I hate dealing with papers during finals week, so I’m trying to do them now.

I workshopped my second memoir piece yesterday and it went great! I got a lot of helpful feedback and I didn’t feel uncomfortable presenting my topic. I received many “wow, risky topic! I like it!” and “you have such a calm, detached narrator.” A well-respected guy in my class says both of my pieces read very much like the wonderful Annie Proulx. I’ve read Brokeback Mountain twice, but have not read The Shipping News. Guess I’ll have to check that out.

Who does your writing get compared with?

EDIT: (Sorry to my FeedBurner subscribers who will be getting double emails today!) I was looking over my blog viewers and yesterday, I had someone from this server (Oxygen (Harpo Productions)) Oprah.com on both of my blogs! How cool is that! Yes, I know it was a mistake that someone surfed on but still, that’s exciting. 🙂 Wave at Oprah, everyone! LOL

This has been a quiet week for magazine queries. I’ve been busy with school and working on manuscript revisions and the mags have been neglected for a few days. Is it just me or does it seem like teen mags are folding left and right? Teen People is gone, I think Elle Girl went online and Teen has reduced its number of issues. For freelancers in the teen market, that’s bad news. I’ve been trying to work up the right query for Teen and desperately want to get something in that mag before it either folds or switches to online only. I was surprised (and pleased!) to learn that 60% of their content is freelance written, so that’s good news. The freelance content for Seventeen is only around 20%, so I haven’t quired them yet. I wish both mags did e-queries, but they’re still using good old snail mail.

So, I’m shifting back and forth between short projects (magazine articles) and long projects (my manuscript.)

What do you prefer working on? Short pieces with quicker feedback or longer pieces with more development?

Today’s topic: writing grants and fellowships. Last week, I started researching artist grants in Florida and soon I’ll expand my search nationwide. Keeping up with the deadlines is half the battle. Florida offers several grants to professional writers (meaning the applicant cannot be enrolled in college when applying for the grant) and there are many, many pages of guidelines, rules and suggestions to follow. Nationally, there are generous screenwriting grants (the competition is quite stiff, however) and companies such as ABC and WB offer TV writing grants. ABC has a daytime and primetime writing grant, but no news is available on it at this time.

The WB offers a fellowship where winners live near the WB production lot and study TV writing for up to a year.

Nickelodeon offers a fellowship for writers quite like the WB’s award.

Scouring the Internet for these grants and fellowships takes time, but I think it’s worth it. Grants can be used to fund workshops, build a Website, buy a new laptop and other things that a writer could use.

Has anyone applied for a grant or fellowship before? If not, would you apply?