Writing and Publishing Fiction

As I have mentioned before, the downfall of past fiction efforts has been an overly designed approach. I have written and completed a handful of short fiction stories using this approach, and some of them have turned out OK; however, I have not yet published a fiction story.

Recently I was inspired by Richard Dreyfus, and decided that I would create my own method of writing fiction (short story or novel), the Mashed Potato Method of Writing a Fiction Story.

To refresh my memory on the submission guidelines, I thumbed through my 2000 Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market. (I don’t have a 2009 copy or 2008 or 2005, or anything else from this millennium for that matter. I have been out of the game you might say).

In a nutshell, this is what the Novel & Short Story Writer's Market (Kuroff, Barbara. Writers Digest Books) had to say in 2000.

That’s a good question. Generally, I have always tried to publish my fiction stories in literary magazines. To identify likely candidates, I relied on the Writer's Market and the Novel & Short Story Writer's Market, two books that catalog a large number of print publications. The Writer’s Market covers fiction and nonfiction publications. Some good information about the publications is included in each.

The trick is to identify what publications where you would want to publish your work would be likely to want to publish your work.