Writers' organizations and communities

Lists of/Links to Writers' Organizations

Writersmarket.com Organizations - An alphabetical list of selected writers' organizations. This list is easier to navigate than other WM databases since it's only six screens. However, it is not comprehensive; for instance, the Maryland Writers' Association is not on its list.

Local Writers' Associations and Groups by State - This page offers a comprehensive list of state and regional writers' organizations and associations, but [WARNING] it's on Squidoo, which means it's a web page maintained by an individual and not an organization, so it may disappear or be altered at any given time.

Poets and Writers Literary Organizations -A short/selected list of major writers' organizations.

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Individual Organizations/Associations of Note
[Note: Inclusion here does not mean an endorsement on my part; I am just noting their existence/availability.]

American Independent Writers

National Writers Union (NWU) - The only labor union that represents freelance writers.

The International Association of Writers -  (Scroll down their home page, and you'll find a list of "Best Writer Organizations," which includes themselves, SCBWI, NWU (see above), and the American Society for Journalists and Authors.)

Web directories and resources for creative writing: Yahoo directory

I was excited recently to discover that Yahoo still maintains a Web subject directory (which, ironically, I found via a Google search); even more excited to see that one of its subject categories is Literature > Creative Writing.

[For those of you who don't know Yahoo's history, before Yahoo had devolved into a celebrity news port, its focus was on indexing the Internet—this was before the Internet got so crowded. I heard a Yahoo rep speak at librarian conference in the mid-90s about their subject indexing.]

But I'm not sure that I can trust this directory as being either comprehensive or unbiased. When I looked at the Yahoo sub-listing for Literature > Creative Writing/Blogs, I was puzzled that they list only 25 blogs, and wondered why they'd listed Neil Gaiman's blog first—which meant the list isn't alphabetical, but it didn't say if it was listed by popularity ranking either.

Of course I wanted to help them plump up the list, so I clicked on the top link that says "Suggest a Site"—this links to a page that says:

There are two ways you can submit a site to the Yahoo! Directory.

Standard
Free!
No time guarantee

or

Yahoo! Directory Submit
7- Day Guarantee (If you choose Yahoo! Directory Submit we guarantee that your site will be considered by our editors within 7 business days.)
US$299.00 non-refundable, recurring annual fee

So, writer beware. I'm sharing the link to this listing, but not necessarily endorsing it.

The future of books

• NPR's "On the Media" devoted a full hour to the future of books and publishing in its July 2nd show, Book It. (This is an updated re-broadcast of a previous show.) The broadcast includes an interview with Neil Gaiman on what authors in the future will have to do to make money. According to this show, formats like the iPad or the iPhone will be how books will be delivered in the future. Drat!

• On the Media's information page for this show includes a link to a 2008 New York magazine article, The End, which is on the end and/or the transformation of the publishing business.

• Realizing this was becoming one of my Links posts, I googled "future of the book" and found:

• The Institute for the Future of the Book (IFB seeks to chronicle the shift from print to screen, and "impact its development in a positive direction.")
• The Future of the Book - A Wired magazine article (from 1996!)
  
• Since links have a tendency to die, you can see other articles and web sites for yourself via my Google search for "future of the book"
• Finally, ironically, my Google search brought up the page, The Googlization of Everything, a page created by writer Siva Vaidhyanathan, who is working in collaboration with IFB.
  

Magazines I actually read: Smithsonian Magazine

Those who are regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I've been referencing Smithsonian magazine in recent posts. The reason is simple—my in-laws give us a membership to the Smithsonian every year, and the magazine comes free with the membership. But only in recent months have I become a steady and appreciative reader.

Unlike the New Yorker, the Smithsonian arrives in my mailbox once a month—perhaps it's most important characteristic for this harried reader. But the magazine also features gorgeous photographs (which, yes, means less text to burn through in one sitting) and, even better, frequent articles on literature and/or authors.

One of its regular features, "My Kind of Town," invites prominent authors to write about their hometowns or adopted cities. (You can access the feature from this link, and search past articles both geographically and alphabetically, by author. From this site you can also upload your own "My Kind of Town" submission, both text and photos.)

Recent articles written by and about well-known writers have included:

• Going Home Again (March 2010) - Joyce Carol Oates writes about the upstate New York town that influences much of her work;

• Mark Twain in Love (May 2010) The woman who, for Twain, was like Dante's Beatrice;

• Harper Lee's Novel Achievement (June 2010) [This was referenced in my June 21st post]

You can search its online archive for articles on:

• Books
• American Writers
• Literature (a broader subject category than books or American writers )

A full electronic archive of the magazine is available, from 2007 to the present.

However, despite my promotion of the magazine's web site, for me it's still a publication that is best approached tactilely, letting the pages fall open to a beautiful photograph or an unexpected revelation.

Markets for short non-fiction

I made this list of non-fiction markets for anyone who might benefit from it—but keep in mind it's mostly here so I won't misplace it! Markets that specifically publish flash or short non-fiction were hard to find, which is why I included the Creative Nonfiction list of publications from Poets and Writers; perhaps hyperlinking through it will lead to other markets.

Brevity - Check guidelines page for submissions calendar; usually don't accept in summer months.

Conclave - Publishes personal essays 750-1,000 words.

flashquake - Says it publishes flash fiction and non-fiction.

Poets and Writers - Creative Nonfiction list - A list of ALL literary journals in their catalog that print non-fiction, regardless of length. (But I thought the list was useful, so I'm including here anyway).

The Sun Magazine - Readers Write feature - No word limit given on guidelines page, but they normally run length of two columns or less. They list a new topic to write about each month, which Sun readers are to write about.

* * * * * *

Here are some anthologies devoted to short nonfiction (but, given the dates of publication, some of the markets/pubs are obviously no longer going to be valid):

• In Brief: Short Takes on the Personal (1999!)
• In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction (1996!)
• Short Takes: Brief Encounters with Contemporary Nonfiction (2005)

Local is the new word in journalism

This is my first post that is here mostly to offer links to sources on a particular topic. (See previous post for more info).

Although I consider myself a creative writer, I have an ongoing interest in newspapers because I used to (and probably subconsciously still) think of them a backup plan: if I suddenly had to make some money, I could dust off my clips and walk them around to newspaper offices, offering to freelance. You tell me to write about something and I can usually deliver, no matter how little I know about the topic beforehand. It worked twice, in two different states in the 1980s, but I should know better than to think it will work now.

Or maybe there is still work in newspapers—just unpaid or poorly paid, compared to years past. Some recent articles I've run into have discussed the trend toward local news and local blogging.

• Maybe I'm a little behind on this trend, but the first article I saw about the local trend in a major publication (not just as a blogger's fantasy) was the article Peytonplace.com (Newsweek, Oct. 12, 2009), which discusses how citizen journalists/bloggers are stepping in to cover outburb communities abandoned by big-city newspapers. Some of the ventures have been launched by news companies themselves, like the New York Times. The article uses terms like "hyper-local journalism" and "journo-bloggers"—I'm not sure these are new terms of art, or were just made up by the writer.

• Then a few day's later, on Oct. 19th, the Washington Post rolled out a total redesign, along with a print "Redesign Owner's Manual." Two of the manual's eight pages are devoted to the Post's new Local emphasis: one page is about the Post's new "Local Living" section (which rolls in its former, separate Home and county weekly sections, saving paper and print) and the other about "A new local home page." The new Local web page can be set up to be the user's entry way into the rest of the Post, with zip code set-up for weather and a way to format the page to display headlines from your chosen area and areas of interest (e.g., The District, Maryland, Schools, Crime, Obituaries, Religion).

[The irony here is that I looked at the web page, but then had to go back to the print manual in order to figure out how to format the page. It was a lot easier to figure out using the print write-up vs. the bald site itself.]

• The next day, NPR's Diane Rehm Show discussed New Business Models for Journalism. Forty-one minutes into the show, Rehm asks Arianna Huffington what the Huffington Post is doing to "address the local issues." Huffington says that the H. Post has launched Denver, New York, Chicago sections, to offer aggregate local news by making partnerships with local newspapers (linking to their news sites), and by using local bloggers and citizen journalists. (Sounds like unpaid or low paid work to me.)

BTW, the Huffington Post has been looking at the topic of the evolution/death of newspapers for awhile, but can't seem to make up their minds what to call the trend. They offer these categories (some with only one article each):

- The Reconstruction of American Journalism

- Death of Print

- Death of Newspapers

- Newspaper Decline

...etc.

Dare I say it? The H. Post needs to hire a librarian to firm up the categories and make the site more searchable. Perhaps that is where my next I'm-really-desperate-for-money news job is.

Collecting a virtual library for my readers and me

I've been collecting links and articles over the last several months on topics that interest me, particularly those that I keep meaning to write about for the blog. But it occurred to me today that I could just post the links with minimal description, and make them findable under particular categories. For instance, I've bookmarked a few articles recently on the fate of newspapers; rather than try to add my own cry to the crescendoing dirge for newspapers, I'll just put them in a post indexed "newspapers."

To be honest, I'm doing this mostly for my own benefit, so that I can find things later, whether to re-read them more intently or to visit them for the first time. And doing this will help plump up my somewhat anemic "Special Features" section under "Writers Resources" and "Musings on Newspapers."

I still intend to write an essay a week, so this will an occasional supplement to my other postings.