It’s 2018. Do you know where you will get published yet?

Welcome to a new year, already slipping by faster than the last. They say that as you get older time becomes your mortal enemy, losing more of yourself to the past, and less to the potential of the future.

I’d like to think that on some quantum writer scale, time never ends; merely convolutes into new experiences, seamlessly joining one life to another life without fanfare. That is, if you believe that the purpose of existence is to experience rather than to just exist.

As a writer, I think back to my youth. No cares about time back then; simply cares about gratification, evolution to a more mature shell of the imuplsive, yet creative being that existed. Mistakes–oh so many mistakes. What doesn’t kill you…makes you older! Not necessarily wiser, however.

But the words! Oh, the words began to drip from all around; new words, then ways to phrase these words, gossamer wings that allowed my sentences to gather some weight, beyond the shallow characters of youth.

My fifties are rapidly coming to an end; another year before the tens-digit flips over and a new decade begins. Like the new year, it is simply a construct, an idiotic frame of reference to which I hold no weight. Life is about living and if you die you will hardly be reflecting on it, so the notation  of passing years is stupid at best; self-serving sympathy at worst.

Enough about me. Let’s talk about you. What’s on your plate? Have you considered submitting a story to BNP Magazine? We do pay 5 cents a word (2000 word max) for stories we publish, with a wide range of genres that you are welcome to tackle.

If you read our last issue you will see that our interviews are fascinating. We just had sci-fi giant Robert J. Sawyer interviewed. In our upcoming issue (January 2018, out Wednesday) we have two interviews, one with author Kelly Charon, author of YA novels “Pretty Wicked” and “Wicked Fallout”, and the other interview with Kurt Koontz, author of “A Million Steps”. Both are fascinating writers, each bringing to their craft differing approaches.

I was asked, recently, what I thought about Stephen King’s book “On Writing” and whether I felt that writers should tell others how to write. My answer was that I am only interested in how a writer chooses how, when, where and how to tell their story. Beyond that, I have no interest in being told how to write. Each writer has their voice, their style and their process. While some may overlap, usually they do not. For a writer their craft is about interpreting their life. And so my best advice is simply to learn skills, emulate styles to understand how each works, then to allow your own style to emerge through the act of writing. Write journals, letters, stories, editorials, blogs, book reviews–anything to keep those words moving.

Short stories are an excellent way to find yourself in words. And short stories are, in may ways, harder to write than a novel, the latter less restrictive on space and word count. To make a strong short story, the writer has to be economical, efficient, brutal and clever with idea, vocabulary and style.

So as we continue through 2018, do send in your work. SUBMIT it HERE and be sure to read the guidelines. I’ll look forward to seeing what you can do.

HNY!

<William>