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Five Paths to Break Into TV/Film as a Novelist
by Ellis Cube,
Right now, IP (intellectual property) is everything in Hollywood, and by “everything” I mean its validation—both their and your proof of concept. If your novel draws attention or builds up a sizeable audience, executives/investors will feel more comfortable…
Lovable Predictability: The Pleasures and Challenges of Writing a Children’s Fiction Series
by Alex Woolf
“Why do we always have to reinvent the wheel?” my editor once asked me.
When a new book is launched, it’s like introducing a stranger to a largely disinterested world. Potential readers know nothing about its characters or the…
Good for Your Career? Evaluating Events for Writers
by Catherine Lundoff
“You should go to this – it’ll be good for your career” is a phrase that you’ll hear more than once as you start getting published. The phrase gets applied to conventions, conferences, writing workshops, book festivals and…
SFWA Market Report For June
Welcome to the June edition of the SFWA Market Report. Please note: Inclusion of any market in the report below does not indicate an official endorsement by SFWA.
Crowdpublishing
by Diane Morrison
Everyone says that indie publishing is the wave of the future. Avoiding gatekeepers, who are often prejudiced against particular ideas or demographics, and putting your work out there to see if it will sink or swim on its…
Words Out of Time: Building a Better World Through Etymology
by Ken Pelham
Your stiff-upper-lipped hero, Professor Jenkins, frustrated with the chicanery of Air Captain Hamm, pounds the table and shouts, “Good heavens, man! The scoundrel has hatched yet another outrageous boondoggle!”
Boondoggle. This is where your narrative gets stuck in the etymological…
An Appreciation of Eleanor Wood
by Michael Capobianco
SFWA thanks Eleanor Wood and Spectrum Literary Agency for more than twenty years of service to the organization.
Rebound Novels
by Paul Jessup
Novels are like long, committed relationships. They take months to years of your life, and they require complete and utter devotion to their singular purpose. Certainly, there is something to living inside of a novel, breathing inside of…
Camp Writerhaven Announced
News from Middle Tennessee State University: MTSU Write is proud to announce Camp Writerhaven, a new writers’ retreat for wordsmiths in all genres at Rockvale Writers’ Colony June 20-23 and July 14-20. Camp Writerhaven provides writers time and space to…
Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards Announces 2019 Book Shortlist
News from Dartmouth University: Ten books that dare to imagine how society collides with the future have been named to the shortlist of the 2019 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards.
SFWA Market Report For May
Welcome to the May edition of the SFWA Market Report. Please note: Inclusion of any market in the report below does not indicate an official endorsement by SFWA.
From the Inside Out: Worldbuilding Through Extrapolation
by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
It’s virtually impossible to do ALL of your SFF worldbuilding prior to writing your book/story. How much weight is given to each stage depends on the author (some prefer to do a lot before starting, some build…
Why I Review, or Rather: What Is Reviewing?
by Cameron N. Coulter
Since March 2018, I’ve been writing a monthly short fiction review column for Skiffy and Fanty. A year ago, I didn’t have too many thoughts on reviewing, but now I find I can have long conversations about…
The Art of the Playlist
by Paul Jessup
Ever since I first started taking writing seriously as a teenager, I’ve always written to music. Back then it was a bit more difficult than it is now, in the days of Spotify and gigantic playlists that can…
How to Avoid Writing That’s as Clear as a Mountain Stream
by Chris Sumberg
The phrase “clear as a mountain stream” gets splashed around pretty loosely, sometimes in reference to clear writing but also in reference to the sometimes not-at-all-clear names of actual bodies of water, clear or otherwise. When you take…
2019 Kevin O’Donnell Jr. Service to SFWA Award Announced
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA, Inc.) is pleased to announce that the Kevin O’Donnell Jr. Service Award will be presented to Lee Martindale during the SFWA Nebula Conference awards ceremony on May 18th, 2019.
The Dream Foundry
by Anaea Lay
We’re building a community meant to capture the community. The whole community. We want to find beginners and bring them in to nurture them, help them learn, smooth their career path. We’re going to have resources that are…
SFWA Market Report For April
Welcome to the April edition of the SFWA Market Report. Please note: Inclusion of any market in the report below does not indicate an official endorsement by SFWA.
How to Win a Short Fiction Contest*
by Shawn Proctor*Winning not guaranteed.In project management, the key is to begin with the end in mind. So maybe I should have foreseen that my flash story, “A Good Egg” would be published by Flash Fiction Online as a reprint…
Two Simple Rules of Editing
by E. D. E. Bell
As a former engineer, data analyst, strategic advisor, and manager who entered the fiction writing and fiction editing world not too far apart and not so long ago, I’ve had to come up to speed quickly…
The Productivity Monkey
by Deborah Walker
I don’t find productivity to be a one size fits all discipline. Sometimes a theory or technique just doesn’t resonate for me. For example, I’ve never got on with the Pomodoro technique, but some authors love it. I…
Open for Submissions: “A Matter of Time Science Fiction Bundle”
The SFWA Self Publishing Committee is happy to announce that we are open for submissions for the next SFWA Science Fiction StoryBundle, which will run from July 31st through August 20th. The theme for the bundle will be time travel. For those who…
More Writerly Than Thou
by Sandra M. Odell
I have struggled with the titanic highs and crushing lows of severe mental illness and PTSD most of my life, yet nothing quite prepared me for the psyche shitstorm that followed the release of my second collection,…
SFWA Market Report For March
Welcome to the March edition of the SFWA Market Report. Please note: Inclusion of any market in the report below does not indicate an official endorsement by SFWA.