I entered a story into a local competition this week.
Flash fiction, under a thousand words.
Fewer than 20 competitors.
I lost.
A rejection from a major magazine doesn’t sting. They’re a major magazine. Even the best get rejections from them. But a rejection from a local contest where I’m not even better than a score of people IN MY AREA? That hurts.
That hurts a lot.
So, at the end of March, I submitted a poem to the Common Language Project’s annual poetry anthology at The Writer’s Garret, in which everyone has to write a poem of 30 lines or less, all using the same 30 words, and based on a theme.
The Common Language Project: Fortune
Mine was one of the poems selected.
They’re paying me $50, which is more than I’ve ever been paid for a story. (I did get a $50 gift card for a story once, but it’s not the same thing as actually getting paid.)
24 lines, 244 words. That works out to $2.08 per line or 20.5 cents per word.
It’s a sad little poem, entitled “Saying Goodbye to My Dog.”
If you’re interested, you can download the free PDF of the whole anthology here.
I published a short story on Amazon for the Kindle.
Next weekend, I’ll try to get it up on Smashwords as well.
Here’s the cover:
