FundsforWriters - December 3, 2016 - The Risk of Oversharing

Published: Fri, 12/02/16

Volume 16, Issue 49 | DECEMBER 3, 2016

Message from the Editor

It's getting cooler on the lake but is still quite pleasant. Note, still able to wear long sleeves and no jacket. In our neck of the woods, that's what we call chilly. We put an LED Christmas tree on the dock to be seen on the cove, along with eight other neighbors. Makes our piece of the lake quite holiday-ish. Hope to get you a picture of that soon!

C. Hope Clark
Editor, FundsforWriters
Email Hope | Visit Website | Sign up for Newsletter
Newsletter: ISSN: 1533-1326
FFW has proudly been on the Writer's Digest's 101 Best Websites for Writers list every year since 2000

Our subscriber list is NOT made available to others. Use information listed at your own risk. FundsforWriters gives no warranty to completeness, accuracy, or fitness of the markets, contests and grants although research is done to the best of our ability.

TWITTER - http://twitter.com/hopeclark
AUTHOR SITE - http://www.chopeclark.com
FACEBOOK - http://www.facebook.com/chopeclark
GOODREADS - http://www.goodreads.com/hopeclark
BOOKBUB - https://www.bookbub.com/authors/c-hope-clark

SPONSOR OF THE WEEK

At FanStory you'll get:

Feedback for everything you write.
Contests with cash prizes. Over 50 every month!
Fun. Be a part of a writing community that supports writers of all skill levels.
Find out More | Watch Our Video

Here are some of the Upcoming Contests with cash prizes.

Etheree Poetry
Write a ten line poem that has a specific syllable count. Cash prize goes to the winner of this contest. Deadline is this Thursday, Dec. 8th

Quinzaine Poetry
A quinzaine a poem has three with fifteen syllables. No rhymes. It follows the 7/5/3 format. So the first line of your poem has 7 syllables, the second line has 5, and third line has 3. Cash prize. Deadline: Dec. 14th..

Love Poem Poetry Contest
Write a poem of any type that is a love poem. Deadline is Dec. 20th.

Christmas Story and Christmas Poetry Contests
Ho Ho Ho. Enter the Christmas Contests. Deadlines are Christmas Day.

This is just a few of our contests. View our full listing here. Find out more about FanStory here .

Editor’s THOUGHTS

TAKING THE RISK OF OVERSHARING

In these days of Snapchat and Wattpad, where writers post their writing in hopes that someone will enjoy the work enough to then want to throw money at anything else the writer has written, we have been lulled into believing that the more we post online, the more we will be loved. And the more money we will make.

That's from the writer's standpoint. Now put yourself in a reader's shoes. Is that really how you find books to read? You may have done that once, but as a whole, where do you find your reading material?

There is a fine line between sharing too much and not sharing enough. On the one hand, we want to be seen, and in this day where writers are shouting their throats raw trying to be heard, we think we have to shout, too. So we do anything we can, to include posting our work for free. The Marilyn Monroe syndrome is rampant. We hope that we are so darn good that we're seen by someone with the power and authority to sweep us up and make us famous.

Then there are those who simply put their book on Amazon and cross their fingers. The complete opposite of the over-sharers. They are afraid of embarrassing themselves by trying to be seen and heard, so they just post the book and pray.

We have to promote. We have to steadily promote, be seen, and be heard. However, we don't want to give it away so often that our readers know that if they wait long enough, they'll get more of our work for free again. Because today's world abounds with free and very cheap book discounts, readers have little need to pay full price for anything.

Be professional in your promotion. Find your brand. Be polished and rock-solid consistent in who you are and what you write. Giveaways are supposed to be strategic, orchestrated, and done with a specific result in mind other than make more money. You want readers to want to read you . . . but you also need them to pay for the privilege.

WE HAVE 2 NEWSLETTERS - THE FREEBIE and THE PAID SUBSCRIPTION . . .

Remember that FundsforWriters, this newsletter, is free. Send it to whomever you like and share it liberally. But if you are serious about writing income resources, and your time is limited, consider subscribing to TOTAL FundsforWriters. It comes out biweekly, with 70 contests, markets, grants, retreats, publishers, freelance gigs, magazines and more, It's huge, but it saves you a lot of time searching. It's $18.75 for a year, or 26 issues. To subscribe, simply go to www.paypal.me/chopeclark/18.75 . It will be sent to the email you used unless you specify otherwise.

NOTE TO THE WISE: Send a receipt for one of Hope's books and receive TOTAL for free.
(**and feel free to steal this graphic for your own site!)

Upcoming Book Signings and Classes! (All times in Eastern.)

  Dec 18 - WritersChatroom.com chat - 7 PM
Jan 2 - Night Harbor Book Club, Chapin, SC - 7 PM
  Feb 24-26 - Deckle Edge Festival, Columbia, SC
  Mar 12 - Kapok, FL Writers Conference - all day

WORDS OF SUCCESS

Being afraid to fail is what prevents many of us from trying something new, putting ourselves out on a limb. It often stops us singing, running, working for an exam or telling a joke in company. ... Just in case we feel foolish. Just in case we make a mess of it.

~ Rev. Lucy Winkett
British Anglican priest, Rector of St James's Church, Piccadilly and a professional soprano

ECHOES OF EDISTO
# 3 in THE EDISTO ISLAND MYSTERY SERIES
http://www.chopeclark.com/

Edisto Island is a paradise where people escape from the mainstream world. Yet for newly sworn-in Edisto Police Chief Callie Jean Morgan, the trouble has just begun . . .

When a rookie officer drowns in a freak crash in the marsh, Callie’s instincts tell her it wasn’t an accident. As suspects and clues mount, Callie’s outlandish mother complicates the investigation, and Callie’s long-time friendship with Officer Mike Seabrook takes a turn toward something new—but is shadowed by the unsolved mystery of his wife’s death. Everyone’s past rises to the surface, entangling with death that cuts to the bone.

"Author C. Hope Clark brings to life the uniqueness that is Edisto, peppering the island with endearing and strong-minded characters that linger in your mind long after the last page is turned." --Karen White, New York Times Bestselling Author, www.karen-white.com

"To date, I believe Echoes of Edisto is C. Hope Clark's best book. I have been wrapped up in her previous books but she hits a personal note in this one that grabbed my heart in a rare way, especially for a mystery book."



	As always, purchase any of Hope's books and receive a one-year subscription to TOTAL FFW free. Send receipt to hope@fundsforwriters.com

Success Story

Dear Hope,

Once more your timely information helped me win kudos for my writing and publication! I have been a long time fan of FundsforWriters and have had success winning a couple of contests as I continue to hone my craft. A few months ago, I pulled out a few of your newsletters as I had gotten behind in reading them. Your listing for the New Millennium's 42nd Contest excited me, but the deadline was just a couple of days away. I thought back to the many times you have encouraged readers to just sit down and write. No excuses! I did and to my delight my short, short, "Tsunami," was named a fiction short, short finalist and has been published by Panoply, a wonderful online literary magazine. Your newsletter, along with your words of wisdom are an added benefit to all writers. Thank you for what you do!

Ginger Marcinkowski

https://www.newmillenniumwritings.org
https://panoplyzine.com

To Essay or Not to Essay

By Alex J Coyne

About the sites -

If you’re one of many who haven’t heard of essay writing sites, at their core they’re content mills for students - but with the ethics of desperate writers and lazy students thrown out the window.

iWriteEssays.com offers to write high school and college papers, admissions, dissertations and theses. They charge students between $12.50 to $48/page, depending on the student’s deadline and type of piece. On the high end, they claim being able to provide a paper in eight hours at the right price.

“We can write anything from high school to PhD level.” says Brandon S., a member of the iWriteEssays support team. What does this mean for writers? “Writers receive compensation based on the number of pages they write,” he says, noting that some websites have a set rate and others will pay based on the demand for that particular paper.

A quick search unearths hundreds of these sites. Essaywriters.net promises writers their best efforts towards “making your freelance writing jobs easy, efficient (and) highly paid.” Another, EssayShark.com, allows writers to set their own pay for the order. StudyBay.com claims an average rate of $120 offered by students. 4Writers.com offers writers “up to $16/page” – but they’re not currently accepting new writers.

Posing as a student, I asked Brandon S. if an essay I ordered through an essay site could get thrown out. “Yes,” he admitted. “Presenting someone else’s work as your own is a form of plagiarism.”

Then I asked: “Have you ever had trouble?”

He replied, “No. Our services are confidential. There is no way for professors and teachers to tell that the essays are written by an essay writing agency.”

Good to know they’re aware of this themselves, then . . .

An author’s perspective -

“One word: Unethical,” says Ruth E. Thaler-Carter, a member of Editors Association of Earth .

Sarah Varnam, the owner of a Toronto-based content creation and editing company, agrees. “Sites that provide restructuring of arguments, or even worse, complete re-writes or essays for money are, indeed, highly unethical. Not only are you putting your professional image at risk, as plagiarism is a serious offense, but the student is defying the purpose of higher education."

She’s been contacted by students who want her to write their papers for them before. “It always saddens me that they have no respect for learning. Depending on the subject, the graduate who doesn’t actually know their subject matter could cause harm.” She’s also noticed that the pay for work on these sites is often sub-par considering the amount of work expected from desperate writers.

For legitimate copyediting jobs for students, author Ryan Dunlop suggests talking to professors and thesis advisers to find out what’s allowed – or not.

Has a student really earned their degree if the work isn’t theirs? Before saying yes to writing for an essay-writing site, consider how you would feel if the doctor about to operate on you passed on a thesis written by a writer just like you!

BIO
Alex J Coyne is an author, freelance journalist and blogger. He has contributed to publications and blogs like People Magazine SA, Writers Write, The Penny Hoarder, The Dollar Stretcher, The Investor and more. As fiction author, he was included in NB Publishers' horror anthology Skrik op die lyf. https://alexcoyneofficial.wordpress.com/

COmpetitions

DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT LOVE CONTEST
http://donttalktomeaboutlove.org/contest/
$20 ENTRY FEE.
First prize $1,000. Three honorable mentions guaranteed publication. What does LOVE mean to you? We want your poetry exploring love in any of its myriad expressions: romantic, platonic, parental, and much, much more. We know there is a whole world of love out there, and we want to read about it. See last year’s winner and honourable mentions to get a sense of what we are looking for. All submitted works must be original and unpublished. All works that have been published in print or on the Internet, including self-published works, as well as works that have been broadcast or taped are considered previously published and are therefore ineligible for submission. Poems must be written in English. For each entry send one to three poems of up to 75 lines. Deadline January 15, 2017.

WUNDOR SHORT FICTION CONTEST
https://wundoreditions.submittable.com/submit/68814/wundor-short-fiction-contest-2017
£10 ENTRY FEE.
Deadline February 28, 2017. Whether you have a single piece of work, a collection of pieces or a brilliant novella on your hands, we would like to read it. The only stipulation is that the sum total word count of your submission should fall between 5,000 and 45,000 words. The winner of our inaugural short fiction contest will receive £500. The winner and two runners up will have their work published in full or an extract will be published on the Wundor website. Their work will be strongly considered for publication in print, in which case a publishing contract will be offered.

PUBLISHIZER QUEERLY LIT CONTEST
https://publishizer.com/contests/queerly-lit/
NO ENTRY FEE.
Do you identify as an LGBTQ author, or are you writing stories with LGBTQ themes and characters? Submit both fiction and nonfiction book proposals here in the month of January. All entries must be book proposals written in English and 1,000 words long. Publishizer will only accept unpublished works. Contest entries must be submitted, approved and launched online on Publishizer within the specified month of each contest to qualify. Each contest has a cash prize of $2,000 and may be subject to local, state and federal taxes. Publishizer takes only a 30 percent commission of all pre-order sales at the end of the crowd-publishing campaign.

THE HORROR NOVELIST
www.inkitt.com/horrornovelist?utm_source=cl_fundsforwriters
No Entry Fee
Submit your finished horror novel with 40,000+ words by December 8, 2016. Top 10 percent in the genre contests will be moved on to the Final Round where they will have a chance to win the grand prize of $1,000.

GRANTS

ARTIST TRUST GRANTS - WASHINGTON ARTISTS
https://www.artisttrust.org/
The Artist Trust is accepting applications for its Artist Fellowships program, which provides grants of $7,500 to practicing professional Washington artists of exceptional talent and ability. In 2017, fellowships will be awarded in the cross-disciplinary, performing, traditional/folk, visual, and emerging arts. In addition to fourteen fellowship recipients, one artist in each artistic category will receive a one-month residency at the Millay Colony of the Arts in upstate New York as well as a $1,000 stipend. Applicants must be generative artists 18 years of age or older by the application deadline. In addition, all applicants must be residents of Washington State at the time of application.

GELL RESIDENCY
http://wab.org/gell-center-residencies-2/
Writers & Books, the independent literary center in Rochester, New York, will offer one grant in 2017 to writers with families. This $2,500 grant covers, travel, lodging at Gell: A Finger Lakes Creative Retreat, and food, and it is designed to allow two writers with young children to travel with their families. The residency at Gell will for be up to two weeks, and writers are expected to write, edit, or revise their manuscript (all genres welcome). Deadline January 31, 2017.

MARBLE HOUSE PROJECT
http://www.marblehouseproject.org/
Through Artist Residencies, Sustainable Agriculture and Community Engagement, Marble House Project fosters the exchange of ideas and nurtures the imaginative spirit. With a focus on conservation of natural resources, integration of small-scale organic food production and the arts, residents sustain their growth by cultivating and participating in the surrounding grounds, working on their artistic vision and forging partnerships within the community. Marble House Project is a multi-disciplinary artist residency program located in Dorset, Vermont. Applications are accepted in all creative fields.

FREELANCE MARKETS

THE WAR CRY
http://www.sanationalpublications.org/submission-guidelines/
The War Cry, now in its 135th year, represents the Army’s mission through news, profiles, commentaries and stories. Payment made at time of acceptance. $0.35 per word for first rights, one-time use articles. $0.15 per word for reprints. Submit articles for a particular theme 60 days prior to the issue date. Please limit these submissions to 800–1,250 words. Special Christmas and Easter Holiday editions focus on the meaning of the seasons, and include riveting accounts of spiritual rebirth. Submit 6 months prior to the publication of these issues.

TOASTMASTER MAGAZINE
https://www.toastmasters.org/Magazine/Submissions
The Toastmaster magazine prizes originality, depth of research, timeliness and excellence of expression. The magazine accepts unsolicited article submissions via email. Toastmasters International is a world leader in communication and leadership development. Our organization has more than 345,000 memberships. Members improve their speaking and leadership skills by attending one of the 15,900 clubs in 142 countries that make up our global network of meeting locations.

FAMILY TREE MAGAZINE
http://www.familytreemagazine.com/article/writersguidelines
Family Tree Magazine is a special-interest consumer magazine that helps readers discover, preserve and celebrate their family's history. We cover genealogy, ethnic heritage, personal history, genealogy websites and software, photography and photo preservation, and other ways that families connect with their past.

JOBS

CONTENT STRATEGIST
Employer PayPal
https://jobsearch.paypal-corp.com/en-US/job/-/J3L71N6DZJXGCJ0V5XX
Our Global Content team is looking for a Content Strategist / Writer who is more than a copywriter. We need a storyteller, a design thinker, and a guardian of the user experience who meets customer needs with clear, consistent, and compelling content. Five+ years of professional writing experience, with 3 years writing web and mobile content, preferably for interactive user experiences. Location San Jose, California.

CREATIVE WRITER FOR HEALTH AND FITNESS INTERNET COMPANY
http://www.indeed.com/cmp/Burn20-LLC/jobs/Creative-Writer-Editor-Health-Fitness-Internet-Company-ffbfaae24823b364
Your responsibilities will include writing and scheduling social media posts, headlines, articles, emails, and advertisements in the health and fitness industry, that get results using persuasive language. This is a full time in-house position. You will be required to work in our Hallandale Beach, Florida office.

Publishers/agents

WHITE MANE KIDS
http://www.whitemane.com/submit-book-proposal/
Publishes historical based children's fiction for middle grade and young adult readers. Each book contains accurate historical information while captivating the readers with fascinating stories. White Mane Kids™ does not, however, publish picture books at this time.

TRADEWINDS BOOKS
http://tradewindbooks.com/authors-illustrators/submission-guidelines/
Tradewind Books is a publisher of books for children and young adults. We are especially interested in authors and illustrators of diverse backgrounds. Tradewind cannot accept novels by non-Canadian authors unless they are chapter books to be illustrated. We can accept submissions for picture books; however, we do very few picture books each year.

SUNBURY PRESS
http://www.sunburypress.com/CallforAuthors.html
Sunbury Press is a rapidly growing publisher of a wide range of categories. We are always seeking new titles to publish including: history, historical fiction, police procedurals, crime thrillers, horror, steam punk, young adult, children's, current events, science, reference, art history, ANY local/regional history, humor, spiritual/metaphysical, self-help, professional, memoirs, etc. If we didn't mention your category - try us anyway! We typically receive approximately 1,000 proposals a year, publishing roughly 50 of them (about 5 percent). We choose to invest in those opportunities that we feel have the best chance in the current marketplace.

SOUL MATE PUBLISHING
http://www.soulmatepublishing.com/pages/Submission-Guidelines.html
We are actively seeking authors who can tell an exciting story and aren’t afraid to venture into new territory. We encourage novels that are original and blur the genre lines. Soul Mate Publishing is a royalty-paying publisher currently accepting submissions for the following Romance Genres: Action/Adventure, Chick Lit, Contemporary, Erotica, Fantasy, Historical, Inspirational, New Adult, Novellas, Paranormal, Sci-Fi/Futuristic, Suspense/Thriller, Time Travel, Urban Fantasy, Women’s Fiction, Young adult.