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There is a wonderful book by Dorothea Brande called Becoming A Writer, published in 1934, but still widely read today and often cited. In it Brande talks about developing two selves for the writer, a split personality, with one self being a creative, sensitive and artistic person and the other being a detail-obsessed sharp minded editor. The two ...

For Cory Doctorow it has attracted a great deal of attention to his work that he would likely not have received otherwise. If he has twenty times as many readers, but the proportion who pay for the text they read drops from, say, 70% to 10%, there is still about three times the turnover. Is it good for you? Some considerations: If you care about ...

I can't say if it's reasonable or not, but it's not unheard of. There is also the fact that the editor does like your story. The biggest pro of going through with this is that you get your story published, but is it worth it? As you said, you are changing the timbre of the piece, and if it makes it something you're not happy with it might not be worth doing ...

The standard initial market for a short story is a literary magazine. Famous examples include The New Yorker for literary fiction and poetry. For science fiction and fantasy genres, notable options include Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's, and others. As a general rule more prestigious magazines are able to be more choosy on what they end up ...

Check out Overcoming Writer's Block. It's hard as hell, but you have to push past it and keep writing. You've got be prepared to let your first draft suck. Finish it, and then edit it. Maybe leave yourself little notes as you work through it: "This sucks, but I'll fix it in the redraft", and keep going. Whatever you do, keep going.

If "100k" and "50k" are word-counts (and in this context, that's certainly what I'd expect), that's "novella" (for ~50k words) up to "novel-length" (at 100k words). According to FictionFactor's word-count page, a "short story" is typically between 1000 and 7500 words, "novel" spans the 50k to 110k word span and novellas clock in at the 20k to 50k word mark. ...

It depends on the magazine. Many publications have submission guidelines, and you might check those for what anything required in the cover letter. I found an interesting variety of requests with a few minutes of googling. Asimov's Science-Fiction is clear on what they want: Your cover letter should contain the length of your story, your publishing ...

I'd be hard pushed to think of any other well-known authors who do this at present but I think it may become, as they say, a thing. Here's my perspective. Kindles and the like are becoming more and more popular, so electronic distribution of books is becoming easier. The author has two enemies, the enemy of the popular author is piracy or thievery, people ...

"Just write" is the first part of your answer. You have to kick your personal editor out of your head while writing. He is silencing your voice of creativity, so silence him! You need him after you have written everything down, not before and not while you are writing. The second part is: find other critics. Not your friends, not your family. People who ...

To give a more philosophical point of view, your opinion of your own work as a whole really doesn't matter. Finding out what you're doing relatively better and worse is important, as is having some way of knowing whether you're improving or not. Write, and let other people decide how good it is.

Have you ever looked back over your old writing? With a positive look? I caught myself going "This is a great turn of phrase" in some old email and then realized that email was mine! So... go back over your previous stuff and try to find the good bits. Don't dwell too much on the bad bits (you won't, very likely, be able to totally ignore it, natch). ...

Two tips for submissions (no matter how short the story is): Write just a letter/email and ask for permission to send them your story. In this letter (like in every cover letter) you should describe your story and yourself shortly and you should put in there, why they should publish your story. Why is it fantastic? Why do people really want to read it? ...

All the other answers are good and practical, but in a way they might be missing the most critical (pardon the pun) part. Writing is a very personal thing that exposes aspects of who you are (and of who you think you are - which may be quite different.) One approach to this might be to do some journaling. Ask yourself questions like the following ones and ...

Writer's Market publishes a few different books, including one for poets, which include listings of publishers, agents, magazines, contests, anthologies, etc. You can find them in most major bookstores. They come out once a year, but there are also listings available on their paid-subscription website: http://www.writersmarket.com/ . It's worthwhile noting ...

Not necessarily disagreeing with @Ralph's answer, but if you're interested in genre fiction you might want to search at Ralan's or Duotrope. (For example, Daily SF pays 8c a word for flash.) Many markets have upper limits but not necessarily lower limits for word counts.

There are very few, if any, paying markets for Flash Fiction. There's not really a large market for readers of flash fiction, so it's not worth the investment for most places to pay for them. A lot of authors usually only write flash fiction with the intent to give it away for free. It's a marketing tool. It gets the author's name out there and can get them ...

I would check on duotrope.com. They list a large number of publishers looking to publish individual poems, chapbooks, as well as full collections. You will be able to sort by genre, pay scales, and acceptance rates. Once you find a few possible publishers, find out what else they're publishing and if you think you'd fit with them.

This isn't a binary choice. You don't need to view this as a "take it or leave it" decision - this is something you can talk to your editor about. And you don't need to choose between your ending and your editor's proposed ending - you can write a third ending, a fourth, a fifth, a sixteenth if need be. Odds are, both you and your editor have valid ...

You might want to check out Poets & Writers http://www.pw.org/ It is a bi-monthly Magazine. And as it says on their home page: "If you’re looking for writing competitions, or literary magazines and small presses that welcome both new and established writers, begin here."

Sometimes the best advice for writing is: do more research. That might mean reading more books, interviewing more people, taking more classes, or engaging with different points of view. Debate. Argue (in writing) the big points and the little points. The hallmark of good writing (fiction or non-fiction) is clarity. Clarity comes from knowing your subject; ...

I would suggest going to Amazon.com and do a search for Poetry under their Books category. I did this and then sorted by Publication Date. This will give you a list of poetry books that have recently been published. I selected six and found three that are currently taking submissions, although you have just missed the deadline for one of them. Even so, you ...

I've just written a book and that same issue, needing lots of images from films to illustrate it. I'm going to assume that its some kind of 'educational' work in that its purpose is to teach people something, and in that case, according to my publisher it's okay to go ahead and use posters, promotional materials and screengrabs if the films are reasonably ...

I was wondering about this a couple of weeks ago. I am bogged down in a story and self-doubt was overwhelming me. How terrible the story was, how boring it was in places, &etc. I think most of us know the drill. I got the idea to write down the snarkiest possible review of the story. Absolutely vicious and truthful. Just doing that helped, but a little ...

I'm also working on a weekly publication, and struggle with a lot of the same feelings. I think that rather than trying to address the problem head-on, what has worked for me is to have a fairly strict but reasonable writing schedule that I stick to every day. Following the Seinfeld productivity method, I got myself a giant year calendar and mark the ...

There are quite a few paying markets for speculative flash fiction. Fewer for mainstream. And when I say "paying," that can mean as little as $10. However, look around and you'll find plenty of markets. Here's Absolute Write's list, but it's not all inclusive.

One of the better (and more effective) ways to start getting published is through one of the many legitimate competitions, of which there are many in just about every genre you can think of. The best resource I know in this regard is Winning Writers. It's chock full of good information and hosts several annual, legitimate competitions of its own (including a ...

I think the confusion may be coming from the degree title. It may be that the Master by Research is a masters degree based on existing ( or ongoing ) published research, which is possible, but implies existing published research. Research Publications mean peer-reviewed and published research work, in a set of standard journals (in IT, the ACM is the worlds ...

I'm not familiar with markets that specialize in flash fiction, though these may exist. However, if you feel you've got a worthwhile, marketable story, I think most venues are happy to consider flash fiction submissions. So if there's a market that would be appropriate for a story "if it were longer," it might be appropriate as-is, as well. I've seen ...

One of the things that a regular or consistent publishing schedule means is that not every piece of work you produce for it will be as good as each other, or even the last one. Sometimes, you will send, and have published, a duffer. Hopefully, you will get some feedback on them, to indicate the areas that others feel do not quite hit the mark. It will help ...