Category: writing

Is an Editor Necessary?

~ Jim Flanigan ~ 1 Comment

In a word – YES! I’ve come a long way as a writer in the 8+ years since I started practicing writing on this blog. I’ve won a couple awards, been published, and think I’ve improved as a writer. Regular readers of this blog may disagree with good reason.

So, it should come as no surprise that I now use my editor/cousin/godmother/writing mentor less and less. I think I write better now. Who needs an editor? Plus, I feel guilt. I have never paid her a dime for her services. The problem is that even when I send something to her just to read and specifically ask her not to edit, she can’t resist editing. And she’s an excellent, although brutal, editor. She does not pull punches with me. Her editing is outstanding, and I value her general opinion of my writing even more. But still, I don’t want to take advantage of her skills. Sure, I send her a box of orthopedic socks at Christmas, but is that really enough? Probably not. Maybe I should consider a membership for her in the Jelly of the Month Club.

I blogged about a FREE micro-fiction contest. Hey, you writers out there. Yeah, you. Write, dammit. Bookmark that website and enter their next contest. What have you got to lose? I entered. And did I need a professional edit after 3 stories of just 100 words each. Well, 2 stories I wrote were kind of dopey, so I didn’t care about them so much. The third story I kind of liked. I thought it had some legs. I couldn’t screw up 100 words, could I? Here it is. You be the judge.

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The Return of Jim’s Poetry Corner

~ Jim Flanigan

I told you about the humorous poetry contest I was entering. I hope you sent in something, anything. Maybe just some random words that you scribbled down on a napkin to avoid talking to your dinner partner while waiting for your order of Tom Yum Goong to be served at that Thai restaurant on the other side of town. Hey, the contest was free. You had nothing to lose.

And now the contest deadline has passed, so I may as well share foist upon you my entry. I didn’t know what to write about or how to write it. My OCD leanings tend to make me want to rhyme. But I know “modern poetry” is a free-for-all. Rhyming is passé. So, I wrote a poem about that, even dragging revered poet E.E. Cummings into my hodgepodge of words meant to pass for a poem.

I reluctantly present to you “The Challenge of Writing Poetry After Parochial School.” You can press the + sign below to make the print larger if you really want to read it.

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Writing for an Oscar

~ Jim Flanigan

Do you ever think about one of the novels you have written coming alive on the silver screen with Hollywood elites like Pauly Shore and Lindsay Lohan as the stars and Roseanne Barr in a cameo role as a dumpster fire? What’s that? You haven’t written your novel yet. Well, why the hell not? Write it now. I can vouch for Chicagoland being covered in a thick blanket of snow that won’t be gone until July. There’s nothing else to do but stay inside and write. If you don’t have a novel, maybe you have a novella, short story, or random shapes and pseudo-gibberish scribbled on a napkin. Hollywood is out of ideas these days. As soon as the shooting stops on a film, a remake begins immediately. Your writing is needed.

Well, here’s a screenwriting challenge you may wish to consider.

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Get Unblocked!

~ Jim Flanigan ~ 4 Comments

Winter should be a great time to write. For me, winter is also a time for me to be seasonally depressed, so my writing does not flow nicely like pus from a lanced boil. That’s more of how I feel in the winter – like a lanced boil. It doesn’t help that we just had our first snowfall of substance this weekend, and there’s more snow forecasted on the way this week. Gross.

So, I thought I’d force my writing hand by looking for writing contests with deadlines coming up soon. There are plenty, but most seemed to require more effort than I am willing to give. That resolution I made to relaunch my writing career may be more difficult than I thought.

Then I found this writing contest …

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