#WriteronWriting

[mandirapattnaikwriter]

WINNER OF 2025 O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction BUSTS SOME WRITING MYTHS

in spite of bending and breaking quite a few rules of literary fiction writing, “The Stackpole Legend” manages to be a hugely satisfying read “The Stackpole Legend” (Wendell Berry, The Threepenny Review) is not your conventional short story. Reading it can be revealing, especially to new and emerging writers. I say this because it busts so many myths early writers accept as gospel truth. Let us…

[scriptwriters-network]

Creative Writing Challenge – April

This MONTHLY challenge is for those who want to work on writing new ideas and who would like to maintain a continuous creativity flow with your writing.

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[mandirapattnaikwriter]

How Poetry Inspires Fiction Writing: A Craft Essay

Special Blogpost for National Poetry Month As you may remember, for my last blogpost I had shared my special Poetry Month trampset column What Do Fiction Writers Do All through Poetry Month? I hope you enjoyed the list, and especially, if you are a fiction writer, I hope you’ve been inspired by item #10 Check out the column again. In it, I had referred to a poetry piece at list item #6, titled…

[mandirapattnaikwriter]

THE CREATIVE LIFE: How my creative journey taught me to live

GUEST BLOGPOST BY SUDEEPA NAIR, AUTHOR OF THE SERPENTS OF KANAKAPURAM FEBRUARY 21 2025 About six months before the pandemic shut us inside our homes, I quit my job. There was no single reason for the decision. It just felt right at that time. I gave myself until the end of the year to figure out what I would do next. I travelled to India for a short vacation and came back with no particular…

[mandirapattnaikwriter]

Through an Editor’s Eyes: The Joys and Realities of Running a Literary Magazine

GUEST BLOGPOST BY NAMRATA, EDITOR OF SINGAPORE-BASED KITAAB FEBRUARY 09 2025 There’s something magical about opening a fresh submission—a story waiting to be read, a voice waiting to be heard. As the editor of Kitaab, a South Asian literary magazine based in Singapore, I have had the privilege of witnessing the raw, unfiltered creativity of writers from all walks of life. Five years on, and the…

[scriptwriters-network]

Social Virtual Networking Event – February 1st - This Saturday!

Join us for interactive networking where aspiring and seasoned writers come together to connect with like-minded creatives, engage in stimulating discussions, and provide valuable insights.

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[mandirapattnaikwriter]

“The goal isn’t to be happy with my voice. What I want is simply to have one.”

First of all, I want to thank you all for the tremendous response to the year’s first blogpost “Best Platforms for Finding Submission Calls in 2025” that linked to 500+ open submission calls. I hope you found some great opportunities to send your work to. The post, I believe, found the traction that it did because, of all the opportunities that it listed, almost 90% were free to submit. Without…

[mandirapattnaikwriter]

Best Platforms for Finding Submission Calls in 2025

500+ SUBMISSION OPPORTUNITIES! SUBSCRIBERS EXCLUSIVE! Happy New Year, writer friends! I’m sure you are writing and reading in 2025. Winter is such a nice time to spend more time cozying up with a book. Or, drafting new stories just because it feels a perfect time to do so! Are you looking for places to submit your work now that you have pieces ready, or a manuscript looking for its perfect…

[mandirapattnaikwriter]

2024's Best Flash Fiction: And why I love them

I had the toughest time choosing these stories. Thank you, flash fiction writers, for making this so difficult. For this year’s list, I chose risk-taking and experimental flash. I felt we needed to reassess what we are putting out there–I felt we needed to ask ourselves if we, as writers, are producing literature that enables and sparks dialogue. I strongly advocate starting meaningful…

[mandirapattnaikwriter]

Should a Small Press Book Have Big Ambitions? Part 2

Photo by fatemeh zakeri on Unsplash One of the other topics that I feel should be talked about more in literature is solitude or loneliness. Both mean the same — the state of being alone, without company, whether physical or mental. But, while referring to this issue in writing, we should remember that solitude is a choice, that is to be alone and content, while loneliness is a feeling of…

[mandirapattnaikwriter]

why am I pulling out of social media? (and it has nothing to do with us-elections!)

GROWING A SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE: HOW IMPORTANT IS IT FOR A LITMAG WRITER? I am sure most of you are on social media and having a ‘Following’. I am on Twitter and Instagram but not on Facebook. Five years ago, when I started out as a ‘litmag’ writer (aka had my first publication in an international literary magazine), I was told having a social media presence would be a pre-requisite. I wasn’t on…

[mandirapattnaikwriter]

explained--The alice munro-joyce carol oates-et al controversy

If you are a writer and not living under a rock, something or the other about the Alice Munro controversy has since reached you. Do you really care about the personal being mixed with the public life of a writer, or if the creative choices are guided and informed by private relationships, or is writing, especially fiction, completely untouched by how the writer has lived their life? These are…

[mandirapattnaikwriter]

hi friends! i need to share something...

Hope you have been enjoying (and learning something new!) from my craft essays, prompts, example stories and submission tips. As some of you who have been with me from the very beginning know, I really find this exercise in essay-writing naturally fulfilling and see it as a means of contributing to the flash fiction writing community. If you are like me, who could never afford any workshops…

[mandirapattnaikwriter]

Crafting Narratives through Objects: A Practical Guide to objectification & objectivity

Subscribe for monthly craft essays Type your email… Subscribe Let me begin this month’s blogpost with a poem. I suppose I am still recovering from Poetry Month’s poet interviews. In case my missed April’s highly inspirational blogpost with interesting anecdotes, useful advice and more, find it here. FORK / Charles Simic (b. 1938)This strange thing must have creptRight out of hell.It resembles…

[mandirapattnaikwriter]

Seasonal: Writing About the Seasons

MONTHLY BLOGPOST Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com Introduction: I am sure, as fiction writers, you’ve ‘played’ with the seasons. Maybe you have started a story like this “I don’t remember the first kiss. I do remember the walk back through the woods, the feeling of his arm round my shoulder, the excited fizz of that. At a certain point we stopped and he kissed me. But I don’t remember what that…

[mandirapattnaikwriter]

One-Liners: Where you just can't go wrong

MONTHLY BLOGPOST Introduction: One sentence stories are built on that convergence of thoughts where much is left to the imagination, and yet what is said is profound and blindingly brilliant. To write that one sentence, the writer may have written many and pondered over volumes, and still that was what one had to offer: a single sentence, distilled from the remnants of all that one amalgamated.…