Whenever I hear about literary awards being bestowed on new works or see a list of prizes in an author’s book flap biography, I just allow the benefit of the doubt to take over.  I don’t know anything about most of the awards, but I assume they’re prestigious. Apparently I’m not alone:

The American Book Awards are different from the National Book Awards … how? Is it like a National League/American League-type of thing? Which is the one that Philip Roth is always nominated for? Don’t tell anyone, but before last week we did not know that the Booker was named for a corporation. We assumed it was a dude, or an affectionate British-y version of “bookworm.”

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Oi vey, getting published.  That’s the elephant in the room here in my graduate writing program.  We’re all working on becoming better writers, critiquing one another, reading a ton — it’s incredibly valuable time spent on self-improvement.  But let’s be honest, to what end?  Why are we all doing this?  Because we want to be published.  We want the validation that our work is worth something.  We want to be able to add some italicized names of magazines to our biographies.  We want to write…drum roll please…a book.

Whether or not connections are actually necessary to get published is a separate question.  But if you want to do something other than self-publish, you might have a tough time if you assume that the all-knowing, all-powerful internet can help you find a publisher. Read more »

Ficly is a new collaborative writing community based on the idea that writing doesn’t have to be something you do alone. As a member, you have the option to build on others’ story stubs, compose sequels and prequels to existing stories, or work on story challenges—and all in less than 1,024 characters. To put this number in perspective: that’s just over 7 Tweets. If Ficly sounds familiar to AOL’s short-lived writing community Ficlets, that’s because it is. Ficly was built by alums of the Ficlets developer team, who have dedicated a “memorial” section to their alma mater.

Normally I’d be a little hesitant about distributing my writing freely on the web. But Ficly is less about the writer than it is really about the story. And thanks to the 1,024 character limit, more than one writer is needed to put together a well-developed story. In a profession so focused on the individual, where some of the best work is done when no one is around, it’s refreshing to see a community that does just that: build community.

Check out Ficly for yourself and join here.