I write mostly poetry but when I do compose a short story
I send it to Glimmer Train if at all
possible. I admire and respect the co-editors of Glimmer
Train, Susan Burmeister-Brown and Linda Swanson-Davies. As I do with all submissions to Songs of Eretz (regular and contest),
these sisters read and personally respond to every submission to the many
submissions that their magazine receives every year. Glimmer Train pays
seven hundred dollars for every story it accepts for publication; contest
winners are awarded between two and three thousand dollars. Glimmer
Trains’ fee for a non-contest submission is only two dollars and its fee
for contests is only eighteen dollars. Find out more about the offerings of Glimmer Train here: www.GlimmerTrain.com.
As a thank you bonus for entering
a Glimmer Train contest, the entrant
may choose from several scholarly works from its sister publication, Writers Ask. After entering a contest myself, I chose to receive and had
the pleasure to enjoy the forty-page educational collection of interviews Writers & Their Reading. The collection compiles the responses
of several dozen writers as to what books influenced their writing and how
important reading is for them and for writers in general. The universal answer was that not just
reading but voracious reading of quality literature is essential if one is ever
to succeed as a writer. Every
writer stressed this, even the few that curtailed their reading while they themselves
were engaged in writing so as not to have another author’s voice influence
their own voices.
Sadly, reading and the
concentration and focus it requires to do properly may have become a lost
art. Interviewee Steve Almond
laments that if people from our era were to be transported 150 years back in
time they would all be considered to have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD or
hyperactivity). He postulates that
members of our screen worshiping generation would certainly become restless and
fidgety if forced to sit in the parlor to listen to the latest stories being
read aloud or to read to themselves the recent works of some of the great
authors of that time. That is a
wake up call if I have ever heard one!
