Sometimes the name they give you is all wrong. My paternal grandmother’s name was Nava, which, in Hebrew, translates to “beautiful.” In the biblical Song of Songs, it says, “Thou art beautiful [nava], O my love, as Tirzah, beautiful [nava] as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners.” By the time I met my Nava, she wasn’t quite beautiful, or terrible. She was essentially a shriveled up little raisin in a modest, tweed skirt and thirty-five-year-old glasses. She was certainly sweet and cute, and raisiny, but I’m not sure she was beautiful. I suppose at one time she was—her husband certainly thought so anyway. One day my father and I were talking about names, for some reason, children’s names; what… Continue >>
When your personal income for the year is $542, with $500 of that total coming from a tax write-off for donating a car to charity, you obviously have time to consider the world around you. You read a lot and start to notice patterns emerging in the culture you inhabit. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can wear you down. It may be better just to focus on yourself – as Warren Zevon sang shortly before his death “It’s the land of the brave and the home of the free…the less you know the better off you’ll be.” The cover of the magazine staring back at me is completely filled with a photo of Britney Spears face. The… Continue >>
Ever realized that the writing on the page is nowhere near as good as the idea in your head? You’re not alone…
pjmorledge.com is having a short story competition. Check it out.
Bob Jacobs has been the administrator and member of many successful online writing, creative writing and short story forums (fora??) and has written a great couple of articles about how you too can make it through the forest of critique and encouragement… Bob has previously had this short story featured on Backhand Stories.
I found a great little site that forces you to just… write. You are given a random word, and then sixty seconds to write whatever comes into your head. It’s a great little writing exercise. oneword.com Martin
I’ve had the pleasure of publishing a few pieces from members of Write Words, a great writing community based in the UK. They asked me to tell them a little more about Backhand Stories, so they’ve published a short interview with me about the site. You can read it here. Martin
I just stumbled upon this list of sites for writers to submit their work: http://socialmediatrader.com/resource-list-40-sites-for-writers/ Enjoy! Martin.