Tag: writing

Your First Full-Length Poetry Collection: One Poet’s Experience

Published on by Beatriz F.1 Comment

So… you’ve written several chapbooks and now your fellow poets are urging you to publish a full-length poetry book.  The first question that may come to mind is what’s the difference between a chapbook and a full-length collection?  Chapbooks are generally anywhere from 15-40 pages and are more focused–often devoted to a single theme, idea, or form.  Full length books tend to be longer, about 60-100 pages and cover a broader range of themes, representing a more expansive view of the poet’s work. 

Gathering enough poems for a full-length collection and then organizing them can be a daunting experience. After all, these are most likely poems you have published over the course of many years, perhaps decades.  Keep in mind that some of the poems can or most likely will be previously published, but a subsection of the content can also introduce new material. 

In my case, I had previously published three poetry chapbooks—each one very different from the previous one.  My first chapbook consisted mainly of persona poems written in the voice of historical, legendary and fictional female characters.  Over time, I had written more persona poems, including some of my personal favorites, as my writing expertise grew, and I shaped these into another chapbook which I submitted to contests.  This chapbook garnered much positive feedback and praise from editors and came close to winning several contests, named a finalist, honorable mention, runner-up, but never quite reaching the top spot. 

When I first conceived of creating a full-length collection, I naturally wanted to use many of the poems from this never-published chapbook, but I also wanted my new collection to include persona poems written in male voices, some written in response to the female-voiced persona poems, as well as many other types of poems.  I began to build the new book on the spine of the chapbook, which was divided into three sections united by a long narrative poem that served as the overarching thematic touchstone:   The Story of the Stones.” 

ORGANIZING YOUR POEMS

You can choose many ways to organize your poems:  theme, form or length, date written or covered, place, imagery, biographical significance or association.

I organized the sections roughly by the time period covered in the poem, be it fictional or historical, and gathered poems that addressed more modern times into the third section.  That way the tone and vocabulary of the poems wouldn’t create too stark a contrast with each other.  I also placed the pairs of response poems next to each other: Heloise/Abelard, Guinevere/Launcelot, Maid Marian/Robin, Sherlock Holmes/Irene Adler–some of which were published together for the first time.

The contents fell almost naturally into three roughly equal sections of 14-18 poems, each covering about 20 pages due to the varying length of the poems.  The order within each section was not strictly in chronological order.  In some cases, imagery from one poem links it to the next in a fluid fashion, but I did not agonize over the order of the poems too much. 

The reason for this is that I personally do not read poems in a collection in sequential order.  My natural instinct when I pick up a poetry book (or any book, really) is to open it a random page and begin reading.  If I am intrigued by what I read, then I continue, or backtrack, or jump ahead a few pages/chapters, sometimes to the ending. I very rarely read a book from beginning to end without skipping around.  The less I know exactly what is going on in the story, the more fun I find the reading process.

I know this approach may be anathema to some readers, but I think poetry books lend themselves to this random sampling method much better than novels, for example, and that may be why I’m a poet and not a novelist! 

TITLING YOUR FULL-LENGTH COLLECTION

Many poets use the title of one of the individual poems in the collection as the title of the whole because that poem is an important one for them personally or they use a line from one of the key poems in the collection.  In my case, I gathered the poems first and examined them as a group.  I knew I wanted to use” The Story of the Stones” (based on a visit to Stonehenge) as the central poem, but not as the title.  When I chanced upon the version of “Evening” by Rainer Maria Rilke (one of my favorite poets) translated by Stephen Mitchell, which ends “now bounded, now immeasurable/ it is alternately stone in you and star” I knew I had identified two key images that my poems returned to again and again and which for me defined the dichotomy of the human condition the poems celebrated.

The subtitle “Poems in Voices Across Time” was inevitable as I wanted to emphasize that most of these poems were in voices not my own and not necessarily from my time period.  I’ve always loved time travel as a fictional device and through my poems I travel from antiquity to the modern era. 

PLEASE YOUR FIRST READER:  YOURSELF

While there should be some rhyme and reason to the ordering of your book, it doesn’t necessarily have to please the masses.  You are a poet and a poetry reader—consult yourself first.  (Unless you are a perfectionist, in which case you may delay publication forever!) Do you like poetry collections organized a certain way?  Do you feel confused if the poems seem randomly grouped?  Do you feel there must be a central theme running throughout?  Do you enjoy reading poems arranged by alternating lengths? 

Above all, you should please yourself first when putting together your book.  There is no one “right” way and there are no poetry gods to be appeased.  Stretch that poetic license as far as you feel is desirable and necessary!

The best result is not if your book wins prizes or garners praise from others (although that is nice when it happens!), the most important thing is that you are proud of the resulting work and feel that it truly reflects your personal creative style.

One of my favorite poems from this new collection is somewhat appropriate to the month of October, as it combines gothic elements and hints of Frankenstein and applies them to Wuthering Heights. 

Emily Brontë Addresses Her Creation

            “But Fancy still will sometimes deem 
              Her fond creation true.”  ~ A Day Dream

I named you after the things I loved–
the heath I walked on every good day of my life,
the stone cliffs I climbed as a girl,

for yours was the companion spirit I found there,
your face the vision that hounded me,
when clouds churned across those wind-worn heights.

All that one soul calls forth in another,
I poured into you, my willing vessel
—and you in return guided my hand

more surely than any god could,
you who dared navigate the seas of Gondal
in my childhood, led armies across continents—

my melancholy gypsy boy, man of mystery,
you were both commander and commandment.
At times you wore my brother Branwell’s face—

not the playmate I lost to London Town,
but he who returned home in his place.
When I stood at the chasm of his grave

my mind full of fears I’d soon share
the dark refuge he found there,
I thought back to the first time

I penned your name—Heathcliff—
and wondered whether I did right
to birth what some would later claim

was a monster in the heather,
weave a cradle of bracken fronds
and release you on the fragile river of men—

where your lips declared desires
I dare not speak of, and your black heart
would out-beat mine.

Happy Halloween, readers!

Beatriz F. Fernandez is a poet and short fiction writer. Join me for my November 1st reading (along with Miguel Mitchell) as part of the Speculative Sunday Reading series!  Presented and moderated by Akua Lezlie Hope.
Readings are live on Zoom and tickets are free via the Eventbrite link.

Thank you for reading and please follow us here and on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/OLDSCRATCHPRESS/

Old Scratch Press’s latest publications: Old Scratch Press Catalog

Making the Most of One Poem… Part 3

Published on by dianneP2 Comments

One Poem, Several Posts

You’ve written a poem. You’ve revised it, probably more times than you’d care to admit. You’ve submitted it, waited for a response, and, if all went well, received the wonderful news that someone wants to publish it. You announce the publication on social media. Your friends congratulate you. Your mother shares the link. Someone you haven’t spoken to since high school gives it a thumbs-up. And then? Well, you write another poem, of course. And the first one disappears into the enormous pile of things people posted on the internet yesterday.

It doesn’t have to. In the first installment of this series, I talked about finding ways to extend the life of a published poem. In Part 2, I suggested recording yourself reading it aloud, an activity I personally rank somewhere between public speaking and wrestling an octopus. This time, let’s talk about something considerably less frightening: getting several social media posts out of one poem.

Several posts? About the same poem? Won’t people get sick of me? Possibly. If you post the same announcement six times in a row, you may test the patience of even your most devoted friends. But that’s not what I’m suggesting. A poem is more than a link to a literary magazine. It has a history, a subject, a voice, and, if you’re lucky, a line or two that might make someone stop scrolling for a moment. Each of those offers a different way to introduce readers to your work.

Start with the publication announcement.

This is the obvious one, and it’s worth doing properly. Name the magazine or journal, thank the editors, and give people a link to the poem. If the publication has a social media account, tag it. You don’t need to be excessively modest about this. Getting a poem published is an accomplishment, and you’re allowed to be pleased.

Share a line you particularly love.

A few days or a week later, choose a line or two from the poem and make that the focus of a new post. Maybe it’s the line that started the whole thing. Maybe it’s the one you fought with for three weeks before finally getting it right. Or maybe it’s simply a line you’re especially fond of. You could put the words over a photograph, use a simple background, or just type them into a post. Add a sentence about why you chose them, and link to the complete poem. One caution: Check your publication agreement before reproducing excerpts, particularly if the journal has exclusive rights for a period. Linking to the published poem is generally the safest approach.

Tell us where the poem came from.

I love hearing what inspires other writers, partly because the answers can be so wonderfully peculiar. A poem about grief might have started with a broken teacup. A poem about childhood might have begun with the smell of somebody’s basement. A poem about a bird might have absolutely nothing to do with birds. You don’t have to explain what the poem means. Readers should have room to bring their own experiences to your work. But you can tell us what prompted you to write it. Something like, “I wrote this after finding a grocery list in my grandmother’s handwriting. I hadn’t seen her handwriting in twenty years.” That’s a story. It gives readers another reason to be curious about the poem.

Let readers hear it.

If you followed the advice in Part 2 and recorded yourself reading the poem, you’ve already got another post waiting. You can share the video or audio recording with a short introduction. You might even mention something about how the poem sounds different when spoken aloud. And if you haven’t recorded it yet, there’s still time. The octopus can wait.

Ask a question.

Not every post needs to announce something. Suppose your poem concerns a childhood home. You might ask readers whether there’s a place from their childhood they still dream about. If it’s about an object you’ve kept for years, you could ask what ordinary thing they would never throw away. The question should grow naturally out of the poem, rather than feeling like a desperate attempt to generate engagement. You might get a conversation going. You might get three responses, one of which is from your cousin. Either way, you’ve given readers a way to connect with the subject of your work.

And don’t do all of this in one week.

This is important. I’m not suggesting that you turn every poem into a five-day publicity campaign. Space these posts out. Use the ideas that suit the poem and skip the ones that don’t. One poem might lend itself beautifully to a story about its inspiration. Another might have a striking line that’s perfect for sharing. A third might be best experienced aloud. You don’t have to use every suggestion, and you certainly don’t have to post on every platform. If you enjoy Instagram, use Instagram. If you prefer Facebook, use Facebook. If you have a newsletter, that’s another place to share the work.

The point is to give a poem more than one opportunity to find its readers. And remember that not everyone who follows you will see every post. Social media moves quickly, and even people who genuinely want to read your work may miss the original announcement. Sharing something again, in a new and interesting way, isn’t necessarily repeating yourself. It’s giving someone another chance to discover a poem they might love.

Next time: We’ll look at how a poem that’s already been published can find a second life through reprints, anthologies, contests, and other opportunities. Because publication doesn’t have to be the end of a poem’s journey.

And speaking of opportunities: There’s still time to submit to Instant Noodles! Our final issue of 2026 has an open theme, Author’s/Artist’s Choice, and we’re accepting poetry, flash fiction, flash nonfiction, visual art, and multimedia through November 7, 2026. Submissions are free, and the issue will be published December 1.

Read the submission guidelines and send us your work!

Explore the lively atmosphere of Little Italy, NYC, under a colorful, festive display on a sunny day.

October is Italian American Heritage and Culture Month in the U.S.!

Published on by abbernLeave a comment

Do you have a connection to Italy?
Do you want one?

My new book, Dreams of the Return, contains my poems, translations, stories, and photos based on my connections to Italy, especially southern Italy and Naples, where I lived in 1965 as a teenager attending liceo, and continuing through to the present day.

Published by Old Scratch Press in 2025, Dreams of the Return is available from Amazon:

For more information about the book, visit:

Dreams of the Return

If you’re looking for a gift for October or for the upcoming holiday season, I hope you’ll consider Dreams of the Return.

I send greetings and wish you well in these difficult times.

Alan Bern
Poetryandpics.com

Thanks for your interest in my work and my new book!

Alan Bern is a poet, writer, photographer, and retired children’s librarian whose work brings together poetry, prose, and visual art. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he is the author of three books of poetry, the hybrid fictionalized memoir In the Pace of the Path, and the chapbook because lack. His work has appeared in Third Street Review, EcoTheo Review, The Hyacinth Review, DarkWinter, Feral, and Porridge Magazine, among others. His recent honors include winning the 2022 Saw Palm Poetry Contest and being longlisted for The Bedford Competition in 2023. Alan is also a founding member of the Old Scratch Press collective. Please visit him.

Alan’s newest book, Dreams of the Return, is available from Old Scratch Press. The collection brings together poetry, prose, photography, memoir, and translations inspired by Alan’s lifelong connection to Italy, particularly Naples and Southern Italy.

Candlelit writing desk with handwritten pages, autumn leaves, books, and jack-o'-lantern

Flash Prose Submission Tips and October Publishing Opportunities

Published on by Nadja MarilLeave a comment

By Nadja Maril, a founding member of the Old Scratch Press

It’s October, the month of the harvest when the leaves turn vivid shades of red, orange and yellow before falling to the ground. Scores of literary publications have call-outs for scary stories to mark the Halloween season.

The celebration, from which Our Halloween evolved, is the Gaelic holiday Samhain. During Samhain, the curtain between the living and the dead was lifted for one night. Dressed as ghosts, people celebrating what became known as Halloween would go door-to-door to ask for food. Trick or Treat.

Scary is the goal. The carving of malevolent faces into pumpkins and the display of anything creepy outside your home was intended to calm the ghosts roaming the earth on October 31st. The creepier the better.

When it comes to submissions, many magazines including our own Instant Noodles Literary Magazine prize brevity. IF submission guidelines ask for stories less than 500 words, keep your submission below or as close to 500 words as possible. A short piece of fiction or nonfiction, should still be powerful and compelling to read.

Here are a few simple tips to get you started.

A close-up of a person's hand writing with a pen on a notebook, illuminated by soft light from a nearby candle.
Photo by furkanfdemir on Pexels.com
  1. Begin close to or with action. In a short piece you don’t have time for backstory.
  2. Write about one event, something simple but telling.
  3. Limit your characters. In a short piece there is no time for character development and too many characters will confuse the reader. Stay focused.
  4. Cut the adverbs. Look for all the words that end in “ly” such as slowly or carefully or quickly. You don’t need them. Choose a descriptive verb instead.
  5. Eliminate any filler words such as: just, almost, really, but.

If you’d like to read an example of a good piece of micro fiction, here is the link to the story that won the Fractured Fiction  2025 Micro Fiction prize.  “No Voltage on a Quiet Road” by Maxwell Orsen.

WRITING PROMPT: Think of a scene where something is about to change. A storm is coming. A thief is about to grab your protagonist’s wallet. How does the main character react? Are they changed by the experience? What made this situation explosive? What did they feel at the time? What were they thinking about?

At Instant Noodles Literary Magazine we are still reading submissions, but our “In Box” of fiction is getting full.  Ditto for our poetry submissions. There is more room in the Creative Nonfiction category.  To increase your odds of being published, I’ve put together a list of five more magazines you may want to consider submitting to via Duosoma this month.   https://duotrope.com/duosuma/    You can go directly to the Duosoma website to look for opportunities, but I recommend reading the magazines first to see if the writing they publish is writing you admire.

Inkhorn Review (reading poetry and short prose).

Iron & Salt Press  ( reading  horror and mystery flash short stories).

Macrame Literary Journal.  (reading poetry, fiction and micro fiction)

Bright Flash Literary Review (reading flash and short fiction)

Orion’s Belt  (Literary speculative fiction: reading poetry, flash and micro fiction).

If your work is repeatedly rejected, consider revising. Read it out loud sentence by sentence. Does each sentence provide action, description or surprise?

Keep writing and thank you for reading. Please follow us here on Word Press and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/OLDSCRATCHPRESS/

Check out our newest chapbooks by Beatriz Fernandez and R.David Fulcher.

English: Wendell Berry stands before the solar panels on his farm in Henry County, KY. Photo by Guy Mendes

We Recently Lost One of the Greats

Published on by virginiawattsLeave a comment

Wendell Berry was a beloved farmer and conversationalist, English professor, forest lover, and writer from the hills of Kentucky. He wrote about land and how mankind must strive to use it ethically. Berry came from a long line of tobacco farmers. His father was famous for cofounding a farming co-op that matched supply and demand. The co-op served the people it was meant to serve: small, hardworking farmers.

During his lifetime, Berry got behind causes he believed in. He protested the Vietnam War and nuclear power. He marched on Washington in 2009 as part of a protest to bring about cleaner emissions. He opposed mountaintop removal mining in Kentucky. He worried about what is lost in modernization. He fought to preserve land, regional economies, and human health in local communities.

His relationship with the University of Kentucky, where he taught, became strained when he withdrew papers he had loaned to the school after the university accepted $7 million from a coal producer.

Berry published over 50 books of poetry, fiction, and essays and received many prestigious honors for his writing, such as the T.S. Eliot Award and the National Humanities Medal. The message in all his work remained clear, essentially that man must live in harmony with the earth. He was against large-scale farming controlled by large corporations that relied on chemical pesticides and fertilizers, promoted soil erosion, depleted aquifers, and drove small farms out of business, destroying local communities in the process. He himself used horses to work his own land and used organic fertilizers and pesticides.

His poetry themes include the countryside, the routines of farm and family, and spirituality found in the natural world. It has been said of Berry that he ennobled the commonplace. Here are two of his most famous poems.

What We Need Is Here
by Wendell Berry

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes.
Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear in the ancient faith: what we need is here.
And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart,
and in eye, clear.
What we need is here.

Virginia Watts is the author of poetry and stories found in The MacGuffin, Epiphany, CRAFT, The Florida Review, Reed Magazine, Pithead Chapel, Eclectica Magazine among others. She has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize. Her debut short story collection Echoes from the Hocker House was short listed for 2024 Eric Hoffer Grand Prize, selected as one of the Best Indie Books of 2023 by Kirkus Book Reviews, and won third place in the 2024 Feathered Quill Book Awards. Please visit her.

Virginia’s new book is now available from Old Scratch Press:

Her prior poetry chapbooks Shot Full of Holes and The Werewolves of Elk Creek 

 are available from Moonstone Press. And her debut short story collection Echoes from the Hocker House is not to be missed!

IT’S LIT MAG WEEK!

Published on by diannePLeave a comment

It’s #LitMagWeek, a celebration of the independent literary magazines that give writers a place to take chances, find readers, and get their work out into the world.

Start with our own Instant Noodles Literary Magazine, sponsored by Current Words Publishing and curated by the Old Scratch Press Collective.

Then go exploring! Check out some of our fellow literary magazines celebrating this week:

F(r)iction
Mom Egg Review
The Dolomite Review
Midnight Mind Magazine

Read a lit mag. Discover a writer. Find something wonderful and weird.

Happy #LitMagWeek!

Current Words Publishing and Old Scratch Press congratulate 2026 Best of the Net Nominees

Published on by wyn001100Leave a comment

by Robert Fleming

Best of the Net 2026 Nominees

Visual Art selections by Robert Fleming and Alan Bern

Andy Gordon, Car Side View Mirrors

Joseph Barbella, Horse Power

Robert Fleming, Frozen Sanctuary

Creative Non-Fiction selections by Nadja Maril

Tamara-Lee Brereton-Karabetsos, From Cage to Street

Patty Perreault Bennett, Our Christmas Surprise 

Fiction / Flash Fiction selections by Anthony Doyle and David Fulcher

Liz deBeer, Cracked Pie Crust

Robert Fleming, Dairy Queen Jesus

Poetry selections by Beatriz Fernandez

Merilee Johnson, She Walks Train

Pat Roe, Love Me Some Gravy

David Lee, Gravy Boat Apocalypse

Rebecca O’Hagan, In Defence of Budget Airlines

Robert McAfee, Acela Blues

Jonathan Ukah, Aboard a Ryanair Flight

********************************************************************************************

Yours Truly is:

Robert Fleming, a contributing editor of Old Scratch Press

who published an Amazon best seller visual poetry book: White Noir

an editor of the digital magazine Instant Noodles

Thank you for reading. Please sign up to follow us on Facebook and to follow us here on WordPress to expand your knowledge about poetry and short form writing as well as to receive the latest news about publication opportunities.

Join the Masquerade! Writing Persona Poetry

Published on by Beatriz F.Leave a comment

If you’ve never written a poem in any voice but your own, you might want to try writing a persona poem—it may lead you down unexplored paths of creativity!

The Academy of American Poets defines a persona poem thus:

“A persona poem is a poem in which the poet speaks through an assumed voice….Also known as a dramatic monologue, this poetic form shares many characteristics with a theatrical monologue: an audience is implied; there is no dialogue; and the poet takes on the voice of a character, a fictional identity, or a persona.”

The voice you adopt when you write a persona poem can be a fictional, imaginary or historical character, an animal, an inanimate object, a collective such as a country, or even an omniscient god-like voice.  This is when the fun begins!

In “Richard the Lionheart’s Mummified Heart Examined,” a poem inspired by a true story and reprinted in my latest collection, Stone & Star: Poems in Voices Across Time, I alternately adopt the voice of the King’s Minstrel, the Royal surgeon, Richard I, his wife Berengaria of Navarre, the heart itself, and the forensic scientists who examined the heart in modern times.  Needless to say, this was a fun poem to write and the voices seemed to meld seamlessly to tell the story.

In psychological terms, Jung described persona as a social mask that conceals “the true nature of the individual.”  The term originates from the theater in ancient Greece where actual masks were worn by actors on stage to represent different points of view.

However, I find that writing persona poetry rather than concealing, frees the writer to reveal their subjective truths to the reader without the constraints of their own personality. 

Writing persona poetry is the closest I will ever come to acting, and I find it incredibly liberating.  I first found my own voice via persona poetry and it is still my favorite poetical form to use.

When writing as a historical character, I do some research and try to read letters written by that person if they are available, to pick up some of their personal vocabulary.  The way they address and sign their letters, their general tone, their “voice” is usually apparent and I use that to guide my own writing of the poem. 

Recently, my poem “Lafayette Gingerbread” was published in an anthology,  Poets Respond to the American Revolution: The US250 Persona Poem Project by Highland Park Poetry, which was devoted entirely to persona poetry about U.S. history from 1765-1800, leading up the American Revolution. 

We were asked to write from the point of view of fictional or historical persons, animals or objects:  one poet wrote from the perspective of Brown Beauty, the horse Paul Revere rode, some wrote from the perspective of symbols such as the Tree of Liberty or the Liberty Bell.

When writing as a fictional character, I try to stay within the confines of the work they appeared in, and use vocabulary suited to the time period of the novel.  I have fun imagining what some fictional characters would say, given a chance, especially when in the original work they were not given much dialogue.  In this spirit, I’ve given voice to Weena, the Time Traveler’s mostly mute companion in H.G. Well’s The Time Machine, and Nova, the beautiful mute heroine in the original 1968 Planet of the Apes film. 

I find most of the persona poems I write are emotional in nature, speaking from the heart in a more direct and universal way than I could write from my own limited experience. Some writers may feel uncomfortable putting words into another’s mouth, so to speak. Unlike novelists or playwrights, who regularly write dialogue for fictional and in some cases historical characters, poets are used to thinking of their writing as highly personal and not open to other’s voices. But isn’t most poetry persona poetry, in a way?  Because whenever we write, we almost unconsciously adopt a persona, a writing voice, that is not our everyday voice, but which nonetheless reflects our authentic and true nature.

Beatriz F. Fernandez is a poet and short fiction writer. Join me for my November 1st reading (along with Miguel Mitchell) as part of the Speculative Sunday Reading series!  Presented and moderated by Akua Lezlie Hope. Readings are live on Zoom and tickets are free via the Eventbrite link.

Thank you for reading and please follow us here and on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/OLDSCRATCHPRESS/

Old Scratch Press’s latest publications: Old Scratch Press Catalog

Guest Posting: Go Write Somewhere Else! Yes, You, Get Outta Here!

Published on by diannePLeave a comment

Our own Dianne Pearce (me) has a new post up at Authors Electric, and it begins with an important literary question:

Which author, living or dead, would you most want to get with? (A topic that deserves serious, serious daydreaming.)

The weirdo answer from Dianne (again, me) is Tom Robbins. Not because of what he looked like, but because of what his writing revealed about the strange, funny mind behind it. From there, Dianne (still me) wanders into attraction, humor, imagination, and the peculiar intimacy of reading someone else’s words.

I (Dianne, obviously) encourage you to go read it.

But while we’re (actually me, or rather, I, I am) sending you over there, there’s another reason writers should have Authors Electric on their radar.

Write somewhere that isn’t yours already!

Get off your duff, friends. Authors Electric accepts guest posts, and opportunities like that are worth looking for.

If you’re an author, it’s easy to spend all your blogging energy writing for your own website. That’s useful, but the people visiting your website are generally people who have already found you. A guest post puts your name and your writing somewhere else, in front of someone else’s readers.

And you don’t necessarily need to write about your book. In fact, please don’t turn every guest post into an advertisement for your book. And, on your own blog, don’t do that either. And certainly don’t blog on one blog solely about going to read something on another blog. That’s something we, here at OSP (well, rather I, me, actually; the rest of OSP has no idea what I’m writing here and will probably refuse to be held accountable for it), would never do. (Go read my post!)

Write something funny. Write about the books you love. Write about research that sent you down an unexpected rabbit hole. Write about some peculiar part of the writing life. Write something that makes a reader think, I like this person. What else have they written? People think that about me all the time (I am assured by my caretakers, who wish to keep me relatively compliant and still).

That’s the point.

Guest posting can give you another byline to share, another place for readers to encounter you, another link leading back to your work, and, perhaps most importantly, a chance to introduce yourself without standing on a chair yelling BUY MY BOOK (but seriously, people, buy our books. Well, mine’s not out yet, but buy the other books from OSP. Go ahead. Make a poet smile, and put down the bread knife. God, poets eat a lot of bread!).

Freaking gorgeous bread.

glorious poppy seeds

glorious poppy seeds
delicious and replete
I love your taste
so very much
I happily pick you

from my teeth

Authors Electric is one place to consider. There are others. Look at blogs and publications connected to your genre, your subject matter, your profession, your interests, or the subjects you research for your books. See whether they accept guest contributions. Read what they publish before you pitch them. (Or just pitch wildly, like me in AA softball in 1970-something; you don’t need to know the date. Shut up about the years gone by! I pitched so wildly they [the coach, my own father] stuck me on second base where I could chomp on a huge wad of Bazooka Joe, blowing bubbles so large they hid my face, and not do too much damage to our losing streak. Wait, what are we discussing here?)

EXCLUSIVE!
Actual for real 100% photo of me in little league, wearing my official AA shirt and standing on second base with my beloved glove in my hand, age 9. People never could steal second from me because I was standing on it, and I could not see them coming, because of the gum.

Then come up with something their readers (which is to say readers who read their website/blog) might actually enjoy. Why would they let you post for them? Certainly because you are a serious author taking things seriously and not at all running around the yard barefoot and dangerously late for work. (By the way, forget the job. Poetry is lucrative!)

And how do you know what kinds of posts their gossamer readers like to read? I don’t know. Why you asking me? (Oh, um, read their blog and see what they write about? That might help.)

A quick scan of Authors Electric tells you that its readers are people who like books, writing, writers, publishing, and the odd places a writer’s mind wanders when nobody has stopped it in time. Posts range from writing and publishing to books and reading, author events, technology, literary memories, travel, personal stories, and whatever else can be dragged back, however tenuously, to a life lived among words. They’re personal, conversational, sometimes funny, sometimes serious, and not particularly interested in behaving like somebody’s content-marketing strategy. They seem to be genuinely nice people (as opposed to faking being nice), and that tracks because they’re mostly in Australia and the UK. I cast no stereotypes or aspersions on one side of the pond, the bog, the gulf of unreachable miscommunication, or the other. If you suggest that I am or that I do, or that I should, I will deny it with the vigor of a Dickens character.

They are also intentionally very light on salty words, unlike me and my prose, because I like every damn thing with extra freaking salt.

Why would anyone want a guest post from you? Your mother may have the answer. She thinks you’re great. But also because posting on a regular basis is really quite exhausting, and you can give another author access to another set of readers while giving the blog’s regular writers a bit of a break. Many hands make light work and all that. (Man, I’m tired. I wish someone else would write this and I could just go empty the percolator!)

And if you think you might like to guest post here, absolutely not, you shameless opportunist! Wait… No. I mean, hey, we might like that. Post a response to this post if you’re interested and tell us how to reach out and touch you (in a platonic way, of course).

And if you’d like to see one example of exactly that, go find out why that lunatic Dianne Pearce (moi, bien sûr) had such a deep (and purely, very pure) professional affection for author Robbins that she would, apparently, have overlooked quite a lot, including the possibility of belly-button fungus.

I mean, it’s Tom Robbins we’re (me, I’m) obsessed with, not John Cheever.

Read “Which Author Do You Most Want to Get With?” at Authors Electric. Go ahead. You know you want to (well, actually, you may not want to, but I would certainly like you to, so consider yourself cajoled)!