verb as in to tempt: to lead away from a usual or proper course by offering some pleasure or advantage
This door is never latched….
Allure
Tag: writing
The Value of Pen and Paper in a Digital Age
By Nadja Maril, a founding member of Old Scratch Press Short Form and Poetry Collective
Even before our worries that the postal system has been intentionally slowed—handicapped by poor leadership and management—there’s been a cultural divide about paper communication. For the past twenty years we have shifted to using computers and smart phones for emails and messaging. We have been told to stop using paper. Stop printing. Save a tree by using less paper. Store documents on the cloud, thus preserving valuable space and resources. Corporations have saved millions of dollars by training employees and clients to communicate digitally and to stop using paper. This has eliminated the need to mail out hard copies of bills, documents and reports.
Now citizens are concerned over the cost of energy and all the energy used by data centers. Maybe pen and paper isn’t such a bad thing.
A hand-written letter is a beautiful way to communicate. The choice of paper, the shape and placement of the words, the color of the ink, are all qualities that cannot be reproduced by a text or email. Just as we wouldn’t want to replace the sound of a person’s voice with a generated computer message, it would be sad to lose the ability to send someone a letter or card through the mail.
BOOK SALES STRONG
The crusade against paper and ink spread to the world of publishing. For several years I heard dire reports that it was only a matter of time before people stopped purchasing traditional books. It was predicted consumers would read only on digital devices or they’d listen to books on tape. Books would soon become extinct.
It’s entertaining to listen to a book read to me while I fold laundry or drive. Convenient to read stories on an electronic tablet. But nothing can replace the heft and weight of paper and the thrill of physically turning pages. Printed books still have their fans. In 2026 book sales are holding their own, hovering at approximately 762 million to over 3 billion total units across a combination of backlist and frontlist categories.
A phone call, a video chat, messaging and email help keep us connected, but a letter is something physical to hold and touch. If you haven’t sent a card or a letter in a while to someone you miss, maybe it’s time to give it a try. I keep a collection of cards inside my desk, along with a roll of stamps. I challenge myself to write something good when I press my pen down on the thick card paper.
WRITING ON PAPER
It’s tempting to always use a keyboard. If you don’t like the initial word choices you can easily erase them. But if you are writing creatively, it can be freeing not to edit, just to keep moving forward. Sometimes you discover things about yourself when you let your thoughts flow first and edit later.
Many writers complain about “Writer’s Block.” They become obsessed with perfection. Frozen by the need to edit each word they write nothing. Think of your initial sentences as warm-up exercises. Ultimately you may decide to delete them but the process of writing them down on paper helps you get to where you need to go.
Keep a notebook and use it. Expect that everything inside that notebook is a rough draft. Your words. Own them.
WRITING PROMPT
CHOOSE AN OBJECT IN THE ROOM. Write a story about that object, the very first thing that comes into your mind. The apple in the bowl is in love with the pear next to it. The story of how your favorite mug got its chip on the inside of the handle. USE PEN AND PAPER. After you write your initial draft then you can revise. Delete the words and sentences you wish. Focus on surprise, suspense, and description. Discard adverbs. Maybe you have created something good.
You have one week left to submit a piece of prose or poem under 500 words to Instant Noodles Literary Magazine https://instantnoodleslitmag.com/submission-guidelines/. For other submission opportunities, check out https://duotrope.com/duosuma/submit/opportunities/
Sign up to follow Old Scratch Press each time we post and follow us on Facebook. Don’t forget to buy those pads of paper, a spiral bound notebook works best, and thank you for reading!
P. S. It doesn’t matter whether you lean to the left or the right, reliable mail delivery is important. This election cycle, the mid-terms, more than 19 million Americans have returned mail ballots. More Americans than ever this year have taken advantage of Early Voting. If you are a U.S. Citizen , don’t forget to vote. The official voting day is November 3rd. In my state of Maryland you can even use a paper ballot and mark it with a black pen!
Poetry, Pretension, and the Art of Being Yourself: An Interview with William Delaat
One of the pleasures of blogging for Old Scratch Press is discovering other writers through WordPress. I noticed that poet William Delaat, creator of Primitive Poetry, had been liking some of our posts, so I decided to see what he was writing.
I found a poet with a healthy skepticism toward literary rules and pretension, a fondness for contradiction, and some interesting things to say about writing and sharing poetry. I enjoyed exploring his work enough that I contacted him to ask whether he’d be interested in an interview for OSP.
Happily, he agreed! We talked about literary gatekeeping, writing under a pseudonym, the terror of reading your own poetry aloud, and the challenges of finding a genuine literary community online.
An Interview with William Delaat
Old Scratch Press: On Primitive Poetry, you write about literary gatekeeping and pretension. What do you find pretentious about the poetry world, and what would you like to see change?
William Delaat: To clarify, on that page I have a line that says, “Poetry is pretentious. I love that.”
When I first started writing poetry, I had no literary training (I still really do not). I used it as a way to express myself in my journal in a more creative way. I did this for years before I ever published anything online. I had no concept that there were people who apply rules and logic to poetry. I just wrote what I enjoyed, and that was enough.
In my last year of undergrad, I took a creative writing class. I had taken some writing and English classes before, and part of my degree was in philosophy, so I was accustomed to writing and reading. I had even taken some “creativity” classes that mostly focused on thinking outside the box and (to be honest) marketing. This creative writing class was the first time I was in a formal setting where we were given assignments where I could say whatever I wanted, and in ways I could not throughout the rest of college.
And YET, my poetry was, for the first time, critiqued in ways I had never experienced. Suddenly, I was having to read books about how to write poetry. These books, typically written by successful poets, were far too nitpicky. It put a taste in my mouth that if this were my first time interacting with writing poetry, I would quickly walk away.
It seems silly to put rules and regulations around a form of art that is so fluid. I should note that this experience is from 2018, and I think the more I engage with poetry online, the more I see that other poets agree with the idea that poetry cannot be relegated to just one form. Perhaps these folks who write instructions on how to write poetry should clarify they are teaching how to write poetry like them. I do not care for that.
As for pretentiousness in the poetry world, I think many poets would agree that we write in strange ways. I do wish that many poets would be themselves more than the poets they see successful online. How often do you see people post something along the lines of “In English we say, ‘I love you.’ In poetry we say, ‘my heart sticks to you like the tide does to the shore.'”
Come on. You saw someone else get engagement doing something like that, so you replicated it and passed it off as poetry. It’s not you. I want to read poetry that shows who you are, and how you see the world, even if it is pretentious! I have written many pretentious things, but I truly felt that way in the moment. Be pretentious, but be you.
OSP: You write under a pen name that honors your parents. How does writing as William Delaat affect what you’re comfortable sharing, or how freely you write?
William: I first started writing under a pen name because I was afraid. I grew up in small-town Midwest America. Weekends were usually spent by the bonfire with lots of beer. Traditional values, and traditional views of the world. The pen name made it so I could write without anyone knowing who I was.
I wrote some nasty things when I first started. Things that I’m not proud of. I have deleted three poems from my site because they were too far, yet I feel as if they needed to be written and needed to exist. Writing under a pen name gave me that ability.
While I still write under a pen name, much of what I do now is public. I make spoken-word videos, and I cannot hide anymore. While close friends and family know that I write online, it is still kept quiet. This has changed some of my writing.
Every once in a great while, I write something that makes me think, “Maybe this one is just for me and my wife.” It is very rare, but it does happen.
OSP: You mention that “Academia Is Dead” remains your favorite poem, even though you wrote it in college. What makes that poem particularly important to you? Has your understanding of it changed over time?
William: Academia Is Dead was written in 2018, when I was in that creative writing class mentioned above. Maybe I still like it because it’s moody. Maybe because I am skeptical of higher ed (even though I have a master’s degree).
Although, as I age and fall more into what makes my writing uniquely mine, I think I enjoy storytelling more. Academia Is Dead is a story, after all. It is the visitation of an old friend, begging to be buried alive, but then I suggest she should be publicly executed so all have to stare at what they have done.
It’s a strange contradiction, in a way. I blame technology for what it has done for the classroom, while I wrote it in college, on a laptop. I think people sometimes have a hard time grasping that contradiction, as much as we may hate it, is boiled into our blood. Academia Is Dead is a contradictory piece. I mourn her, yet I suggest a different type of death than what she requests.
I also wrote this in my fifth year of undergrad. Watching freshmen come in and how they complained about having to write four-page papers. Meanwhile, my super-senior friends and I were writing dozens of pages and arguing over who was right.
Maybe it was the angsty music I listened to at that time flowing through. Maybe it was an observation of changes in trends. I don’t know. What I do know is that I have great concerns for college students and the way they now have to navigate AI. I often wonder if they read the poem and see it the way I do.
For those who read it, and are true academics, I hope they don’t view it as a condemnation of them. I hope they can change my perspective on academia.
Featured Poem: Academia Is Dead
William selected Academia Is Dead to accompany this interview because it remains an important piece in his development as a poet and connects directly to several of the subjects we’ve discussed.
Read “Academia Is Dead” on Primitive Poetry
OSP: Your website includes both written poems and spoken-word performances. What changes for you when a poem moves from the page to your own voice? Do you find that some poems work better in one form than the other?
William: Writing poems is easy for me. Reading them is terrifying. The camera is not my friend. I’ve always read my poems while writing them, but when it is just me hiding in my attic office, I don’t care. I, like anyone else on the internet, care how they are received.
There certainly are poems that work better when they stay in written form. I have many scrapped videos that I just couldn’t get the rhythm or tone right. I don’t know if this is just a “me” problem or the poem’s problem.
I had a poem a couple of months ago that someone else read and posted to their website. They read it better than I ever could. Again, contradiction. I read aloud every poem I write, but that doesn’t mean every poem I write should be read aloud.
OSP: You write openly about producing work that doesn’t always meet your own standards. How do you decide which poems to share publicly, and what do you do with the ones that don’t make the cut?
William: I suffer greatly from imposter syndrome. At least once a day I wonder why and how I have an audience on my website. I often think that my standard for what is good is far too high, and yet I cannot bring myself to lower it.
The compromise I’ve made is that I just post things. Primitive Poetry is full of poems that have no ending, are missing details, simply because there came a point where I could not go on. My journal is full of even more.
I have over 100 drafts sitting in my WordPress dashboard right now. Eventually, I just get to the point where I panic-post and call it good.
Sometimes I go back and edit already posted poems, even some that were posted years ago. The ones that don’t make the cut live in my drafts or journal, waiting for the day when I visit them and hopefully bring them new life.
OSP: You describe Primitive Poetry as a place to connect with other artists who enjoy writing without taking themselves too seriously. What would you like that community to look like, and what kinds of connections have you made through the site?
William: I owe a lot of my audience to WordPress. The Reader function on WordPress makes it easy to connect with other writers. Dianne, it’s how I found Old Scratch Press.
Unfortunately, I think WordPress is losing touch with the way people interact. Building a community on WordPress is incredibly difficult and takes an immense amount of time. I’ve been doing this for eight years and have 1,500 subscribers. The best way I’ve found to engage with the community is through comments. This is not what I want the community to look like.
I’ve been exploring different avenues: Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, even TikTok despite my disgust with it (hey, another contradiction). Substack offers some promise, but it feels like starting over again.
Yet I’ve made incredible connections through WordPress and Primitive Poetry. I met a fellow who reads classic poetry. The way he reads is true art. I’ve met other writers who pour their hearts onto the page. I’ve met people who point out the problems in my poetry and are actually trying to help (now THAT is rare!).
These are all good connections, but they are done through email and the occasional comment. I believe in proximity being an important part of relationships and community. I don’t think Primitive Poetry lends itself to that very well. It is on the forefront of my mind, and I am actively trying to find ways to fix it.
A Final Thought from William
This world we live in is becoming ever more complex and divided. One of the beauties of art is that it shows things how they are and calls it out. We need more art. Whether that be painting, sketching, singing, or writing of any kind, we need it.
Live within the contradiction, point it out, and laugh at it. No one is without contradiction.
If there is anyone who has considered writing poetry but is worried about starting, or confused about where to start, they are welcome to reach out to me through my website. I’ll talk them through what I’ve done that has worked, and things that have failed. Maybe that is how we build the community.
About William Delaat
William Delaat writes poetry with themes of nature, family, grief, and the quiet weight of ordinary life. Through Primitive Poetry, he explores love, loss, contradictory lives, and belonging. He invites readers to slow down and take a closer look to find meaning in the ordinary.
Explore William’s work and connect with him:
Website: Primitive Poetry
Social media and other links: William Delaat on Linktree
Our thanks to William for sharing his thoughts and work with Old Scratch Press. We hope you’ll spend some time exploring Primitive Poetry and joining the conversation.
Sharing Is Caring!
Getting attention for poetry, books, and independent art isn’t easy. There are so many talented writers and artists out there, and one of the simplest ways we can help one another is by sharing our audiences.
If you’re visiting Old Scratch Press, why not consider featuring one of our members on your own blog, website, podcast, or social media? We’d love to introduce you to our writers and artists, and we’re always interested in opportunities to introduce our readers to new creative voices, too.
Interviews, guest posts, reviews, and featured works are all possibilities. It doesn’t have to be complicated, and it doesn’t have to cost anything. Sometimes all it takes is a little curiosity and a willingness to share the spotlight.
The more we help one another find readers and audiences, the stronger our creative community becomes.
Interested? Reach out to Old Scratch Press and let’s see what we can do together! Let’s show each other off!
Your First Full-Length Poetry Collection: One Poet’s Experience
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
Descent
noun: an inclination downward
Go down; go down~
All Hallows’ Eve
the basement is calling….
Making the Most of One Poem… Part 3
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!
October is Italian American Heritage and Culture Month in the U.S.!
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:
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.
Flash Prose Submission Tips and October Publishing Opportunities
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.
- Begin close to or with action. In a short piece you don’t have time for backstory.
- Write about one event, something simple but telling.
- Limit your characters. In a short piece there is no time for character development and too many characters will confuse the reader. Stay focused.
- 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.
- 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.
We Recently Lost One of the Greats
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!
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!
