Writing may often feel like a solitary pursuit, but in today’s publishing world, no author truly succeeds alone. Networking—whether with fellow writers, industry professionals, or readers—is one of the most powerful tools an author can use to grow, learn, and thrive.
One great resource for authors are local bookstores! Many independently-owned bookstores have a shelf dedicated to local authors. They are usually happy to stock books by local authors and I’ve been asked to sign copies for my local bookstores as well!
There are a few bookstores near me that go above and beyond stocking local authors. One has a monthly series of workshops they hold for local authors to help them hone their craft and also to teach authors how to market themselves to readers. They also hold local book fairs and festivals and encourage authors to come and sell their book themselves! These book festivals are a great place to meet other local authors and to talk shop with them about local marketing opportunities. They are also a great place to meet new readers!
This local author group also has its own podcast! They interview local authors to help them promote their work to the reading community. I recently sat down with the host, Amy Watkins, for an interview with the Rock, Paper, Write podcast. You can listen to that episode here. Amy also invited me to the Wheaton Arts Parade to sell my books with some other Kensington Row Bookshop authors. The Kensington Row Bookshop also organizes the annual Kensington Day of the Book Festival. It’s such a supportive bookstore.
For authors, networking isn’t about self-promotion alone—it’s about building authentic relationships that provide growth, support, and opportunity. The more you engage with your writing community, the stronger your career foundation becomes. So, go out and make some new friends and sell some books!
The holiday/end of year issue of INSTANT NOODLES, the issue where we always ask people to try for humor. Do you have what it takes to make us smile?
Submissions for 2025 are open through November 2, 2025.
The Old Scratch Press team asks that all fiction/non-fiction pieces adhere to a word count of 1,000 words or less.
2025 Themes and Topics
GRAVY is our 2025 winter holiday theme. Give us your best holiday gravy fails, mishaps, ridiculous gravy encounters (any December holiday, from Hannukah, to Solstice, to NYE, etc.) or your best wry work about gravy, in general. The point of the end-of-year issue is always to be light-hearted to downright silly. Submissions for GRAVY are open through NOVEMBER 2, 2025; the issue will publish on DECEMBER 1, 2025.Please CLICK HERE to submit. We’re looking for short fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, art, and multi-media.
INSTANT NOODLES is always free to submit to, and free to read. We’re about to announce the pieces that were published that we’re submitting to BEST OF THE NET and PUSHCART, so stay tuned to this station!
Thanks for being an INSTANT NOODLES participant and/or fan! We appreciate you giving indie authors a place to get read!
It’s the “dog days of summer.” Where I live we’ve had only brief periods of respite from the extra hot days, and these sweaty days force me inside, where they, ostensibly, give me more time to write. And so I am thinking about all of that. And I’m wondering, those of you who write, have you ever considered taking classes, or have you taken classes, in writing? It occurs to me that while my daughter can play a few songs on the piano through trial and error, she is much better when she is actively taking lessons. She doesn’t take lessons because she wishes to be the next piano great, or even play professionally. She takes lessons because she enjoys playing the piano, and would like to be able to play it better. I pay for the lessons gladly, without a thought about it. Do we do that as writers, with writing?
When I went back to school to get my MA it was because I wanted to get better at writing. Yes, I had the hope of publishing, but mostly I just wanted to be better at writing my stories and poems. I signed on for my MFA primarily because the teachers in my MA program, who were not affiliated with the MFA schools, suggested that I had a spark, and could get it even sparkier with more training. And so I did it, the MFA, for me.
I am curious and would love to hear what you think about this. Have you ever done any “professional” training for writing? Something like lessons? Have you spent money on your development? Do you hope to move from hobbyist to pro? Or, perhaps, consider and reply to this by telling me about lessons that you have taken in something else, or paid for in order that a child or someone else in your life is able to take lessons. I would be very curious to hear what you think makes something a skill that you might need training in versus something you come fully equipped for, without training.
I’m laughing to myself now, sitting here, thinking about “the dog days of summer,” and how I once paid for dog training for my prior delightful pup, an out-of-control terrier who I’d adopted when he was still a puppy. I had named him Chad,
and he came after I lost the dog who preceded him, a very fancy little terrier named BeBe who walked beside me like a queen, and never needed a leash or a single command, from the moment I brought her home. Chad, on the other hand, chewed everything: my toes as I crossed the room, my ears as I sat on the sofa or lay in bed, my boyfriend’s brand new Nikes, huge holes in his blanket, and he pooped blue wool for a week after, half a wooden magazine rack while I was at work one day, scads of toilet paper rolls. He peed everywhere. There was a moment where I listened to him cry from behind the baby gate in the kitchen thinking, “One of us is not going to make it out of this relationship.” I found a dog trainer all right. I could not wait for her to get to my house! And I remember her like it was yesterday, though it was more likely 2001, when she arrived, and I let the beast loose on her, and she said to me, “Okay. I can see he has a lot of energy. Let’s start training you to be a better owner.” By the end of the session, several hours later, I admit, for I was a slow learner, I was fully trained, and Chad and I lived harmoniously from that moment on, for sixteen and a half years.
And just now, as I prepared to publish this post, I thought to myself, Maybe throw this post in Word and check the spelling, even though I know my writing does not need it! But I did, and I found four spelling errors, due to poor typing skills, which tells me that it seems that I am still, to this day, a stubborn and slow learner. 😉
So what about you? Do you train at writing at all? Are there other things you will use training for? Do you think of writing as something a person can improve at with training? I am curious to see if it is only me.
OLD SCRATCH PRESS 