fiction – Page 9 – Andy writes!

Friday Five: lessons from a lit mag first reader

What I’ve learned from the past six months of reading submissions for a literary magazine

For the past six months or so, I have volunteered as a first reader for a literary magazine. In this role, I’ve been one of the first people to read some 150 flash and micro-fiction submissions to this magazine. They come from writers of all kinds. There are the newcomers seeking their first acceptance, the veterans with several publications and awards to their credit, the MFA graduates and PhDs, the college professors, the undergraduates, the college dropouts, the writers of science fiction, horror, humor, crime, romance, fantasy and just about every other genre, including literary, and writers from every continent except Antarctica. I’ve read pieces submitted for contests as well as regular submissions to the magazine.

The experience of reading all of these submissions has taught me a lot about writing and the submission process, and I hope these five lessons will help you, too.

My quest for coffee stories yields not a latte

On International Coffee Day, the scarcity of java-inspired stories continues to baffle me

Note: I consulted ChatGPT for assistance in researching literary references to coffee.

Like many of my fellow writers, my brain runs on coffee. It takes a couple of cups of flavorful, strongly brewed dark roast to prep me for the writing flow. I’m on my third cup of the morning as I sit down to write this, and will probably pause at some point to pour a fourth.

As popular as coffee is among Americans–it is, by far, our nation’s most popular drink, according to Coffeenatics–the magical elixir it does not seem to figure prominently in our literature.