A Writer's List--Best of and Worst of 2008

Since the New Year is upon us, I thought it would be fun to poll some writers and ask them for their opinions on some of the best and worst parts of being a writer. Luckily, I received several responses from all different sorts of writers, male and female. Many answers made me nod in agreement and laugh out loud. Here are the lists:

Best of. . .

BEST PLACE TO BE PUBLISHED:
*Good Old Days magazine
*Woman's World - ($1000 for 800 words for a romance short story.)
*Short story anthologies and literary journals that nominate for the Pushcart Prize
*WOW! Women On Writing
*Skirt! books because "they got Kris Carr on Oprah...that says it all. :)"
*Crickhollow Books (doing all kinds of promotion for book -- even developed its own Web site.)
*AARP Magazine

BEST CONFERENCE:
*Annual November MO-SCBWI conference at St. Charles Community College, St. Charles, MO
*Maumelle, Arkansas "They really went all out."
*Annual Missouri Writers' Guild Conference in April
*Book Expo America *SCBWI Annual Conference in LA (2 writers mentioned this)
*Surrey International Writers' Conference *Oklahoma Writers' Federation, Inc. annual conference (2 writers)
*San Francisco SCBWI's Asilomar Conference in the Monterey area of California on the beach. *Maui Writers' Conference, "a life changing experience" *Kindling Words, "by a large margin."

BEST WRITER'S TOOL
*A free(downloadable) gadget called Cool Timer. *A good writing friend who is supportive, honest, encouraging, and patient
*A brain that has absorbed all the books you read and people you have observed with a vivid imagination and good form, branded in the underside of your skull
*Comfortable chair and a large computer screen--22" wide flat screen monitor. (2 writers)
*I think the Internet is the best writer's tool. (3 writers)
*The question "What if?"
*The Wordpress blog platform--easy to use, versatile, and great for author promotion
*Chocolate -- dark chocolate, and plenty of it.
*A critique group
*Library
*A computer (2 writers, especially for those old time writers who started on the typewriter)
*Bylines 2009 Writer's Desk Calendar.
*Bum glue
*Uninterrupted time *A Writer's Market

Worst of. . .

WORST TIME WASTER
*Cleaning the house. As soon as it’s clean, it gets dirty again.
*Computer games. (2 writers)
*Letting the critic come in and tell me to quit, that I can't write, that I should be doing something else, that I'm not good enough, blah blah blah.
*My email (6 writers)
*Telephone or forwarded email. (2 writers)
*MySpace and Facebook (2 writers)
*Surfing the Internet (3 writers)
*Windows Vista!
*Worry

WORST REJECTION
*“The worst rejection I ever received said that my humor essay, which I had submitted as a humor essay, read too much like a humor essay. Duh!”
*“The worst rejection I received was from distant relatives after I read a children's story to their child, and they wanted to listen was to 'Burn it!' (even though his child smiled and said she really liked it)."
“It was the judge who said I absolutely knew nothing about fiction writing and should do something else.” (from an author who has over 5o fiction novels published!)
"Those who don't bother to reply."
"The first." "Any rejection after the last step in the process, because you were so close."

I have so many more great responses that I will share more, especially worst writing advice, in the New Year. Happy New Year and happy writing!

Margo Dill

http://www.margodill.com/

http://margodill.com/blog/