What Was I Thinking?

As long as mixed grills and combination salads are popular, anthologies will undoubtedly continue in favor. - Elizabeth Janeway




The next time you hear me make rumbling sounds about “doing a book”, will someone kindly remind me I am nuts! I don’t think I have had such a brain drain since I was in college…well, maybe it was since MAP testing entered the public schools! But reading and planning for Storm Country has been such a job! However, I keep telling myself it will be worth it in the end every time a child picks up a good book in the school libraries of Joplin.

credit to John Hacker

Submissions are heavy. Everyone seems to want to help by donating their writing work. The publisher is donating time, other publications are donating ad space and promotions, and a photographer is donating one of his lightning strike photos for a cover to the book. Take a look at John Hacker’s work. Isn’t this a beauty full of the splendor and magnificent power of weather?


I have learned so much from this anthology project already, and I have come to really feel what editors go through. I am seeing this whole writing experience from the other side and have new appreciation for the work contest editors, anthology editors, and publishers like Lou Turner go through on a daily basis.


A few things I learned for next time (did I really say “next time”???) are:
Maybe only online submissions should be accepted since snail mail eventually has to be put into a doc. form anyway.

Always have the title of the story put in the subject line of an email. (Ah, do you know hard it is to go back to a story when over 200 emails that say Joplin Writers’ Anthology submission in the subject line?)


Be sure to hold to the guidelines. Refuse to read size 8 print with a magnifier.


Don’t feel guilty about rejecting a love poem when the guidelines clearly specified the topic to be entered…and it was NOT love poetry…or when the word limit is 1500 and a submission is Chapter One of someone’s novel at 6500 words.


Always ask for pages to be numbered.


The bio at the bottom of the submission is handier than on a separate document if possible.


Despite the work involved, the Storm Country project is so worthwhile. There will be no profits taken by the writing guilds involved. It all goes to the Tornado Relief of Joplin schools. Friday the submissions will close, and I admit I will be glad to stop reading stories about devastation and loss that the weather stories hold. However, I feel good knowing that so many writers are willing to give their work away so others may benefit. While not every submission can or will be used, all writers’ efforts are deeply appreciated.

My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it. - Ernest Hemingway


We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.- Somerset Maugham