“I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.”
Henry David Thoreau

We’ve all had our moments of white-hot inspiration — and perhaps you’ve created a small gem from one of them. If so, and it’s under 1500 words, you may want to consider polishing it until it sparkles and then submitting it to the 15th Annual Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition. The deadline: December 15.

The first place prize winner will receive $3,000, national exposure in Writer’s Digest magazine’s July/August 2015 issue, a paid trip to the popular Writer’s Digest Conference, and other prizes. The second prize winner will receive $1,500, story publication in the July/August 2015 Writer’s Digest, and other prizes; and the third-place winner, national exposure, $500, and other prizes.

This year’s competition also offers another benefit: everyone who enters will be given a free pass to a special online webinar, “Marketing Short Fiction: The Art & Science of Literary Publishing” conducted by Jacob Appel. Jacob is an award-winning author whose work has won the Boston Review Short Fiction Competition, the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Award for the Short Story, the North American Review’s Kurt Vonnegut Prize, the Missouri Review’s Editor’s Prize, and the New Millennium Writings Fiction Award on four occasions, an Elizabeth George Fellowship and a Sherwood Anderson Foundation Writers Grant.

In his online webinar, Jacob will share his advice on choosing among the thousands of print and online venues for short fiction. In addition to market selection, he will also focus on submission strategies, contests, cover letters, “best of” anthologies, red flags, how to build a portfolio with agent appeal and how to market a short-story collection. According to Writer’s Digest, “he’ll demystify the submission and selection process, ultimately leading to a more impressive acceptance to submission ratio. While writing is an art, publishing short fiction is as much a science as a creative endeavor — one that the determined and informed student can master. After devoting so much time, energy and emotion to creating short stories why should an author leave publication to chance?”

This online webinar alone sounds worth the price of admission is you are a short-fiction writer. For more details, visit: http://www.writersdigest.com/competition/short-short.

Write on!