The Orphanage
Reading Room
The Orphanage
Reading Room
Greetings literary lads and lassies! In here you will find something to read. A bon mot, perhaps, rich with the poet's secret weapon: the adjective. Or a short story. Or an article. Or a short novel! That's right, even books. Some of what you'll see here is done by professionals ... some by amateurs. Enjoy yourself, but remember everything here is under copyright. (Want to see some of your own work here? Submission details are underneath the department listings.)
Departments:
Articles
(for current articles go to Oregon
Magazine)
Books
Short
Stories (all short fiction now in Arts&Lettres at
Oregon Magazine)
Poetry
(more poetry in Arts&Lettres
at Oregon Magazine)
Iron
Pants! (a journal of humor, social and political satire)
Featured Link: WorldWide Literary Resource
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Main
Directory Orphan
Home (These links repeated at bottom.)
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Submission section:
I
have some ShareLit for your readers! (No pay, no guarantee we'll list
it, one item at a time. The whole piece if it's an article, short
story or a few poems. Brief description of books, with first chapter.
Say "Submission" in the topic box and send it along.
Some thoughts about writers and their work:
Most writers, and all poets, start out by almost giving their work away.
For example, the first chapter in The
Meanest Fish on Earth! sold to The Wretched Mess News for $2.98!
Then, while the author was fishing in Mexico, Fenwick (fishing equipment)
asked David Bascom, the editor of The Wretched Mess News, if they could
reprint it in their Lunker Gazette. Bascom said he had no idea where
the author was, but, what the hell, go ahead. Back from Mexico, the
author discovered the theft of his deathless prose, and demanded a free
flyrod in payment, which he got. This exposure, for which the author
got $2.98 and a $35.00 flyrod, led to the publication of his first book.
Another reason writers will give something away
is illustrated with Larry Leonard's two SF short stories listed above.
Nobody would buy them. Now, the reasons why publishers don't buy
something often have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the piece.
"The last thing New York Publishers want," Alfred
A. Knopf, Sr. told David Bascom one day, "is literature."
You may have trouble getting published because you
are an illiterate idiot. Or you may have trouble being published
because you write brilliantly -- but on the wrong topic, or have the wrong
political outlook, or are the wrong skin color, or have the wrong sexual
preferences, or don't have enough filthy sex scenes in your children's
book, or insult the wrong population group.
If anybody besides your mother likes your work,
keep trying.
Another reason writers will give something away
is because they are writers. They like to present their ideas to
readers, and a manuscript in a file drawer won't be read by many people.
This is true even of successful writers, when we're talking about work
they have already sold. The ephemeral existence of a newspaper story
lasts one day. If it's a good piece, and you can't sell reprint rights
to anybody, then put it on The Orphanage Press Reading Room for people
to enjoy and learn from. (And, in so doing, just possibly attract
an audience to your name.)
If, by the by, you happen to have a website of your
own, we will be more likely to accept long works, because you can store
it at your server instead of in our bucket. We'll just list your
title here and link to your site.)
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