Sandra Rose Hughes

One of the creative nonfiction pieces I wrote over the summer during my workshop was accepted by Whistling Fire, an online literary journal. Starting today, it is on their website at http://www.whistlingfire.com. It's a how-to style piece about our struggle to get out of debt and build our house. It's alternately humorous and sad. According to duotrope.com, Whistling Fire was, "Conceived in December 2008 as a collective effort of MFA students, The Whistling Fire provides a forum where fresh voices share creative works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. We encourage writers with an eye toward publication to submit their works or works in progress, as we wish to showcase a diverse array of styles and voices. We encourage our readers to comment on posted works in the spirit of constructive criticism. Positive feedback is always welcomed; constructive literary criticism is encouraged. Our aim is to encourage the writing process." Now if only I could access it on school...

"I am going to be an author when I grow up," my student proudly declared during lunch yesterday. "Really?" I responded with enthusiasm. "That's great!" "Yes," he replied to me, and to his friends he said, "I hear the publishers and editors are totally evil, though." "No," I piped in, "they are just people trying to find work they think they can sell. I've met some very kind editors and sometimes they reject your work and sometimes they don't, but they are usually pretty helpful." Which is when I pulled out my copy of my recently published one page Guideposts article that came out this month. I showed it to him and explained that I was an author, too. He looked at it and handed it back to me without reading it. I said, "Magazines are great ways to break into getting published. They will often take your short stories and things like that and sometimes they'll pay you. Guideposts paid me $150 for ...