I have never submitted anything. Had a story picked up from here by an editor once. That's it. Looks like this is going to be a good place to work.
Your stories are so profoundly beautiful, small gems. I'm learning of all these places that publish short pieces just from being here, like the list David Ackley posted in forum. It used to be a pain to submit with snail mail, but email submissions are easy.
David, I agree. Your pieces are gems. Perhaps this will help them find a wider audience.
Folks, I'm leaving this group. I'm only an occasional writer and have little or no interest in submitting for publication. I enjoy reading nearly all the stories and poems posted on fictionaut's front page, but the calibre of writers here exceed my talent. Gloria, I appreciate your invitation. It was nice of you to invite me. I just fear I won't fit in.
You don't have to want to submit, just enjoy writing microfiction, even occasionally, which you do so well. I'll write you a message hoping you'll come back.
david, i think you fit just fine, stories like "owl watching" are super pieces and you have a wonderful way with a tale.
ALL MICROFICTION ALL THE TIME.
Here's a place to post both published and unpublished Microfiction and a place to discuss and debate the special aesthetics of the genre.
Some sources claim word count under 100, others under 200, others under 400 and still others under 500. Your guess is as good as mine, but 500 is the absolute limit. The shorter the better. Poetry welcome.
Joseph Young in FRIGG, Spring 2009, wrote,
"To be its own genre, microfiction needs to do something that other forms won’t. It needs to use language, description, dialogue, character to tell a story that can’t be told any other way. It’s not just compression, and it’s not just leaving things out, background info on characters or such. Microfiction needs to carve out whole worlds in a space small enough to fit the eye. You look, just once, and there the whole story is, on the page...
"If fiction (e.g., narrative) is time, then microfiction is microtime. But let me caveat. A microfiction can describe the entire life of a character. It can illustrate birth, marriage, death, 80 years of experience. But the amount from that 80 years that actually occurs in microfiction, in microtime, is nearly nothing, a tenth of a second."
Me? I think of microfiction as the miniature galaxy inside the marble hung from the cat's collar in Men in Black.
To keep this group vibrant and alive, don't just post and run. Take the time to comment and especially engage in the discussion threads. It will make for a richer group experience.
--Gloria Garfunkel, Micro Cafe Barista
This is a public group.
Anyone can see it and join.