Up for Writing Yourself into a Frenzy?

Our friends over at Script Frenzy, a nonprofit who also runs the popular NaNoWriMo site have issued the following stage play writing challenge:

Script Frenzy is the 100-page challenge designed to inspire everyone who's ever aspired to write a stage play.

The curtain opens and the show begins April 1. Take on the challenge! Write the story you've been threatening to write and have a blast doing it. Thousands of writers will be right there beside you, both online in the forums and at write-ins around the globe.

Script Frenzy charges no fee to participate; no valuable prizes are awarded or best scripts singled out. In order to "win" at Script Frenzy, you need only sign up and complete the goal of writing 100 pages in 30 days. In return for your valiant efforts, Script Frenzy winners are granted a Script Frenzy Winner's Certificate, web icon, and eternal bragging rights.

This is the time to get your brilliant idea written in a whirlwind adventure with an unflinching deadline.

Sign up at www.scriptfrenzy.org and get writing.

Calling All Writers!

Steve Lopez of the LA Times is inviting all LA Times readers to collaborate with him on a novel! His column in next Sunday's paper (March 30th) will be Chapter 1 of "Birds of Paradise: A Novel Collaboration," and readers are invited to contribute chapters 3, 4, 5, and so on until noon PST on Thursday, April 24, 2008 -- just in time for the LA Times Festival of Books on April 25-26! Entries must:

• Be 600 words or fewer
• Be entirely original
• Be submitted under the entrants real name

The final chapter, to be published online on April 25th and in the newspaper on April 26th, will be written by Steve Lopez.
Winners will have their entries published online and in the newspaper, receive two tickets to the LA Times Festival of Books Prize Ceremony April 25th at 8:00 PM, and be invited to read their chapter at the festival. The contest is open to all legal California residents who are 18 years or older as of the first day of the contest period. Please go to the contest website to read the rest of the guidelines and who knows where this could lead you??

2008 Cave Canem Poetry Prize for African American Poets

Details from the Cave Canem site:

Established in 1999, this first book award is dedicated to the discovery of exceptional
manuscripts by African American poets. The participation of distinguished judges and
prominent literary presses has made this prize highly competitive.


2008 CAVE CANEM POETRY PRIZE

Judge: Clarence Major

Publisher: Graywolf Press

Clarence Major is a prizewinning poet, painter and novelist whose first collection of poems, Swallow the Lake, won the National Council on the Arts Award in 1970. Author of 10 books of poetry Major was a 1999 Bronze Medal finalist for the National Book Award for Configurations: New and Selected Poems, 1958-1998. Major’s poetry also earned him a 1971 New York Cultural Foundation prize. He is a contributor to more than 100 periodicals and anthologies. He has read his poetry at the Guggenheim Museum, the Folger Theatre, and in hundreds of universities, theaters, and cultural centers in the United States and Europe. In Yugoslavia he represented the United States in 1975 at the International Poetry Festival. He is also the editor of several landmark anthologies. Clarence Major lives in northern California.

Click here for details and a downloadable PDF of the complete guidelines.

Articles Needed - Cahoots Online Magazine

This just in from Cahoots online magazine:

Cahoots is a Canadian magazine freshly re-designed for the web for women who want more than the "same old same old" from a women’s magazine. Cahoots is a magazine for the creative, engaged, curious, soulful woman in all women. We are seeking submissions of articles, visual art, creative writing, and proposals for regular reviews and columns about things that really matter (and it’s not bee-stung lips!). Conspire to inspire. Visit www.cahootsmagazine.com for full submission guidelines.

Thirty-two Statements About Writing Poetry ~

If you aren't familiar with Marvin Bell (and I wasn't until I came across this gem!), his Thirty-two Statements About Writing Poetry is a wonderful introduction to this astute and insightful man. This award-winning author and poet has succinctly and clearly enumerated several (thirty-two, in fact), thought-provoking observations. Different ones will speak to you each time you read through them.

Get Connected

It was only a matter of time. Variety.com has launched a social networking site focused, of course, on the entertainment industry. Or, as we -- and they -- like to call it, "The Biz."

Think craigslist on caffeine and toting its screenplay or headshot along everywhere. If this sounds a little close to home, know that you're in good company. And now, you know where to find that company online.

What's Your Semicolon IQ?

It's not often that a punctuation mark makes headlines in the New York Times. How thrilling that not only was this particular semicolon noticed; it was found remarkable enough for a journalist to write about, and for the editor to accept that article for publication! Heartening, yes, that something as simple as this could bring fame to the writer; this can be an inspiration to us all!

Congratulations to Beyond Baroque

Los Angeles is known as an industry town. We are lucky that it is an industry filled with creative people, and we are fortunate to have so many talented and hyper-creative people in our midst, but many industry people have creative interests that extend beyond just movie making and there are also many creative people here who are not associated with the movie industry. Los Angeles poets, for example, are an unsung and undiscovered gem in this town. Poets rarely get the kind of press here (and perhaps everywhere) that they deserve. Because Los Angeles is an industry town, many of the artistic services and support around town are focused on movie making, so when a literary arts center such as Beyond Baroque exists, we must relish and preserve it.

LAwritersgroup.com congratulates Beyond Baroque on it's survival and lease extension, and we extend our literary hand in friendship and well wishes to this Los Angeles gem.

Comparing Agent Web Sites

Check out the Poe's Deadly Daughters blog, where Darlene Ryan has written an informative blog post called Agent Check about how to compare literary agents sites and screen them based on their Web sites.

Besides, despite the fact that the mere mention of the word 'homework' makes me cringe (I can handle 'home' and I can handle 'work' just not both off them together), I'm automatically a fan of someone who compares agents to bras and writes:

"Do your homework. A good agent, like a good bra, can lift you to the next level."