Idea #14: Create a Writing Contest Even Though I Don't Run a Literary Journal

Description
The past couple years I've periodically submitted about a half dozen stories to a number of writing contests, paying submission fees that range from $2-20. And each time I wonder: what a great scheme! All these writers desperate for exposure, hoping to at least land on the Honorable Mention list, or even get a cash prize. Many of these contests also end up extending their deadlines, convincing more writers to submit their work - for a slightly raised fee.

Not that I think it's a scam. They do pay out the prizes, as far as I know. These fledgling literary journals or magazines need the cash flow - not  lot of people paying for thick books of short stories, poems, and essays these days. While there are more websites presenting magazines and journals in a more well-designed manner, like Issuu.com (looking through Writer's Market's list of publications, there's a lot of publications out there who haven't even updated their websites since the 1990's), but it's not certain that the Internet won't eventually destroy literary journals willing to pay writers for their work. The only ones that really provide exposure are the university-subsidized ones put out by the Creative Writing Department staff and students.

Would-be writers have always been suckers, though. Just desperate to get their name out there, they fork over a lot of money for books and seminars and webinars promising to make them good enough at the craft to be published the next day. Scroll through Writer's Market's website and look at the prices for some of these products - hundreds of dollars, many charging over $500, for something that could be learned in a library book.

I could probably run a contest, send each of the winners one of the ten copies I printed just for them and pocket the rest of the submission fees.

Steps
1) Create a slick literary website with a bunch of my own work under pseudonyms.
2) Hire a printer to produce a few copies for those who actually request one (and pay for it).
3) Start advertising a contest in Writer's Market or any of the other Writer's-whatever publications. Charge a modest fee a promise a cash prize for first and second place winners.
4) Wait for the submissions to roll in. Enjoy perusing peoples' work and select my favorites.
5) Announce the winners and send them a check along with a hard-copy of the publication. Although, it's not really necessary to send a hard-copy; this just adds to the legitimacy factor.

Enthusiasm: None. I actually don't care to do this. Sure I could, but it would probably only be a little less work than running and actual literary journal, with the added guilt of suckering would be writers like myself.

Practicality: As practical as creating a website and advertising on key writer's advice websites.

Difficulty: Technically speaking, not that difficult. Morally speaking - that depends on you.

Idea #8: Create a log of story ideas

Description
Recently, I flipped through my journal and stumbled across an idea I had come up with for a story. Nothing crazy or detailed, just a quick blurb that could be fleshed out in the future into a complete plotline. I had jotted it down quickly, the handwriting a scribble, thinking that it would make for a good story and I didn't want to lose it. Then I promptly forgot about all about it.

But this is the point of keeping a journal, right? To capture those ideas that drift out of the smoke in our pre-frontal cortex, before the wisps drift off again into the ether. Our minds are always changing - fail to record an idea, and it might never come back from the hidden lands of inspiration. The problem is, these story ideas are buried in amongst the pages of sketches, grocery lists, designs for furniture or other items to build, dream logs (a future blog post on that shortly), and other mishmash. With no key word or date search capability.

So I just have to go back through my journals, one page at a time, and type them up.

Steps
1) Dig up old journals from the basement.
2) Find the story ideas and type them up.
3) Select the most promising and flesh them out into a complete story.
4) Get them published.

Enthusiam: Moderate. Much like the jotting down of story ideas, enthusiasm for reading through these ideas fades as soon as I get them typed. But at least I have them for the future, right?
Practicality: I'd forgotten how many journals I've kept over the years. And that's not counting the ones from high school (dare I step back into that mindset?)
Difficulty: I had to flip back through years and years of notebooks and journals. And sit down and actually type them up. And I'm still haunted by the feeling that I've missed a few.

And I did. I went back and dug out my journals, flipped through them, and typed them into a Word doc. I now have a list, a sampling of which includes:
- A man with Alzheimers in a nursing home who sends postcards about places he had been to with his wife when she was still alive. His granddaughter puts them together into a story of his life, a biography she would have never known had she not read the postcards.
- A boy who is a thief and punk, but wears a Boy Scout uniform to look wholesome.
- A short short about a lottery winner who sets fire to his own house to fake his death so he can finally shake all the people asking him for money.
- A future in which the government has mandated public servants to have electrodes implanted in their brains to force them to make policies according to laws and regulations, removing emotional thought from policy decisions. Based on a new technology using nanofiber cables implanted in mice's brains, successfully making them turn in certain directions when the light in the cables turns on.
- Based on a man I met in the Philippines, who long since went "off the grid," who is now dying and teaching his lessons to an American who happened by chance to meet him while on vacation.

And that's just a quarter of the story ideas I dug up out of these journals. Someday I'll type them up and get them published.