Tag Archives: CHEAP POP

600 Words for The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts

30 Jan

Market Monday reminds me to focus, and then, when I resist, has the nerve to interfere with my angry stupor. Election Dejection, Take II.

More writing cure, that’s what I need. Maybe you need it, too?

On December 5, I marked my return to Daily Shorty with the declaration that in the face of undispelled election dejection, “I would prefer to be animated and productive while I shake with anger and fear, rather than depressed and dithering.” Let the record show that “depressed and dithering” didn’t rear their ugly heads until Sunday. I didn’t overreact—I just went dark as I quietly absorbed the awfulness in the news. But today depressed and dithering tried to take root.

matterMarket Monday, my weekly spotlight on a magazine worthy of your very short fiction, asserts itself. It’s our reminder of my one superpower and yours: Words. The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts would like to see no more than 600 of them. Randall Brown, founder and managing editor, will treat your words well, as he did mine.

Do I like what JCCA publishes? That site is a treasure trove. Just a few gold coins to get you started here, here, and here.

Aesthetics? I like JCCA’s minimalist presentation, and I love the way the site’s organized, with easy access to archives on its homepage.

Do they nominate authors for awards? Why yes, yes they do! Check out that righthand side of the homepage.

Do the guidelines speak to me? This is one of those rare times when guidelines that articulate a vision beyond “send us your best” resonate with me. A strict word limit of 600 demands the kind of focus writers of very short fiction learn to master, but it’s the call to compression in particular—short doesn’t necessarily mean compressed—that shapes the voice of this journal. And I love it.

Let’s change the world for the better by publishing more truth with our stories. If you grace JCCA with your work, please let me know so I can congratulate you.

In the meantime, if you’re fighting continued election dejection, too, here’s the smartest political piece I’ve read in a long time. And I’ll sign off with a quote from America Ferrera, from the Women’s March on Washington, that gives me hope:

If we—the millions of Americans who believe in common decency, in the greater good, in justice for all—if we fall into the trap by separating ourselves by our causes and our labels, then we will weaken our fight and we will lose. But if we commit to what aligns us, if we stand together steadfast and determined, then we stand a chance of saving the soul of our country.

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CHEAP POP Wants Your Micros!

23 Jan

It’s Market Monday! Grab your quirky, amped, oddball micros. You know, the ones that *POP*.

screen-shot-2017-01-23-at-6-31-01-pmI discovered CHEAP POP, home of the offbeat micro, when reading the excellent anthology The Best Small Fictions 2015. More on this little treasure and her 2016 sister in an upcoming post. For now I’ll thank the editors for bringing this terrific magazine to my attention just when I happened to be looking sideways at a handful of micro drafts I’d yanked from my Daily Shorty year. I liked them—I liked them a lot—but who would want them?

Do I like what CHEAP POP publishes? I read Leesa Cross-Smith’s “All That Smoke Howling Blue” in the anthology and thought, hmm. Is that story… finished? I read it again. Stopped to savor strange word-pairings that shot tension or was it joy? into the piece, thought hard about the sentence, “My name, a begging blue prayer,” so sad… or was it so eager? It’s a strange, jumpy or settled? little story, a slice-of-life piece if the lamplight’s flickering and the TV screen keeps going to static and you’re not sure if maybe you keep hearing that same ringing note, low, in your left ear, are you getting tinnitus or is that a memory??

After reading Cross-Smith’s piece, and then this one and this one and this one, I thought CHEAP POP might just appreciate my quirks, so I asked and they answered by publishing my micro “Just Asking,” originally drafted on April 26 during my Daily Shorty year. Many thanks to the editors.

They will like your quirks, too.

Does CHEAP POP nominate its authors for awards? Here’s their awards page.

Aesthetics? CHEAP POP does a great job of showing off an awful lot of pieces. If they didn’t have such a clean and balanced approach to page design, the collection of links would look too jumbled.

Do the guidelines speak to me? As someone committed to the craft of very short fiction, I love their devotion to micros—they take pieces 500 words or less, full stop. They couldn’t be more clear about how to put your submission together, which I very much appreciate. And this speaks to me for sure: “We don’t differentiate between Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, and Prose Poetry, nor do we have restrictions on genre—if it pops, it pops! What we want to see is good writing, your best writing, and that’s it.” Yes!

If you publish at CHEAP POP, please let me know so I can congratulate you! If CP doesn’t speak to you, just move on to the next. There are so many magazines worthy of your best work, I’m sure I’ll spotlight one you like soon enough. Good luck!

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