First published piece

[HEyHEY]

You University rag doesn't count!
Mine was when I in my second year of J-school. I knew there was gonna be a protest for the "Training wage" so I called the local left wing paper and asked if they wanted a piece..they said, "we usually don't do protest pieces, but we haven't covered the training wage enough." So I did it...ended up good except for two things..I used "Mid-as-well" and "Their" when it should have been "there"...didn't catch that while editing.

Months later that paper invited me to their xmas party..it was cool.

[RandomKoolzip]

1. In college, I got published twice.....

Both in textbooks. Once by Simon and Schuster, the other by Houghton-Mifflin. Both times, they were just essays I kicked out on the bus on the way to school. My professors asked If they could send them in to the textbook companies to use as "examples of good writing," I said sure, and got paid fifty bucks each for them.


The first piece I got published outside of my University rag (The University of New Orleans Driftwood, in my case) was in the Nashville Rage, an "arts weekly...." it was a movie review. For a while I was writing full time (!!!!!) for some dude's website.

Blah blah blah. Whoopty shit.

[Der Blaue Engel]

2. A story called "Fever"

In a one-hit-wonder Lesbian erotica journal called "Writing Works," 1998.

Girlfriend brings her lover soup when she has the flu, and things warm up from there. ;)

[porkrind]

3. Don't leave me hanging!

What happened then?

[BigMcLargehuge]

4. first professional sale

"Freedom Smells Like Red Wine Vinegar" to Lost Worlds Magazine for the princely sum of 2 copies of the magazine featuring the story.

First professional sale for money. 13th or 14th weekly column Beat 13 I did for a couple of years here in NH for Manchester's Hippo Press.

[Liberty Belle]

5. A very silly story...

I was 23 with braces on my teeth while working as a night copy editor at an Idaho newspaper back in the early '80s. Just before Halloween, the editor told me he finally had a freelance assignment, if I really wanted it. (Apparently no one on staff would take the gig.)

Turns out he wanted a reporter who could pass as a teen to go trick or treating at Boise's wealthiest neighborhoods and report on what the rich folks were giving out. I donned a disguise to be sure no one would recognize me (or so I thought).

Unfortunately, the newspaper insisted on running a photo on the front page. I didn't know that green face paint photographs as if you're wearing no makeup at all!

When I got to my day job the next morning, I took quite a ribbing from my coworkers. All that for twenty-five bucks and a byline!

Fortunately, it was onward and upwards from there.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Short story set in the BattleTech universe, in MechForce Quarterly

they even paid, I was in heaven... ever since much has happened, and these days I find myself doing my own world, including... 3D CGI art for it... having a blast by the way

[tjdee]

7. A few poems on an online magazine I don't even remember the name of!

I didn't take it so seriously when I started out.

[WCGreen]

8. First paid piece was an OpEd about

the Borking of Lannie Guinier..

Both of these people were being vilified for holding controversial positions of popular issues.......

After five more OpEd's in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, I took to writing for a local alternative papers and have at least three or four published a year.

[SteppingRazor]

9. First piece

Back in the summer between high school and college, wrote a human interest story on an old mansion in the middle of nowhere that was up for sale for the newspaper in Colorado Springs.
If memory serves me correctly, I believe the editor kept maybe four words of my original story.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

10. In Writer's Digest. A piece of poetry

Corn, corn, cornucopious
dumpsters on the street
wafting scents of pizza and roast
wet dreams of fresh cooked meat.

It was in an article about writing on this new thing called an internet.

[lala_rawraw]

11. poetry

two poems in an anthology with 50 or so other poets, i think... cannot remember anymore living under this regime.

[Maeve]

12. A short story printed by a small paper in Ireland

Altho I had been the subject of an interview that was published on-line earlier in 2002.

But my happiest is my first book--picked it up from the printers a week and a half ago! Not on-line yet--haven't got the publicity started, either, but it's more to sell when I am storytelling (altho I think it's excellent!)