The ad said:
Writer's Dream: summer breezes, fall foliage, quiet. Completely furnished cottage on the northern coast of Maine. By week or months. www.grayspointcottage.com - deann@busygal.org - 352-573-0013.
I actually went to the website to get a better idea. But I think it is a smart move to put an ad like that in a writer's magazine when often writer's seem to either want solitude, to clear their heads, or to get away so they can get organized and just sit and write. And after looking at the pictures on the website, I think it would definitely be a place that would be good to go to write or get ideas. If I was writing and needed to get away from all the clutter in my head and house, I would definitely go stay there. It looked peaceful. So I thought it was a surprise but interesting/smart move to do that because I'm sure they would get responses from writers.
I was first of all struck by how few advertisements there really are in this magazine (“the Writer”), and how they don’t overwhelm the reader because they are grouped on relatively few pages, rather than breaking up every page as most magazines do. They seem mostly to be advertisements for tools, courses, conferences and competitions for writers, and mostly genuine. Plus the odd ‘garret’, as Chelsea has noted. The one I’ve chosen to write about is from Claremont Graduate University and invite entries to two competitions, the prizes for which are $100,000 and $10,000. Perhaps the zeros attracted me to the advertisement.
ReplyDeleteThese are prizes “…for a book” and “…for a first book”, so presumably you have to be already published in order to be nominated. They are in respect of the Kingsley and Kate Tufts Awards (respectively) and have been going since 1993 and 1994 (again, respectively). Both are for poetry, which probably rules me out even if I live to be a hundred, but they seem genuine, with no particular ‘catch’.
It inspires me to think that there must be other awards offered for all kinds of writing – long and short fiction and drama – and that even though we probably can’t make a living from writing, as we are told repeatedly, there might be nice monetary gifts along the way for those who at least try.
It never surprises me where you might see an add. People target some magazines for their reader pool.
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