Help me find some hip online publications

November 27, 2005 6:24 PM

Help me find some hip online publications to submit some writing to.

About six months ago I left a (short) career in journalism to get married and follow my husband to South Korea. Leaving the biz was easy, because I figured out pretty quick after graduating that it was much more fulfilling to write what I wanted to write about and not get paid than to write stupid "community interest" stories for less than 10 bucks an hour.

Since moving, I've had lotsa free time to spend writing, and now I'd like to try to get some attention for the things I've written.

I'm not looking to get paid (yet), I just want to find some cool online publications that are not yet past their prime or too popular to consider a lowly wanna-be writer such as me-self. Think McSweeneys or The Morning News before everyone wanted to write for them.

Also, nothing genre-specific, please. The one thing I've found an abundance of is speculative fiction sites, but unfortunately, that's not what I write.

Okay... GO!

posted by Brittanie to Writing & Language (14 answers total)

I got started at Flak Magazine
posted by johngoren at 6:31 PM on November 27, 2005

Second Flak.
posted by nyterrant at 6:50 PM on November 27, 2005

the black table, maybe?
posted by Hackworth at 7:02 PM on November 27, 2005

Response by poster: Sorry, the links to Flak are not working. Also, I just wanted to point out that even though I ended my question title in a preposition, I really am a talented writer with an extensive knowledge of the rules of grammar.
posted by Brittanie at 7:13 PM on November 27, 2005

Hi, Brittanie -- the preposition rule is one up with which Winston Churchhill would not put. Give the Flak link another shot -- it works from this computer, anyhow. Fun people...
posted by johngoren at 8:30 PM on November 27, 2005

Flak Magazine, for some reason, requires you to link to its index page. That's dumb.

You should have writ:
Help me find some hip online publications to submit some writing to, y'all.
posted by metaculpa at 8:36 PM on November 27, 2005

Response by poster: I'm an Okie, so the use of "y'all" is not totally out of character.
posted by Brittanie at 8:49 PM on November 27, 2005

Response by poster: Okay, so the second link to Flak is not working either. Perhaps it's because I'm in Korea - random sites are sometimes blocked here for what seems to be no reason.

Anyway, still looking for more options.

Y'all.
posted by Brittanie at 8:52 PM on November 27, 2005

N+1 Magazine
posted by extrabox at 8:57 PM on November 27, 2005

I'd like to second the motion that the preposition-ending thing is a sibboleth, not a rule. As my dad used to say when picking a bedtime story "which book do you want to be read to out of from?".

See also the split-infinitive thing.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 9:19 PM on November 27, 2005

Brittanie, if you're interested in offbeat pop cultural link blogging, we're looking for new editors at Subcrawl.
posted by Scram at 10:12 PM on November 27, 2005

There is nothing wrong with ending sentences with prepositions; that's one of those invented "rules" that's so silly even the prescriptivist mavens disavow it. See this sensible piece (and the followup with quotes from mavens).
posted by languagehat at 5:56 AM on November 28, 2005

I was tempted to ask for clarification about what you want to write (beyond not stupid community interest) but perhaps "hip" would be enough description to someone who is actually hip.

If you don't care if you get paid, why not start your own blog and write about what you want to write about? If there's a metblog for your area you can see about writing non-stupid community interest stuff for them to drive traffic to your site, or a million other aggregators to get links. Or is the point to get some direction in your writing from an external source?
posted by phearlez at 9:50 AM on November 28, 2005

Response by poster: Exactly, the point is to get a little recognition from an already-established e-publication. I say e-publication because I'm living overseas and I'd rather see something published online than in a paper periodical I might never get my hands on.

Also, the type of writing I'm looking to submit is more short story fiction and personal essay. I'm sick of journalism, although an occasional non-stupid community interest story would be fun too. Problem is I live in a small town on a rural island in Korea, so there's not much of a "community" here, even less so since I'm a foreigner.

I (normally) live in Houston, and I've thought about writing for their metblog, but since I'm not there now I'm not sure how that would work.
posted by Brittanie at 4:21 PM on November 28, 2005