Hi friends! I woke up today to unseasonal rains and there's an unmistakable nip in the air. Autumn might be sooner than usual, and winter, colder. Have you noticed the season changing where you are? Let me know in the comments! It is interesting how a small change triggers a big one. Perhaps you're more intent and energetic now, perhaps you're looking to work on drafting and editing as a new season kicks in, perhaps you feel lesser so than in the summer months.

Formats of handwritten mails (and emails) provide excellent jackets to write fiction that needs to be direct and personal. That is why — epistolary fiction. Read on to find OUT more including helpful examples. Hi friends! A warm welcome to everyone, especially those of you who are subscribers of my Substack and receiving this email. It is so because I'm pausing my tiny Substack account and streamlining you all into this 4-

Hello subscribers and readers! September is the month when a lot of journals and magazines open to submissions. I hope you've been submitting to as many as you'd like to. Most will, sadly, close before you know it because magazines these days cap submissions to a manageable limit. Anyway, if you're unsure what I'm talking about, look at this list…

For this blogpost, I’ve combed through my notebooks to come up with a list of six new PROMPTS you may try during the upcoming long weekend: Take an abstract noun--here's a brief list below--and form an idea around it. Work on the idea to form a plot. Make it reflective and semi-autobiographical. It is amazing how abstract ideas can be useful foundations for writing deep, imaginative, or philosophical stories.

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com If you are a writer, don’t read. That is the advice of leading writers, thinkers and eminent personalities, including Albert Einstein, Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy and William Woodard. Sounds like literary sacrilege, doesn’t it? More so, given that, as writers, we want to read everything we can lay our hands on. But, turns out, there are more layers to it.

August 01, 2025 Allow me to begin this month's A Newsletter With a View of One's Own-04 with shout out to some of our subscribers who have had a great June and July. Subscriber and guest contributor Sudeepa Nair released her book The Lakeview Mystery, available on Kindle across Amazon websites. Jack Morris published And on the seventh day she rose again…

Past two months, I wrote and received acceptances for six pieces after making a conscious decision: I spent less time on social media. Even though engaging through my platforms have emerged to become an indispensable part of my writing life. Why and how? Read on to find out. As you may very well know, writing life is as much about writing and publishing as it is about promoting your publications.

Dear Friends, Today marks four years since I launched this little corner of the internet—my author website! It is a space I carved out to share my writing, connect with readers, and give voice to others wanting to share theirs. I run my author site as a payback medium to Writing Community. It's a craft posts library, a display window for writing, author interviews, guest posts, besides being a home for many general/community interest blogposts.

July 02, 2025 Hey friends! How about starting this month's newsletter by sharing some submission calls I'm really excited about and believe you will be too. Hudson Review is open all month to a no-fee #poetrycontest 1st prize: $1000 + publication, 2nd & 3rd: $500 + publication. Submit up to 5 poems; manuscripts accepted electronically. Stone’s Throw (Rock and a Hard Place Magazin…

CRAFT ESSAY BY MANDIRA PATTNAIK Earlier this week, I was looking at the themes that literary magazines are currently open for. Some of them are "Science" (inScribe), "Memories in Shape" (The Literary Times), "Fairytale, Myths, Legends" (Livina Press), "Letter to the Editor" (The New York Times Magazine) and "I Wish I'd Said That" (THEMA). One or two of these immediately spurred my thoughts.

June 01, 2025 Hey friends! Welcome back! First up. Mysterious are the ways of the heart. My heart is full as both Glass/Fire and Where We Set Our Easel turned-in anniversaries--six months/4.25 Goodreads rating and two years/4.9 Goodreads rating respectively, but my collection of short stories is still looking for a publisher, even as the manuscript gathered one more personal decline.

GUEST BLOGPOST BY HARSHITA NANDA, AUTHOR OF Love Awaits, A Tale of Unbroken Promises MAY 18 2025 Most people have no idea what being a writer truly entails. Thus, I decided to pen down a few words and dispel some of the myths about being a writer and their writing process. Have you seen movies where a well-dressed writer is sitting in a cafe, and the moment their fingers touch the keyboard, the words flow?

in spite of bending and breaking quite a few rules of literary fiction writing, “The Stackpole Legend” manages to be a hugely satisfying read “The Stackpole Legend” (Wendell Berry, The Threepenny Review) is not your conventional short story. Reading it can be revealing, especially to new and emerging writers. I say this because it busts so many myths early writers accept as gospel truth.

May 06, 2025 Hey friends! Welcome back! Starting this month, this blog is set to become more regular and you'll receive a monthly newsletter on the first week that is truly a newsletter--meaning it'll have updates about the literary world we all 'submit' to (pardon the double meaning--we're quite literally here!), some news of open windows (though open and fee-free submission windows are becoming more and more rare, more and more expensive!), a few personal updates (nothing much to bore you!), some tips (I promise those will be helpful) and a round-up of a 2-3 stories I truly recommend.

Get more from Mandira Pattnaik on Patreon

YouTube video by Mandira Pattnaik

Get more from Mandira Pattnaik on Patreon

creating worlds apart with imagination

Get more from Mandira Pattnaik on Patreon

Get more from Mandira Pattnaik on Patreon

Get more from Mandira Pattnaik on Patreon

Get more from Mandira Pattnaik on Patreon

Get more from Mandira Pattnaik on Patreon