Below is reposted the article, 50 Iconic Writers Who Were Repeatedly Rejected , from OnlineCollege.org (credit given, though I've seen the list or a list very similar to it elsewhere.)

Enjoy and submit. Then submit. Then submit. Believe me, there's someone out there who likes what you write. It may not be the best market at first, but it's a market. That aspect of your career WILL improve with time.

50 Iconic Writers Who Were Repeatedly Rejected

This is a short time of transition for The Better Writing Blog by Thomas McAuley. My wife recently passed along that Facebook has -- and apparently has had for a while now -- an app or whatever it's called...called NetworkeBlogs. It allows bloggers to post their blog in a Facebook directory. It makes it easier to advertise your blog to others who might not have found it otherwise. It allows me to find similar or otherwise interesting blogs to follow. It gives me the option to post to my Facebook and Twitter profiles my newest blog entries. And it presents my RSS feed in an attractive, easy-too-use list. Basically, on first study, it strikes me as interesting, potentially helpful but also a bit of an unknown quantity.

I've posted my blog there and will wait to see what happens. As of this writing, only my wife and I follow my entries, so help me move past the pathetic and follow my blog on Facebook. If I have more than 20 followers, The Better Writing Blog moves to another level in the keyword search listings. That's a whole other order of visibility, if the listings run in the same way as other keyword search engines.

Anyway...with or without followers, The Better Writing Blog will continue. I post it, hoping that others will benefit from the things I have to say about writing and the rewards and difficulties of living a life dedicated to writing, but I'm also satisfied to simply be journaling my path to becoming a better writer.

Join if you can.

Andrew Bosley's Brainstormer, which can be found at http://andrewbosley.com/the-brainstormer.html or obtained as an iPhone app (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-brainstormer/id374496865) is the most fun story prompt generator I've ever used.

Andrew Bosley is a self-described concept artist working -- as of the publishing of the bio on his site -- out of Raleigh. I'm assuming the North Carolina, not the English variety of Raleigh. Wherever he's working, his site is way worth a visit. Not only is his Brainstormer tool a dandy find on its own, he also has a couple terrific galleries of his concept art full of odd, believable cartoonish characters and what not.

But it's the Brainstormer that really caught me. Typically, when searching for fresh story prompts online, one will find anything from the disappointing -- a simple tired bulleted list of ideas -- to the tech-dull -- a simple script-driven, randomly-generated prompt.

Whereas the Brainstormer also must be driven by a script, the design and action fools the eye and mind into thinking we're looking at an old-timey contraption, hand painted, crafted of thick, yellowed cardboard held together with a brass pin. Something you might find in the drawer of  an abandoned 1920s office building.

Usually a three-part prompt, which Brainstormer is, goes Genre-Setting-Object. The Brainstormer doesn't follow this standard practice. Each of the Brainstormer's three wheels has a different purpose, each of which tends to be a little hard to define simply. They are organized like this:

• An inner wheel includes themes or settings: Disaster, Healing Journey, Genius
• The middle wheel has what I have to describe as modifiers: scientific, family-owned, Chinese
• The outmost wheel, the easiest to define: objects or subjects like subway, church, oil freighter

It's not standard, but somehow the combinations work every time. I must have clicked the damned thing 100 times in an attempt to throw it off. Nada. So different isn't bad. I think of it like Mac's approach to things: design your whatever-you-need with the mindset you've never seen an existing product that serves (or often does its best to serve) the niche you're designing for. Many times, you'll end up with a product that no one has seen before.

::Brainstormer stands, waves and bows::

In the center is a RANDOM button. Click it and its three concentric gold-green wheels start spinning. Quickly, the wheels come to separate stops a la a slot machine. And stopping quickly is key because too long a spin could get old fast. A white line highlights a single item on each of the wheels.

I'll click it a few times and list the results. Fun times.

Ok. 10 seconds. Go!

Um...an Rocky mountain family during the mid 1900s. The son is showing signs of rejecting the fire and brimstone religion he's been taught to believe is all there is to life. Sort of already writing an Appalachian-based story. Pass.

K...duh....how about a huge multi-national conglomerate spills a shit pot of oil in the Gulf. Pass.

Alright...oooh. Good....Let's turn the third one on its head. Normally the gods would abduct some poor bastard, making the ones left behind suffer and bestowing some awesome advantage -- like awesomeness -- onto the abducted person. But, under what circumstances would a god itself be abducted. Maybe by humans. Given the typical scenario I described, maybe they figure something out that allows them to abduct one of the gods' own. Classic standoff that the gods never saw coming.

Bingo! I'll have to write that down. Oh. I just did. k.

Now, honestly, this is not a story idea I probably would have thought of without The Brainstormer. The cool thing is that when you're forced to think about the first two and come to a dead or dull end, by the time you get to the third story, your story-creating ideas are already flowing. The tool lulls you into the right mindset. And it's quick. Three clicks and thirtyish seconds?

The down side is when you're ready to sit down to write prompt-inspired story and you check out The Brainstomer, you'll sneak a peek at the options just above or below the prompt it gave you. It'll invariably be one so tasty and tempting you feel like using it instead. I suppose that's okay, but it feels like cheating to me.

Or you end up clicking over and over until the writing window has passed. Maybe that's just me. Tread lightly.

Regardless of the risks involved, check The Brainstormer out. Bookmark the page on www.andrewbosley.com or download the app. Tell a writing friend. But, most importantly, give it a spin and see what wonderful, fun, off-beat ideas come to you.

What is Luxurious Writing?

I think we all strive for some that I call luxurious writing. There is a certain polish to professional (or merely experienced) writers' work. This polish comes across to a reader as a clear sense of being unhurried in the telling of their story. The author's state of mind during his writing is communicated in smooth sentence structure; natural, unforced sentence variance within a paragraph; and an easy flow from one paragraph to the next. A skilled writer spends necessary time on key details and shows the discipline to give only brief mention to needed but minor details.

None of this is new or complex. But how one achieves luxurious verse in his own writing is no simple thing. What can be done to assist one toward reaching this goal?

It has been said "I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand." For learning writing, I would suggest a little bit of each approach. One method may prove more effective than another but all done together is certain to help the most.

Hear Good Writing

Public radio and C-SPAN often features authors reading aloud their own works. You can visit authors on their book tours. I would suggest attending authors' tours regardless of the benefit to one's writing. If you don't now or have never toured with your own book, chances are if you're serious about this whole business of writing you will. You can buy audio books. Regardless how you get to hear writing read, listen for the songlike quality of the verse. Even plays and movies can both inspire and instruct if the listener is active.

Read Good Writing

Read in conscious detail writing you enjoy and find easy and enjoyable to read. Study it. Dissect it. What about works for you? Not all writing hits you the same way. What are the differences between writing that you connect with and writing that you don't.

Then Go Do Good Writing

Not only will you want to start on your own work after hearing and reading good writing. You may want to take some of that good writing and simply copy it. Many who have written about writing have made this suggestion. Coming from a background of painting, I can tell you there's no better way to truly understand a painting than to copy it. In so doing, you're not trying to rip off the author: what you're trying to accomplish is, in essence, ride in the passenger seat next to the author. By simply typing out good writing, you experience it to a degree. You get inside and feel the flow. You experience first hand the point at which the author decided, "That's just right. That's how I wanted to say so and so." Writing, in this regard, is one of the few types of art where you can go this deep, so take advantage of that fact and dive in.

Happy July 2010, everyone. These are hot days around my house and it's been hard to find good solid blocks of writing time.

Unless you're a hermit, you'll know that the World Cup has been dominating the sports world for the last month and continues through the 11th, another week. You'll also probably know that the Tour (of de France and Lance fame) begins today even though its publicity has been diminished due to more American interest than usual in the Cup.

With a personal history of being a soccer fanatic and with a son engaged in high-level cycling, these two events smeared over both of these summer months presents a very difficult quandry for me. My work and writing have always fought for my time. Now that the Tour and the Cup are here, I have a lot of juggling to do.

The obvious answer to finding writing time should be -- to an outsider -- have a simple simple solution: Miss the Cup. Skip the Tour. To that I say Fuck the You. Missing either one is not an option. My addiction has progressed too far to turn back.

Here's what I've done to help get everything done -- and allow me to include watching these infrequent sports events as "getting something done:"

• Balanced diet and little simple sugar. Sugar crashes don't work.
• Go into the day knowing that you're looking at a 12- to 16-hour days.
• Perfect the short nap. Halftimes are about 30 minutes.
• Treadmill and other workouts during games.
• Say good bye to all other TV. Since television is the devil anyway, use this busy time to refuse to watch it. I limit myself to the Cup, the Tour and BBC morning news.

There's more, but I'll cut this short since Argentina plays Germany in about 5 hours. Yes, it's just after 4am and I'm up writing.

Wish me luck.