Leon Ogroske has been the Editor of Writers’ Journal for 10 years. This publication serves about 22,000 writers nationwide and publishes 6 times per year. Of the magazines in this gallery, they are the only one to also accept short stories and poetry for publication.
Writing, Editing, and Genre-Skipping
About.com: You’ve worked at Writers Journal for about 10 years. What did you do before that?
Leon Ogroske: Actually, I worked in the agricultural industry, a completely unrelated field!
A: Do you write for any other magazines? Or do any other kind of writing?
L: I do, but that’s just my personal thing—it’s not connected with Writers’ Journal at all. I write short stories that I submit to other publications.
A: Many of my readers are trying to make a living freelancing, but they also tell me that they write in other genres, like short story, on the side. What do you think of skipping between genres?
L: I think if people are capable of doing that, it’s a good thing. I write fiction, but I also write non-fiction, and sometimes I find I may be moving along in a fiction story and I’ll get bogged down. So then I go back to my non-fiction, and maybe that will inspire me to go back to my fiction writing and go on with the story. I think that when you do that genre-hopping, it stimulates the mind, it inspires the person, it gets those creative juices flowing.
About Writers’ Journal
A: Writers’ Journal seems to have something for everyone; how do you balance between all the genres?
L: The genres are mainly in the contest submissions and winners. But, in the article submissions, we definitely accept articles about any genre.
Some of [the genres] are a little bit harder to distinguish from one another, and that’s why, last year, we started the science fiction/fantasy contest. Some science fiction writers might not like the mixture between he two, but don’t want to limit the submissions.
We’re really interested in non-fiction articles, too, though. We like to introduce people to new concepts and help them to polish their writing abilities in every genre. That’s why we really like to call ourselves the complete writer’s magazine.
However, there are subjects that we don’t cover. For example, song writing, and play writing. Although, if I had a good article on play writing I would probably seriously consider it.
A: What makes Writers’ Journal unique compared to its competitors?
L: Many of the articles are writers helping other writers. They are either well-published, or, they may be, for example, a professor of English, or something like that, and they just want to get the word out there, to convey an idea to other writers.
Our audience is mostly aspiring writers, however, we also receive comments from writers who have been out there for years, and they say they like our magazine because they can pick it up and it’s inevitable that they will find something that will help them in their field of writing.
A: I noticed that the magazine is very heavy on contests, do they get a lot of entries?
L: Yes, and we receive many comments from the people who enter the contests. [They say] that they do it not so much for the hopes of winning the contest, but it helps them--it forces them to write. Especially because they’re such short stories, and many writers find it very difficult to write a short story. Some of them will tell us that it really helps them to become more concise in their writing, and it helps learn to edit the writing down. That’s really an important part for the writer.
Click through to page 2 to see how to pitch Leon at Writers' Journal.
