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It has been some time since we’ve posted an Artcast, but we plan on getting them rolling again. This clip by Judah Mahay and John Sleek takes a different tack. They discuss the craft of writing per an article they plan on co-authoring, which will be published come May. This breaks our tradition of having Art Notes about articles, but in a sense this keeps to the them, even though the article hasn’t been published yet.

We hope you enjoy it and please leave your comments below.

Also, you can send suggestions for other articles you want to be added to Art Notes by emailing artnotes@beyourart.com. Though most articles will be from BeYourArt.com we are more than willing to consider articles elsewhere.

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2nd Place Winner of the 2009 Be Your Art Writing Competition. Co-published with the North Shoreian Magazine, February 2010.

By Anna Katsavos

It smells of a scavenger hunt, each of us waiting for the cue, each of us ready to pounce.  We take our positions, sit up straight, and smile, all of us flashing our biggest, toothy grins.  Forty-five dollars poorer, we’re gathered in a swanky city club, sitting at our designated tables, each of us perched on her seat, emitting vibes that beg, “Pick me, pick me.”  This eight-minute speed-dating, a bizarre, rate-a-mate version of musical chairs, is already more than I can handle.  It’s worse than I had imagined, worse than that school-yard feeling of waiting to be chosen.

Ding!  Ding!  Every eight minutes, Ding! Ding! I mean come on–eight minutes?  It takes me longer than that to pick out bottled water. Read more…

Co-published with the North Shoreian Magazine, February 2010.

By Judah Mahay

The popular craze of technology these days has driven forward a demand for products never dreamed of a couple of years ago. With the advent of the iPhone and its newly birthed competitors, namely Android based phones, artists have been blessed with an array of previously unimaginable tools. This article will begin the series “Best iPhone Apps for Artists” exploring this topic. Furthermore, “The Writer’s Spotlight” will focus on the iPhone apps for masters fiction. Writers have seen applications dedicated to them pop into existence on what seems like a daily basis. Let’s take a look at what is available at the moment.

Story Tracker | Submission Tracking Tool

I always like to start with my favorites. The submission process can be overwhelming, especially if you are dealing with simultaneous submissions and sending out multiple stories at the same time. You’re asking yourself if you should contact a magazine, but can’t remember when you sent the story. You finally get a story published and have to make phone calls to the other markets, but can’t find the piece of paper you wrote the list of magazines on. This nifty application helps you deal with just that and it does an excellent job at it. The tool lets you input stories and markets, at which point it lets you link them up with probable response dates. Beyond the basics it allows for a depth of information for each market and it tracks statistics such as work published, rejected, earnings, trunked stories, and more. A great tool and well worth the $9.99. Frankly, I would buy it even if it cost $20.

Price: $9.99 Read more…

Third Place Winner of the 2009 Be Your Art Writing Competition. Co-published with the North Shoreian Magazine, December 2009.

By Micki Peluso

Hank’s eyelids opened with aching slowness, blinking away the bright wash of sunlight spilling into his room. He squinted out the window at a high, pale sun. Past noon. Damn. He’d overslept. Most mornings he enjoyed watching the sun rise over the Palo Duro canyons, deep below the Texas plains—last night’s binge at the Rock n’ Bull Saloon had laid him low.

Rubbing a hand across his face, Hank swung his feet over the side of the bed and reached for his boots.  He frowned as he looked for the other one and found it on his foot. He’d slept, shirtless, one boot still on, caught up in his pulled down denims which hung at his knees. Read more…