Editor Interview: Winamop

Stuff that makes us think

I quite like Joel Veitch's site rathergood.com, a little heavy on the kittens, but I do have an affection for the silly.
I admire the staying power of "Private Eye" a hard-hitting satirical magazine in the UK which has been going for.. err, well long before the internet anyway.
The Onion is good too.
You know what the internet is like.. I could be reading absolutely anything that grabs my interest!

I think Martin Friel is a good story teller, if only I could persuade him to do more for us...
Outside of the site I'll vote for Ian Rankin, and you can't beat Herge's Tintin stories!

We don't take ourselves too seriously, and we like people to have a go. Maybe you're just trying out your story telling or poetic skills and want to put the result in a quiet backwater of the internet? Try Winamop.
We've had quite a few people start with us and go on to great things, they pop back in to say hello occasionally.
Others become regulars because it's a nice place to be.

If it's a story, check the flow of the words, read it out loud to someone.
It's amazing what a few commas will do to help the reader's understanding of a paragraph.
I reserve the right to put apostrophes in the right places...
I'm quite prepared to go with any weird idea, but if the words don't read properly you're doing your reader no favours.

An intriguing short story with a nice turn of phrase or a poem which makes me think about it. I like rhymes too, I know it's unfashionable but I haven't been in fashion since 1973!

I can cope with most things concerning document format, but editorially I sometimes wonder who the piece is aimed at. Maybe only the writer?

It's good to have a few lines of bio, maybe something about the person rather than just a list of where they have been published.
I really don't mind if they've never been published before.

I couldn't ever publish anything I hadn't read to the end! I want to know what happened...
Having said that, I can generally tell in the first few lines if it's going to be good or not; but there's always the odd surprise. That's the joy of it.

No, just me reading it. I'll usually accept it on merit (if there is any merit in it).
Sometimes I'll run poetry past JBP, our proper poet, but he'll usually find fault with it when I just want to know if there is a spark in there!

A nice cup of tea, a few biscuits and a full in-box will keep me occupied happily (usually) for a few hours. I set time aside to do it, you can't just skim stuff, it's not fair to the writers.
I'll tend to set it into html there and then, whilst it's fresh in my mind and I can write the introduction to suit.