How to Get Published

Increase Your Writing Output

2011-12-06T02:09:00.001-08:00

If you want to get published, you have to write. Writing - just getting that first draft out as words onto a page - takes time, and can be a slow and frustrating process. I've found something that may be able to help you.

Have a read of this great post by Rachel Aaron, called How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day. Rachel discusses in detail how she created for herself a triangle with three core requirements: Knowledge, Time, and Enthusiasm.

I hope you get something out of it. I personally thought the Knowledge section was most applicable to me. How about you?

Patience

2010-09-16T22:08:00.000-07:00

Getting published takes patience, and lots of it. I'd like to share a little story from my own experience about patience.

Last year, sitting out on my front verandah with a little drink and a notebook, I was hit by a crazy idea for a short story. I started to scrawl in my notebook. After a few minutes I stopped. The idea was starting to scare me, and I backed out. After another few minutes of contemplation, I knew I had to continue: if the idea scared me, it was powerful.

I spent hours revising and honing the story to get it just right. I submitted it to Every Day Fiction on 5 December. And I waited.

Then, on 3 February 2010, I got a rewrite request. They liked the story, but it needed to work. The feedback they gave made sense, so I got to work. I submitted my revised story on 24 February. And I waited.

Then, on 22 May I got... another rewrite request. This shook me, and I spent some time re-reading the feedback, and thinking about whether to do another rewrite, or just drop it. I decided to go ahead, and submitted my re-revised story on 2 June. And I waited.

Then, on 29 June I got an acceptance! That was wonderful; but, before I could see it published online, I had to wait some more.

People Need to Know appeared online on 22 August 2010, 260 days after I'd first submitted it. It was a great feeling. Most of the feedback was postive, and it's rating reasonable well. People Need to Know taught me a lot about patience; one of the great lessons in how to get published.

Versatile Blogger Award

2010-09-15T19:44:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Jeffrey Beesler for passing on the Versatile Blogger Award to me. Like all awards, this one comes with rules:

The Rules for The Versatile Blogger Award:

Thank and link back to the person that gave you the award.
Share seven things about yourself.
Pass the award to fifteen bloggers that you think deserve it.
Lastly, contact all of the bloggers that you’ve picked for the award.

I've already thanked Jeffrey (check), and I just love sharing things about myself. Here's seven things:

Today is my tenth wedding anniversary
I play classical and steel-stringed acoustic guitar
I had nine stitches in my tongue when I severed it with my teeth in a trampoline accident.
I've never broken a bone, to the best of my knowledge.
I often don't finish novels I start reading; if they lose steam half-way through, I put them down.
I can keep a secret.
I can type at about 70 words per minute.

Fifteen recepients is a big call; so I'm bending the rules. Here's ten people that I'd like to pass this award onto:

Time to go leave some notification comments, and complete my onerous obligations.

High Concept

2010-08-31T17:45:00.000-07:00

In today's world of the two-second attention span, you need to knock people out, quickly. If you want your novel published, high concept is a very good way to do this.

Your novel has high concept if its basic "idea" can be summed up in a single phrase or sentence. To quote Nathan Bransford's recent blog post What High Concept Means:

"High concept means that a novel/movie/TV show's plot can be described very succinctly in appealing fashion."

Do yourself a favour, and read Nathan's blog post through, to make sure you understand high concept. Think through your favourite novels and movies. For each one, decide if it has high concept and if so, what it is. Remember, not all successful novels actually have high concept.

Now, think about your own novel (in progress). Does it have high concept? More importantly, should it have?

A Conversation with John Updike

2010-07-07T22:18:00.000-07:00

Check out the following interview by Sam Tanenhaus of The New York Times with John Updike. Topics include the writing life, other writers, aging and writing fictional characters that do things that the writer would never do.

I got a lot out of this clip, so I hope you do too.

There's No Such Thing as a Failed Story

2010-05-09T20:47:00.000-07:00

If you want to get short stories published, you will need more than just talent. You'll need more than just hard work, too. What you need is perseverance. Perseverance is partly about hard work, most about patience, and all about emotional resilience.

Read the article There's No Such Thing as a Failed Story by John Smolens at the Writer's Digest website. Firstly, it's down-to-earth in its realistic assessment of the average writer's chances at "success". This may seem depressing, but while making you open your eyes to reality, the article also encourages you to persevere.

As the title says, there's no such thing as a "failed" story. Each story you write teaches you something else about how to write; about what works, and what doesn't. You only know if you're going to write a great story after you've sat down and written it, not before. If it turns out to be not that great, learn from it, and write the next one.

Of course: preserving is only worthwhile if getting published is really your goal. Do you really want to get published? If so, then keep learning, and keep going.

Help with Query Letters

2010-03-22T22:42:00.000-07:00

If you want to get a novel published, you're going to have to get really good at writing query letters. What's a query letter? It's the letter or e-mail that you send to an agent or publisher, to get them interested in your novel. Gone are the days of sending unsolicited manuscripts in the mail. I'm not sure if those days were ever here, anyway.

A good query letter is a quick note that gives the agent an overview and the flavour of your novel. A great query letter gets the agent hooked. They'll send you an e-mail straight back that says, "Please send me a copy of your manuscript, I'd love to read it." Or, something like that.

Bad query letters appear to be the most common. This is a shame. If you've spent the last few years of your life writing a novel, I think it's worth spending a bit of time learning how to write a letter that's going to pitch that novel for all that it's worth.

One way to get good at writing query letters is trial and error. This is slow, frustrating and may lead to depression. The best way to learn is from others' mistakes. It's fine read examples of good query letters, but having the mistakes high-lighted in not-so-good queries is even better.

Enter: Query Shark, a blog where people submit their queries for a serious pounding. I haven't read all the entries yet, but I've found two important ingredients for a great online writer's resource at Query Shark: this blog is very informative, and very funny. I'm not going to waste my time learning stuff without having a bit of a laugh along the way.

If you want to get your novel published, you'll need to send out some great query letters to literary agents. Read Query Shark to find out how not to write a query.

The Write Habits

2010-03-21T17:51:00.000-07:00

If you want to get published, you have to write, a lot. When you are writing - really writing - you're not thinking about publication, much like an artist that is painting isn't thinking of the opening night of his exhibition in some posh city gallery. Stop thinking about the publishing process, and get to writing.

Good writing comes from good writing habits. Good writing habits are those that are effective - for you. Writers have an insatiable curiosity for understanding the writing habits of other writers, particularly those more successful then them. You can get a lot of good ideas looking at other writers' habits, but remember that these are not going to be a simple recipe for success for you.

Last year I blogged about a YouTube clip of Jeffrey Archer talking about his own writing habits. It really is a fascinating clip, and I've watched it many times since. I can assure you though, that I'll never adopt his habits. Actually, I have taken to writing long-hand with a felt-tipped pen since then. I like it.

Just recently, the prolific and widely published dark fiction author Angel Zapata used his blog A Rage of Angel to share a little about his own writing habits. The post is titled Writing Habits-Dawn of the Gummy Bear. I highly recommend that you read it, and the comments that follow. The post and comments have triggered a discussion with other writers about their own habits. You'll notice one thing about the comments: everybody is different. What works for one person will never work for someone else.

Should you play music while you write? Should you write in the morning, or late at night? The answer is: do what works. I'd urge you to consider one thing, though: be very careful about making your creative connection dependent on any drugs or alcohol. I'm not telling you what to do with your life; but I think it's very dangerous territory to establish a writing habit that makes good writing output depend on chemical stimulants. When you find yourself wanting to write more, and better (which you will), then you may find yourself with a substance problem. Then, if you get over the problem, you will struggle to re-establish that creative connection again, with cleaner methods. Gummy bears are a good, safe alternative.

If you want to get published, it's important to be up-to-date on the publishing industry, to know how to write a query letter, and to browse through the blogs of agents and publishers. More important than all of that however, is the need to get down and write. Find out what works for other writers, find out what works for you, and then develop your own successful writing habits.

How self publishing can lead to a real book deal

2010-03-17T00:29:00.000-07:00

Alan Rinzler has recently posted an excellent article on his blog called How self publishing can lead to a real book deal. What makes this article stand out from the crowd is that it is positive and optimistic about the prospects of those that go down the self-publishing route. Self-publishing gets almost as much of a bashing as vanity publishing, seen as nothing but a way to half fulfil the dreams of talentless, cashed-up writers.

Alan Rinzler doesn't join the self-publishing-bashers, though he admits that the stigma does exist:

A successfully self-published book can propel you down the road to a book contract at a commercial publishing house.

That’s the truth of the matter, despite the worries I hear from writers that self-publishing could doom their hopes of ever landing a real book deal. Don’t listen to those persistent rumors and urban myths that agents and editors won’t take on books the authors have published themselves.

Alan Rinzler's not just fuelled by boyish optimism. He's recently got book deals for two authors that initally self-published their work, and he's glad to talk about it.

Within the article, Alan Rinzler expands on what he sees as the top four reasons that self-published books get real book deals. Apart from the possibility of getting a book deal, there are other advantages to self-publishing:

With self-publishing you have total control over every aspect of the book. It’s an effective way to test and develop a book, since with small print-on-demand editions, the editorial content, cover design, and marketing approach can be polished up as you go along.

If you're thinking of self-publishing, have a look at this article. Even if you're not, Alan Rinzler's blog contains a wealth of knowledge "for writers and book people".

The Making of a Book Cover

2010-03-14T16:33:00.000-07:00

This fascinating video shows, in just two highly compressed minutes, the process of making the book cover for Blameless, by Gail Carriger:

Though it tells us nothing about how to get published, I find this type of thing not only interesting, but motivating. Why? Well, like many people scratching around trying to write a novel, I tend to visualise the end goal in a physical sense: the touch and feel of the printed book, thhe smell of the pages, and the look of the cover. So watch this clip, and dream like me about a graphic designer creating the cover of your first published novel. Then get back to writing it!

PS: Thanks to Nathan Bransford, for pointing out this video on his blog in this post.

Nathan Bransford's 10 Commandments

2010-03-10T21:49:00.000-08:00

Nathan Bransford is a literary agent who has a well-read blog of the same name. I only just discovered it today, but I can tell it's got some real potential, so I've become follower number 3,217. Those other 3,216 people can't all be wrong, can they?

Nathan Bransford's blog is all about the publishing process, what literary agents do (and how to find them) and all those little (and big) things you need to know and good if you want to get published.

For a taste of Nathan's blog, have a read of Ten Commandments for the Happy Writer, and browse from there. I particularly enjoyed his statement

Writing is not an excuse to neglect your friends and family. Unless you don't like them very much.

What do you think of these "commandments"? Do you keep them?

Why Do You Want to Get Published?

2010-03-09T17:19:00.000-08:00

If you want to get published, you need to be highly motivated. Being motivated is not enough, though: you need to understand what lies behind your motivations, so that at the end of your life you don't ask yourself, "Why did I waste my life on that?"

I'd like to share with you a guest post by Anne Burt at Christina Baker Kline: A Writing Life called Why Do I Even Want to Write a Novel? If you're considering writing a novel, or are part-way through the project, you should read this article. Anne Burt begins her article by writing:

Motivation has always been as cruel to me as it has been – well – motivating. I’ve been motivated to write because: I imagine glory when the world reads my masterpiece; I need to act out some childhood revenge fantasy about surpassing my father; I have a contorted sense that immortality is achievable through words on a page. Any analysis of my past motivations leaves me thinking I’m either a narcissist or an idiot or both.

Can you relate to that? I can. The joyful reception of a grateful world which you have blessed with your literature: a world that will pass on your book from generation to generation, from now and forevermore. If you stop and have a look at yourself (something I know I try to avoid) you'll probably find that you're "either a narcissist or an idiot or both." I say both.

Perhaps the concept of the the-ness of a novel inspires you, as it does Anne Burt. I haven't done the exercise that's described in her article: it's a little too artsy for me to bear. I can relate however, to holding a novel and thinking about what it would be like for the novel that I one day write to look and feel and smell just like that one.

On the subject of motivation, and the legacy we all want to leave, have a look at a new blog that's popped up called Choose Your Legacy. The blogger, Matt Rosinski, is trying to explore and express these very concepts.

Take time to discover your true motivation: find what you are passionate about. Why do you want to get published?

Top 5 Reasons to Despise Plagiarism

2010-02-10T20:21:00.000-08:00

As I've posted before in my post Dealing with Plagiarism,

"[i]f you want to get published, you need to be prepared to deal with plagiarism."

Another case of plagiarism has been highlighted within the online writing community by Greta Igl in a post called Stop! Thief! at her blog For Write or Wrong. The story, involving her friend "Carmen" (not her real name), is well worth a read. It demonstrates the blantant theft that some people are happy to pull off.

Within her post, Greta Igl lists the top five reasons she despises plagiarism. These are:

Plagiarism steals more than just a writer’s words.
Plagiarism makes editors suspicious of innocent writers.
Plagiarism robs authors of the right to publish their own work.
Plagiarism makes writers suspicious of one another.
Plagiarism is the worst kind of grubby, back-stabbing behavior a writer can exhibit.

If you want to get published, you need to be wise to the risks of plagiarism. Take the time to read Greta Igl's article, and my post, Dealing with Plagiarism.

Use the comments below to share your own experiences with plagiarism. Have you ever found that your work has been copied without your permission?

Always, Always Keep a Copy

2010-02-03T17:58:00.000-08:00

Always, always keep a copy of every submission and revision that you send to publishers. A great way to do this is to e-mail your Gmail or similiar webmail account with the file as an attachment. That way the story is "out there", even if your computer crashes.

You already know this, of course. I already knew this too. Yet, I still managed to stuff this up. For the full story, see my post titled How Embarrassing at my Surge Bin blog.

The moral of the story? We can all slip up by not doing something we know we should do every time. There is no real cure to the disease of being human. I can only say that I know that I'll be more dilligent, and I hope that you can learn from my mistake and be more dilligent too.

The Stephenie Meyer Problem

2010-01-26T21:58:00.001-08:00

I went to the library the other day, as I am wont to do. And so should you: you need to read to get published, and the library is the most cost effective way to do this. If your librarian doesn’t know your name, you need to be asking yourself some serious questions.

Anyway, as I was getting my books checked out, I noticed a bookshelf behind the counter. Each book had a small piece of paper sticky-taped to it. Aha, I realised, these are the books that have been reserved. The library may be a cheap place to get your books, but if you want to read something that's popular –really popular – you need to write your name down on a list, or you won't read it this decade. I had a mini-epiphany, standing there, staring at the reservation bookshelf, while the librarian asked if I was alright. Before lay the most wanted, most popular books in town. This, I realised, is where I want to be as a writer. Not just "published", not just with my books in every library; no: I want men, women, boys and girls to have to write their names down on a list to get their hands on my books.

So, I hurriedly looked through the authors and titles, aware that the librarian was now getting quite worried. There was Clive Cussler, Nora Roberts and John Grisham. As I was reading through all these names, the big picture hit me: these lesser mortals merely broke up the wall of black spines of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Series. There are only four books in this series - I looked it up – but there were twenty or thirty Twilight books on that shelf. People have to reserve copies of the Twilight novels, despite there being multiple copies. I turned to the librarian and said, "Stephenie Meyer's pretty popular, then?". Her eyes rolled. "You don't know the half of it," she said, and walked away, presumably to process more Twilight requests.

Later, as I pondered this experience, I found myself in a quandary. I'd decided I wanted to be like the authors on the reservations shelf; a lofty goal, to be sure. To be most like those authors, I would need to be most like Stephenie Meyer. The problem is: writer's love to hate her. Really, it's hard to find a positive word about Stephenie Meyer's writing within the online writing community. Is she really as bad a writer as everyone says, including Stephen King, or is this just a lot of literary snobbery?

I refuse to believe that Stephenie Meyer's success is just about marketing, or film rights. Those things may sell a few books, but they're not going to stop someone reading the book and saying, "That's terrible," and then telling their friends. Instead, people rave about her, and word-of-mouth sells books. Her writing has something that people want, even though her writing isn't what many consider to be "good". I want - no, need - to find out what that something is. Yes, I'm going to read Twilight.

What's the Big Idea

2010-01-20T14:35:00.000-08:00

If you're going to write a novel that's worth publishing, you need to know that your "idea" is big enough to sustain the story. As John Irving said,

The craft of a novel is simply to make the story better, more compelling, more unstoppable on page four-hundred than it was on page forty.

Has your novel idea got what it takes? Good question.

Katharine Weber has written an excellent guest blog post over at Christina Baker Kline's writing blog, A Writing Life, called What's the Big Idea. In her post, Katharine Weber writes:

I always have too many ideas. The question for me really isn’t ever Where do you get your ideas so much as How do you identify your best idea?

Katharine writes that sometimes ideas need to be sacrificed:

You have to be able to make decisive choices. Everything in the novel should be necessary to the novel. So for me it is sometimes as much about throwing elements and ideas overboard as it is about finding ideas.

Click on the link above to read have a read of Karathine Weber's post. Have a think about the novel idea that you're working on. Is it strong and compelling enough to keep a reader turning pages? Is it overly complicated; a conglomeration of too many different ideas?

Novel Journey: Should Christian Fiction Specialize in Hope?

2010-01-17T19:58:00.000-08:00

Last year, Mike Duran, one of the monthly columnists at Novel Journey wrote this article:

Novel Journey: Should Christian Fiction Specialize in Hope?

I'm currently exploring whether I should go down the path of Christian Fiction, and what I'd want to say if I did - I therefore found the article relevant and interesting. I hope you do to.

Four Strategies for Finding Writing Ideas

2010-01-14T20:33:00.000-08:00

If you want to get published, you have to write quality pieces that are fresh, vivid, different, and yet accessible and universal. You also have to write a lot: both to get noticed, and to get better. If you want to be prolific and yet continue to write better, you can't afford to run out of ideas. Ideas are the foundation and the fountain of great writing.

Pam Allyn is an American literacy expert and author. In the YouTube clip below, listen to Pam Allyn explaining the four sources of writing ideas. In this clip she is teaching others how to teach writing to their students.

In this clip, Pam Allyn says:

The truth is, all great writing ideas come from wondering, observation, imagination, remembering.

Also:

All of us have the capacity for all of those things. What gets in our way a lot of the time is a fear of 'nobody's gonna to listen to me', 'nobody's gonna hear me', 'nobody really sees me', 'nobody really understands me'. 'Someone's gonnna laugh at me'. 'Someone's not gonna trust my idea'.

This is very sound, yet very simple advice. We all have the capacity, if not the responsibility, to look around (observation) this world and wonder. Remembering is the observation of the past, refined by the subconcious. It is a fantastic source of writing ideas. Imagination is the ignition source of much great writing.

Think about your writing:

Do you rely primarily on only one or two of the four strategies?
How will you start exploiting the strategies that you've been neglecting?
Do you allow the kinds of fear that Pam Allyn discusses to get in your way?
Identify one thing that you're going to change about your writing after listening to what Pam Allyn had to say and pondering your own writing process.

Use the comments below to share your own thoughts about the Four Strategies for Finding Writing Ideas.

Writing a Humorous Column IV

2010-01-12T16:30:00.000-08:00

[This article is Part IV of a series on writing a humorous column. We recommend reading Writing a Humorous Column, Writing a Humorous Column II and Writing a Humorous Column III before coming back to this one.]

This is the fourth post from Greg Bray, who has kindly agreed to write a series of guest blogs here at How to Get Published. While his posts focus on writing humorous newspaper columns, his advice is sound for anybody looking to get published in newspapers and magazines.

Greg Bray is a shift worker living in Gladstone, Central Queensland. On his days off he spends a fair bit of his time tapping away at his keyboard, writing a regular weekly column for the Gladstone Observer, or trying to bring some of his characters to heel in his novels.

When he is not handcuffed to his laptop, he can usually be found working around the house, spending time with his family, touring on his bicycle or motorbike, or simply sitting in his tinnie wondering why the fish aren’t biting.

One day he hopes to make a living as a full time writer. You can contact him via his Blog which can be found by googling ‘Gladbloke’, or by going directly to http://gladbloke.wordpress.com/.

The Next Step
Ok, you’ve landed a regular writing gig with a local paper, or magazine, so now you’ve got to keep, and build, your readership. And you will do that with good writing, which contains interesting and relevant topics. As well as honing your style, seek out new experiences, visit places you’ve never been before, attend meetings, move away from your computer and live a little, in other words, get the hell out of your comfort zone then write about it, and find the humour in each situation. At this point I can’t stress enough for you to start carrying a notebook if you haven’t already started, because you will get ideas that you will need to jot down if you don’t want them to slip from your memory quicker than an eel into thick weeds. Gollum!

Also, even though you are now a regular columnist, it is important that you remember to never rest on your laurels. No matter what writing you do, always aim for your very best. Never, ever, churn out average work, and submit it. Trust me, it shows when you get lazy and your column becomes just another job. Always aim to continuously improve your writing, and in doing so you will continue to build your fan base. Perhaps it might pay to enrol in a creative writing course? Join a writers’ group or organisation, expand your knowledge, in short, do whatever it is you need to do to stay at the cutting edge.

I didn’t say it was going to be easy, but it can be a lot of fun working this hard.

The Big Picture
Once you have a proven track record of having regularly written good quality columns, which have been published and received positive feedback then you are ready to raise your profile.

At this point you may wish to approach other newspapers and ask for syndication, or to write a regular column for them. Perhaps you’d like a crack at writing an advice column, or movie reviews for a magazine. Look for other writing opportunities to keep you busy, motivated and pushing your personal limits. Don’t over extend yourself, keep your promise to supply regular, well written pieces, and in doing so, you will be building a worthwhile CV for later use.

Where does it end?
For a lucky few, it ends with a regular column in a large paper, or a full time writing career as a freelancer. This is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for all determined writers, but you’re going to have to work hard to position yourself for the opportunity when it arrives, and you have to be ready to grab that chance when it turns up.

The fact that others have made it, means that you can too.

“If it’s your dream, then have a go!”

But remember, Dave Barry’s job is Mine!

If this article has been helpful to you, or you think I have left out something of importance, then feel free to comment below, or drop me a line at my blog

(c) Copyright 2010. The author, Greg Bray, remains the copyright owner of the content of this post.

Writing a Humorous Column III

2010-01-11T16:47:00.000-08:00

[This article is Part III of a series on writing a humorous column. We recommend reading Writing a Humorous Column and Writing a Humorous Column II before coming back to this one.]

This is the third post from Greg Bray, who has kindly agreed to write a series of guest blogs here at How to Get Published. While his posts focus on writing humorous newspaper columns, his advice is sound for anybody looking to get published in newspapers and magazines.

Greg Bray is a shift worker living in Gladstone, Central Queensland. On his days off he spends a fair bit of his time tapping away at his keyboard, writing a regular weekly column for the Gladstone Observer, or trying to bring some of his characters to heel in his novels.

When he is not handcuffed to his laptop, he can usually be found working around the house, spending time with his family, touring on his bicycle or motorbike, or simply sitting in his tinnie wondering why the fish aren’t biting.

One day he hopes to make a living as a full time writer. You can contact him via his Blog which can be found by googling ‘Gladbloke’, or by going directly to http://gladbloke.wordpress.com/.

“If it’s your dream, then have a go!”

Truly O Grasshopper, it has been said, “Writing is easy, getting published is hard….”

Ok, you’ve put together your columns, you’ve re-read them for the thousandth time, and they are still making you smile (even though you stopped sniggering somewhere around the 456th reading), and now you feel that you are ready to submit them for publication. I’m not going to bore you with the gritty details of how to format your columns as there are plenty of sites and books out there which will give you more, and much better advice, than I can.

My first submissions were typed up, double spaced, and hand delivered to the editor of a local weekly paper. I had contacted him earlier by phone and asked if his paper was taking submissions. He asked to see two of my columns, and specified that they be submitted in Microsoft Works format. That’s how long ago that was!

So I did exactly that, and two weeks later was informed that the first of my columns was going to be used in next weeks’ edition. I was over the moon, how easy was that?!

The next weeks paper didn’t arrive. A rival newspaper carried the story that informed the citizens of Gladstone that the weekly paper had been bought up and closed down. My dream literally blew up on the launch pad.

A month later I submitted my columns to the remaining paper, a daily newssheet where they were rejected immediately as the paper had never run a humorous columnist in the past, and wasn’t keen to start now. Now at this stage a lot of writers will give up, but this is the moment where you must shine. Okay, I’ll admit that rejection hurts, but not as much as the feeling of failure will hurt you when you’re old and frail and sitting in a rocking chair with a blanket over your legs wondering what might have been if you had persisted. Well, that’s my viewpoint anyway.

If the editor will speak to you, ask what it was they weren’t happy with, what needed changing, or improving. I lucked out with the daily newspaper ed who proved to harder to get hold of than a certain Mr. O. B. Laden.

Undeterred, I battled on while nursing my severely bruised ego, and continued writing columns, but also started to dabble with short stories, poetry, and novels. Some of it was okay, some was good, and some of it was so appallingly bad that I have left strict instructions in the event of my death for my family to burn my computer and scatter the ashes far and wide lest anyone sees my woeful efforts.

Another thing I did at that time was to go back to my local library and re-study the works of the great column writers, closely examining the way they structured their sentences, how they introduced and ended their columns, and the various types of humour they employed. I filled books with notes, dug up lesser known column writers, then started to buy newspapers and magazines from different parts of the country just to read, and study, the columnists.

Meanwhile, the ed at our local paper must have been inspired by my query, because he started a daily column, written either by himself, one of his journalists, or a guest columnist. Everyday I followed each writer, comparing my work to theirs. Some were alright, some pretty good, and others, atrocious.

One pattern did emerge though; the majority of columnists had a relatively short shelf life. Many of them started with a bang, but within a couple of months were struggling for material. Some found that filling a weekly column with 500+ relevant, interesting, and funny words was too much of a chore and over the following couple of years I watched as columnists came and went like customers through a revolving door.

The Editor eventually left and was replaced by a female editor who maintained the daily column format. Putting together several of my absolute best columns I drew a circle around a date on my wall calendar and decided to make another approach. Persistence is the key here folks. Keep trying!

Then fortune struck. One of the regular columnists, sick of facing flack from readers over comments she had made in her columns (which I thought were actually quite funny and interesting) put a note on the end of one her columns asking for submissions from the public. I was perfectly placed, prepared and READY! So, two weeks before the deadline on my calendar, I submitted two of my best columns for her consideration. They were both published, and I was delighted to see letters of support from the public appear asking for more of my writing (and no, they weren’t from me or my family. Possibly…)

Within a month, I was given the regular slot in each Monday's paper and now all I had to do was keep the columns coming. Thankfully, I had kept practicing, writing, editing, and fiddling until I was able write a half-decent first draft, then hammer it into shape after three or four edits. This is why I keep insisting that you write all the time.

Write when you are tired, when you don’t feel inspired, when your TV is blasting away in the background, when your children are using your back as a target for their rubber band guns, when you feel that you would rather curl up and die rather than turn on your computer, because when you start writing when a deadline is involved you will be grateful for all those times you really pushed yourself to produce regardless of how uninspired you felt. Because you will know without a doubt, way deep down inside, that you can produce the goods under pressure.

If this article has been helpful to you, or you think I have left out something of importance, then feel free to comment below, or drop me a line at my blog

(c) Copyright 2010. The author, Greg Bray, remains the copyright owner of the content of this post.

Continue Reading: Part IV: The Next Step

How to 3WW

2010-01-10T15:04:00.000-08:00

Writing prompts, like Sunday Scribblings and Three Word Wednesday (3WW) are great fun. They're also a useful tool for the developing writer. Prompts force you to sit down and write something; anything. Prompts get you thinking about words, ideas, experiences and then allow your imagination to work with these. Finally, posting back to the prompt site will get a few people over to have a look at your creation and provide some comments. Make sure you return the favour. You'll learn something, every time.

One of my favourite prompt sites is 3WW, because it gives you three separate, unrelated words to think about. What are the different meanings and contexts of the three words? What do they make you think of? How can they be linked?

As an example, consider my efforts with 3WW CLXXI . The three words were drain, epic and nibble. As usual, I did a brainstorm with these words:

As I was brainstorming and linking the words, the scene came to me, and I got writing. The six-sentence story I came up with was called To the Top.The whole process, including the writing and editing, only took about 30-40 minutes.

The other thing I love about writing prompts? I almost always end up with something that I know I would never have writing without the prompt. What you write is a product of who you are, what prompts you and what you chose to do about it.

So here's your prompt: start writing. Have you tried 3WW? Has it helped you?

Update: Three Word Wednesday has a new site. Go to http://www.threewordwednesday.com/.

Caring about Real People

2010-01-07T19:37:00.000-08:00

If you want to write quality fiction that people will want to read, and that will get published, your writing must have believable, vivid characters that your readers will care about. The reader must love your heroes and hate your villains, or vice-versa. Apathy is not an option. You probably already knew that.

You're probably already trying to do this in your flash fiction, short stories or novel. For the reader to care about your characters, you need to care about them first. You already knew that too, though.

You are never going to truly care about fictional people (characters) unless you first care about real people. I don't mean you have to be a social animal. You do need to understand and care about people – real people that are in your life.

Do you observe people – are you a people-watcher? You should be. It's great fun, and very educational to watch the people in the world around you. Look at how they dress, how they interact, speak, walk, drive and sop. Guess their relationships to others, their background and wealth. Hypothesise: what are their motivations, their frustrations, their fears? Once you start people-watching, you won't be able to stop, and you'll have a steady stream of potential character traits entering your sub-conscious, ready to be pillaged for future works.

Caring about people is deeper than people watching. You have to talk with people – not to people, but with them. When in doubt, shut up and listen. Listen and find out what is making the other person happy, or sad. Have empathy, and show it, within reason. Help others with their problems: as a person this is always a sound investment of time and money. As a writer, the increased richness of your experience ad your personality will flow through the quality of the words on the page.

Good fiction writing demonstrates profound truths about human nature and relationships through real characters. You will only ever achieve this by caring about real people. And even if you only ever write rubbish, and you never get published, you will have become a better person, and be certain to have made some true friends along the journey.

Do you find that the quality of your fiction writing is improved by caring about real people? Have you seen this in other writers – good or bad? Please share your comments below.

Writing a Humorous Column II

2010-01-06T17:07:00.000-08:00

[This article is Part II of Writing a Humorous Column. We recommend reading that post first, then coming back to this one.]

This is the second post from Greg Bray, who has kindly agreed to write a series of guest blogs here at How to Get Published. While his posts focus on writing humorous newspaper columns, his advice is sound for anybody looking to get published in newspapers and magazines.

Greg Bray is a shift worker living in Gladstone, Central Queensland. On his days off he spends a fair bit of his time tapping away at his keyboard, writing a regular weekly column for the Gladstone Observer, or trying to bring some of his characters to heel in his novels.

When he is not handcuffed to his laptop, he can usually be found working around the house, spending time with his family, touring on his bicycle or motorbike, or simply sitting in his tinnie wondering why the fish aren’t biting.

One day he hopes to make a living as a full time writer. You can contact him via his Blog which can be found by googling ‘Gladbloke’, or by going directly to http://gladbloke.wordpress.com/.

“If it’s your dream, then have a go!”

Finding Your Style
It’s one thing to tell a funny story to some friends when everyone is relaxed and having a good time. You can use overt gestures or strange facial movements to drive home a punch line for big laughs. But to sit down and write a funny column is a totally different animal, and the great verbal story teller may not necessarily be a good written story teller. I’ll say it again, write as often as you can, and if you persist, you will find your voice, your style, your technique, your method, and most importantly, your Thesaurus.

You may discover that you have a gift for using analogies, or making complex information easy to understand, or have a completely different viewpoint from other commentators on a popular subject. Whatever your particular, and unique style is, you will only find it by long hours of writing. Every day, if possible.

Your subject matter is also extremely important. There are plenty of things to write about, but if your topic is not relevant or interesting enough to the majority of readers, then no matter how funny you are, you’re not going to keep them coming back week after week. A word of warning though, avoid topics that have been worked to death, and avoid at all costs, the column about “Having nothing to write about”.

As you continue to write, you’ll develop an amazing ability to quickly come up with trite, droll, and hopefully hilarious columns. So get writing, and enjoy the process of discovery.

First Edit
Most of my first drafts range from 800 to 1,000 words, but by the time they are published they have been trimmed to approximately 550 to 650 words. This is comfortable for me. When I started, they were longer (much longer), and I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that not one word could possibly be removed without destroying the entire column. In the words of Hermione Grainger, “What an idiot!”

Newspaper editors only have so much space. I’ve heard that some columnists have been forced to submit columns with a 500 word maximum to fit space, advertising, and readership requirements. They can do it, and so can you. Not me though, I’m special…

Ok, I’m limited as well. My long columns were cut to the bone, then cut again, and again in the editing process. I was given the target word count of between 500 to 700 words. The simple fact is, any column longer than 700 words is a strain for the average reader, and faced with a page full of print, they will tend to flick past your handiwork and go straight on to the comics.

To make my point; while reading the Letters to the Editor pages in the paper, how often do you find yourself bypassing, lengthy, long winded letters, and scanning instead the numerous (and shockingly spelled) texts? Unless a letter writer can grab you, first with the title of his letter, then with his opening line, then all he has written is in vain because many readers will either ignore the bulk of his letter, or at best, skim through it.

So, keep your columns short. And simple. Elongated words and flowery prose may impress your old English teacher, but they will drive away most of your potential readers. Look for ways of trimming several words by using one simple, plain word instead.

Final Edit
In all that dirt is the hidden gem of a column, which must be found, extracted, cut, polished then presented to your editor. Once you have reached a point where you are happy with the content, and have re-read the column so many times you’ve just about hypnotised yourself and are no longer laughing at your own jokes, then you must do something very important. Let it sit idle on your hard drive for at least 12 hours, then read it again. And then read it once more.

If you have read it through twice, and not made any significant changes, then it is ready for publication. You will know that it is the best work you can do, and that is what you are aiming for. You don’t want ‘Good Enough’, you want ‘Fantastic, Great, Marvellous!’ as this is what makes the good columnists stand out: their care factor. You will build a solid base of readers with good writing, (and remember the more you write, the better you’ll get!), and their positive feedback will keep you in print once you make it to publication, so aim high.

Some columns will practically write themselves. The words flow like magic from your fingertips. But the majority of them will test your resolve. And a few will drive you insane until you flick them into the ‘Need More Work’ folder on your computer. If your subject is not making you laugh, then there is a pretty good chance it’s not making anyone else laugh either. Sometimes it’s best to take a difficult column for a quiet stroll in a grassy field, then put a bullet through it's heading. You’ll know when it’s time.

I’ve Written a Column, Now What?
Well, for a start I’d like to say, “Good on You!” You’ve taken a gigantic first step and you should be congratulated. Have a bit of a bask in the glow of your initial success, feel free to hold some sort of appropriate celebration, then sit yourself down again at your desk and think about writing at least another nine columns. Once you have ten well-written columns up your sleeve, you’ll have enough to hopefully impress an Editor of a mag, or paper. One good column is great, but what an editor craves is consistency. Are you able produce a quality column each week? How wide is your subject range? Can you take a current event then churn out 500 relevant and rib tickling words?

Once you’re satisfied that you can meet the above requirements, then the hard task of lifting your dream off the runway is all but complete, now all you need to do is keep flying, and work out where you want to go!

(c) Copyright 2010. The author, Greg Bray, remains the copyright owner of the content of this post.

Writing a Humorous Column

2010-01-04T17:14:00.001-08:00

This post introduces Greg Bray, who has kindly agreed to write a series of guest blogs here at How to Get Published. While his posts will initially focus on writing humorous newspaper columns, his advice is sound for anybody looking to get published in newspapers and magazines.

Greg Bray is a shift worker living in Gladstone, Central Queensland. On his days off he spends a fair bit of his time tapping away at his keyboard, writing a regular weekly column for the Gladstone Observer, or trying to bring some of his characters to heel in his novels.

When he is not handcuffed to his laptop, he can usually be found working around the house, spending time with his family, touring on his bicycle or motorbike, or simply sitting in his tinnie wondering why the fish aren’t biting.

One day he hopes to make a living as a full time writer. You can contact him via his Blog which can be found by googling ‘Gladbloke’, or by going directly to http://gladbloke.wordpress.com/.

“If it’s your dream, then have a go!”

What is it about a person that makes them actually want to be a humorous columnist?

The answer is simple; you want to make people happy. The gift of laughter, or the warm glow of a well told yarn is beyond price. And in most newspapers, the humorous columnist joins forces with the writers of comic strips to act as a pressure relief valve to prevent ‘Bad News Overload’ before the reader turns to the Sports pages (and discovers that their team has lost again).

So, how do you get a start in the business? First the bad news. Competition is pretty stiff. If you don’t have a journalism degree then that makes it harder still, and even if you do, there’s not a lot of chance you will be selected from the group of hungry candidates clamouring at the Editors door.

The humorous column in any newspaper is often known as the ‘Toy Shop’. A much sought after place where journalists can write pretty much anything they want to write, and poke a rubber chicken at others. But mostly what they do is make a goose of themselves. Hey, if it gets’ laughs, that’s all that counts.

If you’re reading this, then it is a pretty safe bet that you are interested in becoming a humorous columnist, perhaps part or full time for your local paper, a magazine, or a web site. And I hope that the following tips, hints, and advice will come in useful for you. First up, some points:

Humour is a very, very serious business. Ask any clown and they’ll tell you the same thing, “Funny = hard work.”
Humour is subjective. What one person finds funny may be at complete odds with what tickles someone else’s funny bone.
Humorous columnists are generally not funny people when you meet them, and they are certainly not much fun to be around when their deadline is approaching.
Having ideas for three or four columns is fine. But you’re going to need several hundred if you want to be the next Dave Barry. Editors need consistency. Can you deliver the goods, week after week? Year after year?
Dave Barry’s job is mine, understand? Mine!

Step One: Reading and Writing
The first step on the path to your new column writing life is to Read and Write. Seriously. Read as many different columnists as you can. Note their style, the way they use the right word at the right time to enhance the funniness of a sentence, or paragraph. John Cleese developed his writing style by spending hours as a young man writing his own Goon shows, trying to capture Spike Milligans’ genius, he did ok I suppose…

So, dig up old columns, scour your library, rummage about on the internet, you’ll find them, from Irma Bombeck, to Bill Bryson and Dave Barry, to Keith Waterhouse. All very funny people. And check out any columnists living in your area. These people are your competition, and it pays to keep an eye on them. Trust me, if you’re any good, they’ll be keeping an eye on you as well.

The one thing every comedian, clown, humorous columnist has in common is that they had to start from where you’re starting now. And if they made it, then you can too. How? By developing your own writing style. This will only happen by gluing your bum to your chair and typing until your fingers fall off… then typing some more…, then a little bit more. You can study to your hearts content, but it’s words on the page that count. Seriously, write at every opportunity, carry a notebook to jot down funny things you hear, or think of, then write about them later. I really can’t stress this enough, Write, Write, and Write!

[This article is continued in Writing a Humorous Column II.

(c) Copyright 2010. The author, Greg Bray, remains the copyright owner of the content of this post.

John Irving on Novel Writing

2009-12-30T17:56:00.000-08:00

The YouTube clip below features John Irivng, best-selling author of The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany. In this clip, Mr Irving talks about the novelist as a craftsman. He says:

The craft of a novel is simply to make the story better, more compelling, more unstoppable on page four-hundred than it was on page forty. You have to make the reader interested in the characters before the reader cares what happens to the characters. And there has to be some emotional pay-off at the end.

The end of the novel is so important to John Irving that he has the ending designed and set as a kind of focal-point in his mind before he begins to write his novels.

To get published as a novelist, you don't have to believe the same things about novel-writing that John Irving does, and you certainly don't have to write the same way. (Many brilliantly successful novelists start their novels with not even a clue about how it will end). If you want to get a novel published however, it is wise to to watch interview clips like this, and to ask yourself some questions about the creative novel-writing process.

So, after watching the clip above, what are the similarilies and differences between your creative writing processes and John Irving's? Is there something you feel you should change, or at least try differently? Use the comments below to answer and discuss.

Moonrat's Guide to Getting Published

2009-12-28T17:14:00.000-08:00

Moonrat is a "recovering editorial assistant" and blogs about the publshing industry at Editorial Ass. Moonrat is part of a growing group of publishing industry insiders sharing their experience and advice using blogs. If you want to get published, free advice from people like Moonrat is exceptionally good value for money.

Have a read of Moonrat's Guide to Getting Published. In this brief article, Moonrat shares four important points about how to get published. One of the most important, and easily overlooked, is her second point: Build up your platform while you're writing. Nobody starts as a best-selling novelist (almost). Building your platform is part of the publishing journey. Get to where you're going with achievable steps, and celebrate each victory along the way, however small. Enjoy the journey.

The other vital point that Moonrat makes is: Be a fantastic writer. This is important, not only to get published, but also to be true to yourself and who you're trying to be.

If you'd like to get published, I'd encourage you to first read Moonrat's Guide, then browse around the other content in Editorial Ass. If you like what you see, subscribe.

Get Published with Duotrope's Digest

2009-12-16T18:58:00.000-08:00

If you're serious about getting fiction or poetry published, you need to have a good look at Duotrope's Digest.

Duotrope's Digest is a fantastic on-line resource that lists over 2,750 current fiction and poetry publications in a fully searchable database. This way, you can take the piece that you've just completed and find just the write market for it.

Publication Info
The information that you can get on every publication is quite extensive. Here is a summary of the information that is available:

Genres & Themes. These are categorised for searching. There is usually a quote from the publisher's editorial guidelines that gives you a better "feel" for the what they're interested in.

Lengths. This tells you what length pieces they're after: flash, short stories, novellas, etc.

Media. Is it a print publication, or an on-line journal?

Paycale. Do they pay, or are you rewarded only by the pleasure of seeing your work in print? Some pay better than others. Money's not everything, but the information is available.

Submission Types. There are so many variables to consider here. Electronic or postal submissions, or both? Are reprints and multiple submissions allowed? Are simultenous submissions acceptable? Duotrope lays the information out in an easy-to-read and easy-to-search format.

Response Times. This is my favourite section, and it can be so telling. You get the minimum, maximum and average resonse times. You get the percentages of acceptances and rejects. There's a bit more info here too. Important: This information is based only on what other Duotrope users have submitted. Like all stastics, take them with a grain of salt. But, it's still very interesting…

All of this information is great, but it can't beat following the link to the publication's website and having a good look around. Read their editorial guidelines, and if possible, read their journal. Writers are readers, too – you may well find your new favourite literary journal.

Submissions Tracking
One of the best features of Duotrope is the submissions tracker. You can use it to keep track of all your pieces, and what markets you've submitted them to. It tracks the date submitted, how long it's taken to respond, and most importantly, what the response is. This way you can avoid wasted time and embarrassment with trying to find when you sent a story off, and to who, and whether it's time to send a query. You can also be very pragmatic about accepting a rejection for a piece and sending it right off to the next publisher for consideration.

Curiosity and the Cat
For those of us that also like playing with numbers and data, Duotrope has a section called Curiosity and the Cat, which contains a number of reports on their database. These include the Top 25 "Good, Bad, and Ugly" Markets, based on response times and acceptances.

More about Duotrope's Digest
Duotrope's Digest was one of Writer's Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers for 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Duotrope is run by volunteers, and is always looking for your support.

They also welcome comments, suggestions and questions. If you do have any questions, have a look at the about page first.

Summary
If you want to get fiction or poetry published, you need to know the markets and keep track of your submissions. Duotropes Digest is a fantastic, free tool that helps you do this. I use it, and so should you.

Get Published in The New Flesh

2009-12-14T21:28:00.000-08:00

Do you want to get flash fiction published, but your work is slightly out of the ordinary? You should seriously consider submitting your work to The New Flesh! The New Flesh is a relatively new online literary magazine specialising in "odd flash fiction" – with flash fiction being defined as 1,000 words or less, and odd being defined as "SciFi, horror, fantasy, bizarro, et cetera." Have a read of The New Flesh, and you'll see what they mean by "et cetera".

I interviewed William Pauley III, editor of The New Flesh, and asked him all about his journal, and how to get published in it. Mr Pauley's answers are essential reading for anyone looking to get flash fiction published anywhere, not just in The New Flesh

[The interview appears below. The questions are appear in bold, followed by Mr Pauley's answers].

What are your motivations for running The New Flesh – why do you do it?

As a writer of odd fiction, I often find it difficult to find a place to submit my writing where it seems to fit and doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. If you read the average horror fiction site on a daily basis then every once in a while you will come across a story that is really strange and eerie more than it is straight up horror. Those are the stories that we want for The New Flesh.

How did you come up with the name The New Flesh?

I am a huge fan of David Cronenberg. The New Flesh is from his film Videodrome. "Death to Videodrome... long live the new flesh!"

Authors published at The New Flesh don't get paid, but your journal suggests that they may pick up some dedicated readers. Can you expand on this?

The New Flesh is still a baby - It is only four months old. However, it isn't unusual for a story to get 30 or more comments in just a day or two. I could be wrong, but I haven't seen so many dedicated readers to many other flash fiction sites out there. A lot of sites post stories day after day and don't receive a single comment. At The New Flesh, that is a rarity. I promise that if you have a story accepted for The New Flesh, then you will have a good number of people reading your work.

Do you think that publishing credits with online journals like The New Flesh help a writer get published later in print?

Yes and no. I think that having your work published on an online journal is a great way to build not only a fan base, but it's a great way to build your self-esteem as a writer. Confidence is important in the writing world.

The reason why it would not matter? Well, any wise editor will read the story first and then go back and read the cover letter and bio. I always let the story speak for itself. If it's good, then I'll be really interested in knowing more about the author. If you've got a great story, then your publishing credits won't matter.

Your journal publishes a flash fiction piece every weekday. Can you give us an idea of how many submissions you get in a typical week? How big is that slush pile?

I get about 15 submissions a week. Five of those stories are accepted for that week's New Flesh. I'd say that the acceptance-rejection ratio is about 50 / 50. We always respond ASAP. We've never taken longer than ten days to respond to a submission.

What do you hate to see in a submission - what makes you press delete the quickest?

I absolutely hate when an author summarises their story in the cover letter. Let the story speak for itself. I can't stress this enough. Of course, like any editor, excessive grammar and/or punctuation errors is always a turn off. You'd be surprised at the amount of submissions that I have received that don't have any punctuation at all.

Also, don't send your story as an attachment unless the editor prefers it that way. Use the submission guidelines! Also, avoid stationery backgrounds and photos.

I love weird stories, but I hate stories that are weird only for the sake of being weird. I want emotion, I want to think, I want to care about your characters while I'm reading your story. Don't send me your story about a girl with a marshmallow for a head and fly swatted arms unless there is some substance to it. Don't make your story pointless or meaningless.

What do you love to see – what makes you want to publish a story right away?

Something I've never seen before. Something that makes me want to call up a friend and share it with everyone I know.

If a story is rejected, do you recommend revising it, trying it somewhere else, or trying something different?

Well, that all depends on the story. If the problem is with excessive grammar and/or punctuation errors or just a poorly written paragraph or two, then I will suggest the author rewrite it and send it back to me. But if it's something I am not interested in publishing whatsoever, then I will wish them the best of luck getting it published somewhere else.

Do you have any specific pointers for writers preparing submissions to The New Flesh that you'd like to share?

Really, just go by the submission guidelines. That is the only advice that I have. Nothing turns an editor off of your story faster than a submission that fails to abide by the submission guidelines.

Publishing doesn't validate your life

2009-12-14T18:28:00.000-08:00

Mary DeMuth is a published Christian author and writing mentor. She has worked as a non-fiction freelancer and a novleist. Together with D'Ann Mateer and Leslie Wilson, Mary shares her understanding of the publishing industry, and the Christian publishing industry in particular, on their blog called So You Want to Be Published.

I'd like to use this post to share an article with you that Mary wrote on that blog, back in early 2008, called Publishing doesn't validate your life. I very highly recommend that your read this article, and spend some time thinking it through.

Introducing the subject, Mary DeMuth writes:

I have to admit before I was published, I thought that if I reached that nirvana called "published author," I'd have sweet validation. Every day would be smiles and dancing. You know what? I was wrong. Being published is terrific, mind you, but it doesn't bring happiness or validation. Instead, it adds more stress to your life.

If you want to published – and if you're reading this blog, then you probably do – you need to ask yourself what your core motivations are. Why do you want to get published? Are you looking for the nirvana-like validation that Mary was?

Mary talks about how getting published can be a "weird endless cycle of neediness". She lists the incremental steps of "getting published", starting with getting published for free in a magazine. She doesn't condemn these activities themselves – after all, getting published is a one-step-at-a-time journey – but, approached with the wrong mindset, each new step get make the goal of "getting published" an elusive, ever-changing if-only. You will never be satisfied.

In her article, Mary DeMuth goes on to describe how these "get published" type goals are actually blocked goals. She defines blocked goals, "A blocked goal is a goal that is dependent on other's actions or happenstance." Instead of keeping blocked goals, Mary adopted unblockable goals. Her new goals don't depend on the actions and viewpoints of others and the fickleness of the publishing industry. She lists her unblockable goals in her article.

Mary's unblockable goals are hers. They depend on what she wants from her writing, and they are linked tightly with her faith. They likely won't be your goals, exactly. After reading the article, sit down and work out your own list. What are your unblockable goals as a writer? Like Mary, yours should be tightly linked with your core beliefs as a person.

If you learn nothing else from Mary DeMuth's article, learn this: Publishing doesn't validate your life. I know I need to be reminded of this as much as anyone.

Ken Follet's Masterclass on Getting Published

2009-12-03T03:00:00.000-08:00

Ken Follet is an author of thriller and historical novels, who has sold over 100 million copies. If the elusive dream of a writer is to "get published", Ken Follet can safely be called a success. So, if you want to get published, it would make sense to listen to any advice you could get from Mr Follet, wouldn't it?

Well, Mr Follet has published a very informative "masterclass" on writing on his webpage. If you have any desire at all to get published, go and read it. Mr Follet introduces the masterclass by writing:

The basic challenge for the writer can be very simply explained – it is to create an imaginary world and then draw the reader into that imaginary world.

All novelists are trying to do that. Once we get there, different writers may have different concerns. Personally, I want to entertain you. I want you to be thrilled or moved to tears or scared and I definitely want you to be on the edge of your seat all the time, wondering what is going to happen next.

There are a few things that I really like about Ken Follet's masterclass. Firstly, he uses examples from his own work. This is especially informative if you've read the books that he references, including The Man from St Petersburg and The Hammer of Eden.

The other thing I find especially informative and inspirational is the way that Mr Follet describes how to expand the germ of an idea. Using a kind of brainstorming method on a notepad, he takes us through how to grow a single idea into something bigger, and bigger.

Mr Follet unashamedly uses an outline to build his novels, and tells us how. Using feedback from various people (using, not blindly following), he continues to work on his outline until he is satisfied with it. All this happens before he even starts the first draft. Don't think this process will take you a Saturday afternoon, either. Ken Follet is a full-time, skilled, experienced craftsman; and even for him the process takes quite some time. In his masterclass he writes:

The whole process of coming up with [an] idea, fleshing it out, doing the research, drafting the outline and rewriting the outline comes to about a year all told. There are quite often a couple of false starts within this. I may spend a month working on an idea before I realise that it isn't going to work and abandon it. But after this whole process, I'm ready to write the first draft.

There is further practical advice on going from the outline to the first draft. There are many ways for a first draft to go wrong. Ken Follet takes you through some of the key problems, and how to avoid them.

Finally, Mr Follet takes us through the process of working with an editor and publisher to get the novel ready for publication. In his section of the masterclass called Finding a publisher, Ken Follet has some very encouraging words for those of us that want to get published:

So although people say, "it's terribly difficult for a first novelist to get published," in fact, if you are good it is not that difficult.

The catch of course, is that little phrase, "if you are good." No one wants to admit that they aren't any good, and so they'll externalise and blame others for not appreciating their masterpiece. This is a lot like being a loser. Don't be a loser – get published. Listen to the advice of those you respect, such as Ken Follet, and work on your craft. No one is born a great writer. Humble your pride, sharpen your axe, and get published.

Get Published at Every Day Fiction

2009-11-30T15:38:00.000-08:00

If you want to get published, flash fiction is a great place to start. Don't be deceived though: writing a story in under a thousand words is not as easy as it sounds.

Every Day Fiction is an online magazine that publishes a new flash fiction story every day. Getting published in Every Day Fiction is a great way to develop an audience and build some publishing credits. At three dollars a story, you won't be able to quit your day job – but the point is to get your work published out in the real world.

Here's my strategy and guide for getting published in Every Day Fiction.

Read the Stories. If you want to get published in any publication, you need to be familiar with it. Read at least a dozen recent stories. These are the stories that the slush readers and the editors liked. Think about what these stories have in common. Make sure your story has this. Think about what makes the good ones stand out.

Read Comments and Make Comments. Like many online sites, readers are encouraged to make comments and rate the stories. Get a feel for what the readers like, and what the readers don't really like. The slush readers and editors will be reading the comments and tuning their radar accordingly, so you should too. Contributing comments is helpful for the authors, and gets you more involved in the online writing (and reading) community. Be professional and courteous in all your comments (especially if others are rude to you), and please don't make obvious grammatical and spelling errors. You're a writer now, and everyone is watching you.

Read "About the Staff". You don’t often get an opportunity like this. Go to the About the Staff page and read the mini bios about all the staff. This will give you some insight into the type of people that are running Every Day Fiction. Like it or not, the slush readers need to like your story before an editor even sees it. The editors need to like your story for it to get published. Look at your flash fiction piece and then ask yourself, "Will these people like this?" At this point you may choose to submit your story elsewhere, or even decide not to have anything to do with Every Day Fiction. That's fine: you don’t need to waste any more of your time, or theirs.

Read the Editors' Websites. The above point is a good start, but the mother-lode is at the websites of the executive and managing editors. These sites give not just a feel for what they like (and what they hate) - they go into details. Read their blogs for a bit, and you'll learn how to approach writing with a professional attitude, and how to improve as a writer. You'll learn about how to get published at Every Day Fiction.

Read the Writing Guidelines. You need to click on "Submit a story" to find this. Read it through, several times. While you're there, read about the submission process and all the terms and conditions. Don't skip through this stuff: it's important. Agreeing to these is a type of contract, and breaking the rules because you're too lazy to read it is stupid, and will ruin your relationships with the editors.

Write Your Story. Then edit it at least a week after writing it. Then proofread it. Twice. No, do it again. The shorter a written piece, the less tolerance there is for errors of any kind (especially if you don't yet have a working relationship with the slush readers and editors). This is less than a thousand words. Even a loss of brilliance in the last sentence is unforgivable. If your story is really short, please don't pad it up to a thousand words. At Every Day Fiction, they prefer them shorter. So if you can: make it shorter still.

Submit Your Story. Every Day Fiction have a very easy-to-use system for this. They use the OpenID system to log you on (I use my Google account). As usual, read everything carefully. Fill in the forms accurately and completely. The first time you log on you'll need to fill in a lot of personal details, including your bio. Keep your bio short and make sure you write about yourself in the third person. Mistakes in your bio may be human, but they make you look stupid: so proof-read.

Track Your Story This is where Every Day Fiction get's real slick. Each story is tracked with an ID number, when it was submitted, and its status. For example, I see right now that my first submission was submitted eight days ago, and is still in the slush pile. A bit sad, but at least I know.

Wait. What I really mean, is do something else. Write another story. Be patient with the review process, and use your time productively for other things. Do not, under any circumstances, contact Every Day Fiction before the 60 day review period is over. If you do, title your e-mail with, "Message from Idiot."

Contact. Hopefully, they e-mail you and tell you they'd love to publish your story. Perhaps they reject the story (see next point). If the 60 days pass with no answer, contact Every Day Fiction with a query that is polite, concise and professional. List the story title, ID number and word count, as well as when you submitted it.

Accept Rejection. Chances are, they don't want your story. (Chances are, they won't want mine). Get over it. Submit it somewhere else, or put it on your blog, or enter it in a writing competition. Whatever you do, do not, under any circumstances, contact Every Day Fiction asking for an explanation, making any demands, or worse: making any insults. This is not only unprofessional; it shows that you're a goose. If you want to, submit another story. If you don't want to, don't.

If you want to get published, online literary journals specialising in flash fiction are a great place to start. Every Day Fiction makes the process easier with its clear editorial guidelines and online submission and submission tracking system. Use the experience to help you grow as a writer, and maintain professional behaviour in all your interactions. Persevere, and you will get published.

Get Published by Getting Out

2009-11-25T21:29:00.000-08:00

If you want to get published, listen to the advice of Garrison Keillor. In the YouTube clip below, Garrison Keillor tells us to get out of the house. Too often we spend all of our spare time writing at the keyboard, or researching, or jotting down thoughts in a notebook. Writers become too introverted; they lose touch with the real world, and the quality their writing suffers. When the quality of your writing suffers in this way, your writing loses touch, and you won't get published.

In the clip below, Keillor states, "Writing is about the world that we live in." This is too easy to forget. Garrison Keillor also says, "You always want to be in touch with how things look, and what people say, and what they call their dogs. You always want to be there." Isn't that what writing is all about anyway?

In summary: watch this clip for some inspiration, then get your shoes on, get out of the house, and get published.

The Book Deal

2009-11-23T15:16:00.000-08:00

Let's say you could get the advice of a major publishing house editor. Would that help you get published? I think so.

Alan Rinzler
Alan Rinzler has been an acquisitions and developmental editor with major publishing houses for decades. He's now a consulting editor, who helps clients by evaluating manuscripts, providing developmental editing, and even helping to write book proposals.

The Book Deal: An Inside View of Publishing
Alan Rinzler also writes an informative and useful blog called The Book Deal, subtitled An Inside View of Publishing. In his short article About The Book Deal Blog, Alan Rinzler writes:

The Book Deal is a blog for writers and book people, with a veteran insider’s views on the strange and inscrutable way books are published and the big changes going on in the business today. Look here for my take on the challenges and opportunities writers face in the world of digital and print book publishing, the mysterious process of acquisition, development, sales, and marketing, how agents and publishers conspire and compete behind the scenes to find the best new authors, and other special features.

Grab Readers by the Throat
One of my favourite articles by Alan Rinzler is Ask the editor: The top 5 secrets to getting a book deal. The first secret in this article is to "Bulk up your concept". Alan Rinzler goes on to concisely describe what editors are hoping for in a concept:

We want to see a concept with a strong premise that has energy, intensity, utility, focus and vision. We want books that will grab readers by the throat, quicken their pulses, and resonate for their own lives.

We want authors who have something new to say about an important subject or story, who bring a fresh voice or unusual perspective on a topic of concern to many people. Authors who are passionate about their ideas and stories, who bring to their work a maturity, expertise, and a visceral compulsion to write that comes from their hearts.

An editor can usually tell right away if a concept has a new idea or point of view.

It’s also helpful for you or your agent to know as much as possible about any given editor’s special interests or personal biases.

In particular, I was inspired and instructed by the sentence, "We want books that will grab readers by the throat, quicken their pulses, and resonate for their own lives". Have a look at what you're writing right now. When someone starts reading it, are they going to be grabbed by the throat? If it just tickles their curiosity, it's not enough. It needs to overpower them. Will it quicken their pulse? It has to excite them, like a drug. Does it resonate for their own lives? People need to feel empathy, or sympahty, or best: they need to learn something about themselves. Your writing should reflect the reader's own character back to her like a mirror.

Summary
Alan Rinzler is an editor with decades of experience. He has chosen to share some of this experience in an insightful blog called The Book Deal. If you want to get published, then you want to read this blog, and subscribe to it.

Get Published in Free Magazines & Newspapers

2009-11-22T18:27:00.000-08:00

Our modern world is full of free print magazines and newspapers. They are sitting there, begging to be picked up on stands at airports, train stations and McDonalds restaurants. You can't walk through a major city without having them thrust under your nose.

How do the free print magazines make money? Editing, printing and distributing a paper costs money. Free papers get their money from paid advertising. Their business model is to provide information and entertainment to a sub-section of the community, while selling advertising space to businesses with goods and services to sell or organisations with a message to promote to that particular interest group.

How I Got Published in a Free Magazine
I work in the Queensland coal mining industry. When I saw Shift Miner magazine being offered for free at my local airport, I took a copy and read it. It was clear that their business model was based on selling advertising space with the message that coal mine workers have much higher than average disposable incomes.

I then asked myself, "As a writer, what can I offer Shift Miner, so that I can get published and have my writing put in front of a wider audience?" I decided to pitch the idea of a regular column of very short stories (< 1,000 words) that were targeted at coal mine workers. These would typically be set in the mines, and address the many issues and themes relevant to this workforce.

Before my flight had landed in Newcastle, I had thought up and written a first draft of an example story, and written my pitch to the editor of Shift Miner. I've now had three stories published with this magazine. I still get a kick out of seeing my name and my stories in print. It's even better when I hear from people in the industry who have read some of my stories published in Shift Miner.

How You Can Get Published in a Free Magazine
You can do the same thing I did – you just need to find the right combination. Keep an eye out for the free magazines and newspapers that are on offer. Take them and read them. Decide on who their audience is and what their style is. Think about what you can write that would add value to the publication. It might be stories, or an opinion column, or a series of articles.

Still interested? Write a sample. Make a pitch. Wait two weeks minimum before following up, politely and professionally.

Some Important Points

Write what you know, and preferably what you enjoy. I couldn't write for a free magazine pitched at vegans. Perhaps you could.

Your aim is to set up a mutually beneficial relationship with the editor. Think first about what they want, and offer it to them. But: you need to be sure about what you want, and negotiate to that. You need to make both of you happy. Forget the advice that you must get paid cash to be a real writer. If you're happy to write for free, but want to have your name, short bio and the web address of your blog printed, then fantastic. Just don't quit your day job.

Make sure that copyright and future use are clearly agreed up front, in writing – e-mail is fine. Small newspaper publishers may not bring this up, but you need to. For example, if you re-publish a piece on your blog, or enter it into a writing competition, you risk damaging your relationship with the editor if you haven't sorted all this out.

Celebrate. When your piece is in print, put a copy in your scrapbook. Put it on the noticeboard at work. Go to dinner, and brag on your blog. Enjoy the feeling. It's not a bestselling novel, but it's a major milestone. Remember that getting published is a journey, not a destination. You need to enjoy the trip. It's your journey, so you get define success, and decide whether you can enjoy it.

In summary, if you want to get published, start out small. Establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with the editor of a free magazine or newspaper is a great way to ease into the life of a published writer.

Dealing with Plagiarism

2009-11-04T21:19:00.000-08:00

If you want to get published, you need to be prepared to deal with plagiarism. Plagiarism is word-stealing: taking the writing of someone else, changing it a little (perhaps), and then claiming it as your own. Those that get caught have no future as writers: they will generally not get published again.

Plagiarism is best explained and discussed with an example. Angel Zapata is a dark fiction and horror writer in the US who has been published in a number of online literary journals. He discovered he'd been plagiarised by an author going by the name of Richard Ridyard. Angel did not take the attitude of a helpless victim, however. His actions serve as a model to other writers who are looking to get ahead and get published, and then discover that they have been plagiarised.

Read Angel's account of the Richard Ridyard Affair in this post on his blog. You will see that Angel's first response was to investigate further. Investigation and data gathering is a much more sensible course of action than making a purely emotional, knee-jerk reaction.

Once he had gathered enough information (that is: evidence), he then contacted affected editors and authors. And then: goodbye Richard Ridyard.

A big part of the success in removing the Ridyard stain on online publishing was the involvement of the online community in getting behind Angel, and helping with the process of contacting editors and authors. I wrote a short piece on my Surge Bin blog about this called The Richard Ridyard Affair.

So, if you want to get published, get wise to plagiarism. Familiarise yourself with the Richard Ridyard affair (follow the links above). Take action if you discover plagiarism of anyone's work - not just your own.

On Writing Characters

2009-11-04T03:19:00.000-08:00

If you want to write a novel or short story that is going to get published, you need to really know and understand your characters. Joyce Carol Oates is a prolific prose fiction author. In the video below - an extract from a longer speech - Ms Oates explains how she creates and gets to know her characters. She provides examples from what was then her recently published novel, The Gravedigger's Daughter. This was her 36th published novel; so, if you want to get published, I think it would pay to have a listen to what she has to say.

The thing that stuck with me was her frank discussion about the pain and frustration that goes into that 'not quite got it right period' at the start of writing a novel. Ms Oates describes it as a six-week period, but for those of us that write a little slower: it seems to take a little (a lot) longer.

The key message from Ms Oates here, if you want to get published, is

"a writer who's been writing for quite a while doesn't give up."

Writer Beware Blogs!

2009-11-02T18:30:00.000-08:00

We all want to get published. This dream to get published however, can become a desperate obsession. It is this desperation to get published that makes writers vulnerable to those who are willing to exploit others with dreams and ambitions to make a buck. As writers, we need to be aware of the kind of cons, frauds and tricks that are out there.

Writer Beware Blogs! is the blog of Writer Beware. In their own words:

Writer Beware, a publishing industry watchdog group sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America with additional support from the Mystery Writers of America, shines a light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes, and pitfalls.

If you're a writer, and you want to get published, have a read through Writer Beware Blogs!. Even better, subscribe via RSS or become a follower.

Get Published by Reading

2009-10-30T02:35:00.000-07:00

Get published by reading? Well, it's not quite that simple; but it's still important. I'd like to share with you a very short YouTube clip of Stephen King addressing an audience of young hopefuls, providing a little advice on what to do to get published. The first point is summarised when Mr King says, "If you don't have time to read, you can't be a writer."

So make time to read. If you're going on the bus, or the train, or to the doctors surgery: bring the novel, or short story collection that you're reading. Read before you go to sleep. Read instead of watching the drivel that's on television.

I also really love the last sentence of this clip, because I can relate to it so strongly. "There's a magic moment - a really magic moment - that will always come to you if you want to be a writer, where you put down some book and say, 'This really sucks. I can do better than this; and this got published."

Take a look, then get reading, get writing, and get published.

Get Published on Six Sentences

2009-10-29T19:02:00.000-07:00

It can't be said enough: if you want to get published, you need to write well; and to write well, you need to write a lot. It also helps to take the challenge and write in different styles, and with different story lengths.

What can you say in six sentences? That's the motto of the Six Sentences social networking site on Ning, located here . The aim is simple: write a story in just six sentences. Sound easy? It's not.

The Ning site grew out of the main Six Sentences site which is an online literary magazine based on the same premise, created and edited by Robert McEvily. I recommend going to the main site to get a feel for what a 6S story is all about. Even better, become a "follower".

Once you've got some ideas, sign up to the social 6S site, introduce yourself, and get writing. My 6S page is here.

You'll find we're really a very friendly group over there, which leads me to a few points:

The feedback that you get at 6S will be positive, as a rule. You'll get told what works and what people like, but will rarely get told if something is really bad. That's good for the ego, but a bit hard to find how you need to improve. Your best guide is that if you posted a story and get few or no comments, they didn't like it. Yes, it's happened to me.

Keep the positive feedback thing going. That means, read others' stories – they're only six sentences, it won't take all day – and provide positive, upbeat comments on what you liked. Suggestions for improvement aren't outlawed, but please stop and think about what you're trying achieve. Be kind and tactful.

By joining 6S, you've become part of the online writing community. People in the online writing community generally have their own sites and blogs, and support each other in various ways. As with any community, some are more active than others, and people do come and go. Sometimes there are troublemakers. Usually, it's pretty fun, though.

In summary, if you want to get published, you need to get writing. Six Sentences provides a quick - though not as easy as it looks – practice ground where you'll get feedback and become part of a community. Stick at it, and you may well receive the honour to get published on the main site.

Three Word Wednesday

2009-10-28T18:55:00.000-07:00

We all know that if you want to get published, you have to write well. The best way to become a better writer is to write, and then write some more. Sometimes our motivation and inspiration wane a little. When this happens, the best cure is to start writing anyway.

But what to write? A great tool to get you started is the use of writing prompts, and one of the best regular writing prompts I can recommend is Three Word Wednesay, or 3WW for short. 3WW is run by ThommyG, and in his words, it works like this:

Each week, I post some words. People write things using the words. Then they comment here.

The great thing about 3WW is that ThommyG, and a lot of other participants will check out what you've written on your own blog or website, and leave some comments. It's a good thing to return the favour every now and then.

Here are a few 3WW contributions that I've made on Surge Bin, my own writing blog:

Nine Clubs

Tip Velocity

A Bag of Potting Mix

So, in summary: if you want to get published, you need to get writing. To get writing you need to get ideas, and sometimes a writing prompt like 3WW can be just what you need.

Listen to Jeffrey Archer on How to Get Published

2009-10-27T22:44:00.000-07:00

Jeffrey Archer is a highly successful novelist and a household name. It's a good idea to listen to someone like this if you want to get published.

The YouTube clip below is an extract from a presentation by Mr Archer to the Oxonian Society of New York on 15 March 2008. In this challenging speech, Mr Archer sheds a little light on the time, effort and dedication that is ahead of you if you want to get published as a novelist.

If you want to get published, spend three minutes and ten seconds and watch this:

Read Simon Haynes on How to get Published

2009-10-27T22:36:00.000-07:00

One of the best ways to get published is to follow the advice of someone who is a lot further along this journey. Not every successful, published author takes the time to give advice, but there are some.

Simon Haynes is the author of the Hal Spacejock series of novels, and lives in Perth, Western Australia. His website has a series of well-written articles both on the "Act of Writing" and the "Business of Writing". Remember, you need to write well to get published.

Start by reading Mr Haynes' article How to get published and work from there. You can access the other articles from the "Articles" drop down menu on the website. You can even download a free copy of his first novel, Hal Spacejock, on this site.

How to Get Published

2009-10-27T21:35:00.001-07:00

This blog is all about how to get published as a writer in Australia. Getting published is a journey, not just a destination; and, I'm on the same journey you are. I share with you what I find works, what doesn't, and what some of the traps are – as I go. Information on resources and links to help you become a better writer and get published.