[4184] in Depressing_Thoughts
Re: one of these days i'm going to get my foot in the door....
kevles@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (kevles@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Fri Nov 12 16:48:53 1993
I grew up in a household with a free-lance author, and can offer just a
few suggestions:
- Join or form a group of people who meet, say once a week to
discuss each other's writing for quality, publishability, and suitable
market. You will probably find that this helps you both to improve your
writing, and to submit to places that are looking for your kind of
story.
- Each publication has a different guiding philosophy in terms
of what they want to publish. For example, the New Yorker wants
pretentious fiction,and Reader's Digest wants uplifiting, easy-to-read
stories. Before submitting to a magazine, read several recent issues to
determine who the audience is, how long the stories are, the attitude
towrds major audience factors such as gender politics, religion, and so
forth. Then either tailor your stories for the publications, or choose
publications that want your kind of story.
- Prepare to be rejected a great deal. If a story takes more
than four months to return to you, follow up with some sort of letter or
phone call asking if they've lost it ... it happens.
And most of all, good luck! You're trying to break in to a tough
market.
--Beth
(PS - Mom moved from author to editor for a while, although she still
writes. Unsolocited manuscripts DO tend to sit around for a while. If
your story is very good but not quite good enough, or not quite for the
market, you're more likely to get comments back from the rejecting editor.)
