Woman's Weekly

This morning two fat envelopes appeared on my doormat, and recognising the labels, I knew without opening them that they were rejections.

The sad thing was that they were both from Woman's Weekly.

It doesn't matter how hard I study the magazines and scrutinise the guidelines, I've never managed to get it right for this magazine, even when I think I've written the perfect story from them.  What's even more frustrating is receiving a standard rejection telling me to read their guidelines.  Sometimes I wish I had a bit of mystic ability and could interpret a crystal ball.

Never mind, you have to take it on the chin and my stories will be reassessed and sent somewhere else.  You never know, one man's meat is another man's poison or so they say.

So now its back to the drawing board to create the perfect story for Woman's Weekly, because now its personal and I'm determined to crack this market one day, even if that day is a long way in the future.

I'm In Prima Magazine!

I was absolutely delighted last week to see my story appear in Prima Magazine.  It’s been my first success for a while, so it was almost as exciting as seeing my first ever story in print.  My experience with the team from Prima has been fantastic.

Firstly I received a telehphone call to say that my story had been accepted, followed by quite a lengthy conversation about me and my writing habits.  This was a bit weird and made me feel like a “proper writer”.  

Right from the beginning I was told what edition the story would be in and when it would come out in the shops, and have also had correspondence regarding updates on payment.  All in all a lovely and efficient team.

I was also really impressed by the illustration which accompanies the story which shows that the illustrator has really read the story and tried to include as many details of the story as possible.

Prima ask for 800 words and pay £100 - not bad.  This was the first time I had submitted to Prima so was even more delighted to be published.  My story had a twist in it which do seem to be popular.  The only downside is that Prima classes the publication as choosing a winner, so I would imagine that this is a one off opportunity, although if anyone knows differently, please do let me know as I would love to submit to them again.

If you haven’t tried submitting to Prima before I would definitely suggest giving it a go.  Their email address is: yourwinningstory@hearst.co.uk.