How Do You Want To Be Published?

I’ve been writing for a long time now with limited success. As a working mum, bringing up a young family, its always been hard for me to find the time to write consistently and most of my writing has been in fits and starts.

 

During this time, I’ve had several short stories published in women’s magazines, but so far have had little luck with sending longer pieces of work to agents. 

 

With the demise of the short story market I have lost a little bit of my love for writing short stories and so am concentrating now on writing romance novels. 

 

In the past I’ve been a member of the Romantic Novelists Association and have received feedback on a couple of my novels through the New Writer’s Scheme. This year I’ve been working on one of those novels previously submitted and dare I say it, I think now it’s in much better shape. 

 

It’s always been my dream to be traditionally published – it’s the ultimate validation that you are indeed a writer and that your writing is worth paying good money for, but recently my thoughts have turned towards self-publishing. 

 

Self-published books haven’t always received good press. The ability to easily upload and publish a piece of writing meant that anyone could become a published author regardless of the quality of that work. This has led to a poor reception for self-published authors. 

 

But following my research I think the tide is turning. What has struck me more than anything is that self-publishing doesn’t have to be – and shouldn’t be – second rate. In fact, I think it would be impossible to make a living from your writing if you didn’t consistently produce professionally written and edited work. There is of course much to learn and that’s what I’ve been trying to do through online courses, and the increasing number of podcasts which are available to listen to, and the thought of being in control of my own destiny is certainly appealing. 

 

With my youngest about to head off to university in September, finally the time might be right to devote more time to my writing and building a business out of one the things I love doing the most is certainly appealing.

 

What are your thoughts on traditional versus self-publishing? 

 

Submit, Submit, Submit

No not in a 50 shades kind of way, I'm talking here about short story submissions.

Last year I only had two short story submissions accepted but when I reviewed my submissions at the end of the year, I found out that I had only submitted ten throughout the year.  

Don't get me wrong, this wasn't the full extent of my writing during the year, but it did bring home the fact that you really have got to be in it to win it.

Rather than setting a target based on number of submissions throughout the year, in January I decided that I was going to aim to have at least ten short stories under consideration at any one time.  

By the end of March I only actually had four under submission, so I decided that I wanted to submit another three during April and three more during May so that by the end of this month I would have achieved my aim.  Obviously this is with the hope of building on this to exceed my target by the end of the year.

By the middle of April I had only submitted one story and then the following week I received one back so it was time to get moving.  

To be honest, I haven't written much new so far, but I have been trawling through my laptop and found some I had written earlier!  Some I've been editing, some I've completely re-written.

By Thursday though I still hadn't submitted, so I started on a period of intense editing and by yesterday afternoon I had hit my target!

Feeling quite pleased with myself as today I have edited another story which I plan to send to a competition.

Maybe finally I'm getting into the swing of things!

Hope your weekend is going just a well as despite the weather!

Short Stories

I can’t believe that its March already – this year really does seem to be slipping through my fingers.

Despite that I had a reasonably productive month in February.  I carried on the 500 words per day writing challenge until well into the middle of the month, by which time I had four new short stories written, some of a longer length than I usually write. At this point I stopped writing any more as I decided that I needed to do something with them, so I typed them all up and plan to edit them this month.

I also edited a story I had written a while ago and sent it out to my writers’ group for a critique.  As usual they gave me some very constructive feedback and suggestions of things which didn’t quite work.  Some of them were things which had been niggling me, some which I hadn’t thought of but once they were mentioned, were glaringly obvious.  I mulled over how I could make changes to the story to make it better and today have re-edited and sent it out.  Fingers crossed it gets accepted.

It’s a story about a young teacher who takes a class of primary school pupils on an outwards bounds residential.  Rather fittingly today I waved off my youngest on a four day trip – the house is weirdly quiet without him and I’ve had to close his bedroom door tonight, because I can’t bear seeing it open when he is not there.  Even the toothbrush holder with one toothbrush missing is a poignant reminder that he is missing – but I digress, he’s probably having a ball and not missing me at all.

We are told to write about what we know, and although I’m not a teacher, I have been picking my kids brains to work out likely scenarios – they’ll probably want commission if the story does get accepted.  Let’s hope its good luck, sending it out on the day he went on his trip.

It might be a slow start to the year, but I feel like I'm getting back into the short story swing of things.

And now back to the editing.

Can Anyone Help Me Find My Mojo?

I was planning to write lots of stories while I was on holiday but somehow I couldn't find the inspiration.  I came up with a few new ideas but on reflection, they all seemed a bit run of the mill. The feedback I've had recently is that although my stories are well written, the themes are well used, with nothing to make them stand out from the crowd.  So I kept rejecting my ideas because I didn't think they were original enough to be worth writing up. 

The other thing is that I'm working on my novel for the RNA's New Writer's Scheme and I'm finding it hard to switch between long and short fiction.  I did manage to work out some plot problems I had with the novel and I've been working on that since I came back which is taking up rather a lot of my time.  The trouble is I fear its taking up too much time so I can't get my head round writing and submitting short stories.  Part of me tells me not to worry, to get the novel finished and then go back to the stories, but I don't want to loose the momentum. 

Redundancy looms and I would really like to have a bit of time to try and earn some money from writing, but if I concentrate on the novel now and it bombs, I'm back to square one. Now, while I'm getting paid, should I be concentrating on getting my stories out there or should I pin my hopes on the novel? Or can I find a way to do both?

So, my question to all you freelancers out there is - how do you balance short term projects against long term ones?  Answers on a postcard - or in the comments box - please.