Thinking Smaller for Success
Hello again. It seems like forever since I created a new blog for my own website. If you’re keeping up with the blogs, you know the last blog I wrote was entitled “Back to School.” In addition to having the exciting opportunity to write new short stories and study existing literature, I just completed a course in publishing. Yes, finally back to the journey of becoming published! After all that is the goal of this blog. Right? During the publishing course I learned that traditional publishers aggressively seek new authors if for no other reason than to get first dibs on that new blockbuster selling talent. Breaking into the industry and becoming published can still be a long laborious task, as I am finding out.
It’s time to think smaller and multitask. Author and Professional writer Joie Gibson states in an interview that when she was starting out she wrote to a local magazine and just asked them to help her become published by publishing a small poem in a corner of the magazine. Joie say’s, just ask, if you want to become published. So, it is possible I am not asking enough or in the right places. By asking, Joie began a three-year writing relationship with the magazine writing short stories, not poetry. I recently have written to a few local editors and just asked to be published. Stay tuned this avenue might just land me in a publication.
Another major benefit to taking the publishing class was finally narrowing down what type of publisher I should be looking for. For a new fiction writer like myself my best bet will be to search out a small publishing house that seeks to publish contemporary fiction with mixed genre expectations while querying agents for representation at the same time.
This next term I will be working on my masters writing thesis in which I will finally put my outline for a crime fiction novel entitled The Mysteries of Lake Okeechobee to work by completing major portions of the novel itself. In my next blog I hope to reveal more about this new and exciting novel.
Now, it’s time to write.