One Word
The thought of sending a book out into the world is – if you think about it seriously – daunting. Who knows if people will like it? If they don’t, what are the greater implications? Can you continue to build your writing career? Are you set back so far that it’s beyond repair? How does any of this affect your confidence? The blazing success stories are few compared to the amount of books published that sell only moderately, or underperform. But step that back: just submitting a book to a publisher can be intimidating. Oh, you might brim with mindless enthusiasm before you know better, but then the rejections come.…
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I have only the vaguest recollection of my first submission – a (long) short story to some magazine (I can’t remember which exactly) way back in the late 1980s. The story was an action story. I remember the story specifically. I still have it (and wrote two sequels, as well as a prequel before prequels were fashionable). One day, I’d like to do something with it although, in retrospect, it’s probably better suited to a screenplay. The magazine was one of those women’s periodicals, like Woman’s Day – although I don’t think it was that particular one. It was one that did publish short stories, though. I wouldn’t have just…