So you "wannabe" a writer?
By Nancy Marieº
Wannabe. A name that usually makes most people think of someone who
has not quite arrived, hasn’t quite made it, or doesn’t quite have it
altogether yet. Either that, or they think of wannabe gang members who are
assigned the most degrading tasks and who have a whole series of hoops they
have to jump through and rules they have to follow before being accepted as
full gang members. Unfortunately, for wannabe writers, this is all too true.
There are hoops you must jump through and rules you must follow, and the
amount of respect that you will receive for all your sweat and labor is, like
most wannabe gang members, negligible. And, most important of all if you
"wannabe" a writer because you think you will become rich and
famous, think again. One of the first rules you must learn and accept if you
decide to follow this path is, "Don’t quit your day job!" For the
financial rewards, at least in the beginning would not cover the fees for a
pay toilet, and the amount of publicity you receive might land you a listing
in the local obituaries, if you live that long. If, after all this, you are
still determined to become a writer, then, good for you. It will probably the
most challenging, the most depressing, the most frustrating, and the most
rewarding career you could pursue. But, like the wannabe gang members, be
prepared to jump through the hoops and to follow the rules.
To start with rule number one is simple but not that easy to follow. You
must write and write as frequently as possible. It is great to have all these
fantastic, creative ideas in your head, but if you don’t put them down on
paper, then you are not a writer. Once they get transferred from your mind to
some other medium, like a computer file, you can then consider yourself a
writer. It is like learning to play the piano. You can have talent, knowledge,
and desire, but unless you practice you will not get any better. Period, end
of discussion. To be a writer, you must write. A lot of famous writers
proclaim that you must write everyday, and at the same time. That is well and
good, and works for a lot of folks. For others it doesn’t work so well. Don’t
let that "everyday rule" stop you from writing whenever you can.
Write as much as you are able and as frequently as you can. If you do that,
then you can consider yourself a writer.
Rule number two, send your work out. Now you can ignore this rule if you
want to be an unpublished writer, but if your heart’s desire is to become a
"published writer," then you must send it out for publication. This
rule, in turn leads to some of the hoops you must learn to jump through. These
hoops include word length, submission guidelines, and content. There is no
getting around or over these hoops, you must jump through them if you want to
get published.
For example, let’s say you’ve just written the "great American
novel." You know this and everybody who has read it knows this, so you
start sending it out. You send it to Harlequin Romances to start with, and
then are shocked when you receive a standard rejection letter that states,
"Sorry, this doesn’t fit our publishing needs." What happened? You
ask yourself. Why didn’t they jump at the chance to purchase the next
"great American novel?" What happened is just what the rejection
letter says. It was the wrong book for the wrong publisher. It didn’t fit
their publishing needs.
You can avoid this type of rejection and heartache by researching your
market before you start sending your work out. A great book, well worth the
price is the Writers Digest Market Place. It list just about every book
publisher and periodical on the market today. It also lists, and this is the
invaluable part, what types of things they publish, what they have an actually
need for, and what their submission guidelines are. Submission guidelines are
a very narrow hoop that you must jump through. If a magazine only wants
submissions between 500-1000 words, then that’s all they want. Don’t think
for a second that because your article on Recycling Doggie DooDoo is so
great that they’ll ignore the extra 500 words. They won’t. It is kind of
like cooking, you have a recipe to follow and if you don’t follow it, the
results might be disastrous. Publishers have recipes for their magazines and
they follow them. This includes submission guidelines on word length and
content.
Well, your great American novel was rejected by Harlequin Romances. There
must be something wrong with it, you tell yourself. So you begin rewriting,
and rewriting, and rewriting. This process leads to rule number three. Stop
rewriting and send it out. Rewriting is an important process, for some writers
the most important process. But like all good things it must come to an end.
Using words is a fabulous, awesome, and exciting challenge, and the really
neat thing is that there is a never-ending supply of new words that can be
substituted for the old ones. New ways to structure a sentence, new ways to
explain and creatively highlight an idea. Unfortunately it is a process that
will never end, if you don’t put a stop to it. At some point you must say,
"Enough is enough!"
Okay, you’ve put an end to the rewriting. It may not be perfect, but it
never will be. Accept it and move on. So, what’s next? Rule number four is
next - keep sending it out until it’s accepted, and rule number five follows
immediately. Start on a new writing project. Don’t wait until you receive
that acceptance letter, write something new and send it out.
Following these rules and jumping through the hoops is not easy, but then
nothing worthwhile in life is. But, if you do follow the rules and learn to
jump through the hoops with style and grace, you will receive one of the
greatest rewards available. You will be a published writer and receive the joy
of knowing that other people are reading what you write and thinking about the
things you have found important enough to write about. You will no longer be a
"wannabe." You will be what only one in a hundred people who set out
to become ever achieve, a published writer.
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