I had my first story professionally published over twenty years ago, and since then I’ve been plugging away at getting new stories published and produced. I’ve had some success, but by no means a lot. When my children were born, I quickly discovered that I didn’t have any time to write. So instead, I decided I would document the process of me getting my work written and sold. I got in touch with everybody I could who had ever bought my work from me, and I asked them why they’d done it. The intention was to answer some of the questions people might have about how writers got their work.
But it ended up teaching me a lot more than I really expected it to.
It made me examine a lot of the assumptions I’d made about editors and what they were looking for, about their relationship with and to me. It made me see some of the mistakes I’d been making, and how to correct them. It taught me things that – I hope – are going to make me a better writer.
So let me share some of the things I learned.