If you’re a new writer, your struggle, besides writing a great story, is, once it’s done, to get it published. That can be a poem, a short story, flash fiction, a novella, a novel. It doesn’t matter—the goal is the same: to write something good enough for someone—a print or online journal, an indie publisher, a Penguin Random, W.W. Norton, a Hachette, or even the New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper’s, whatever, and getting published. You want your name in print, and you’ll do anything to get there, not just for that one published work but to get yourself going, to build your confidence, to start your writing career. But what are you going to write? How are you going to get started, write that beginning, middle and end, get it read by other writers, polish it, polish it some more, and then get it into the hands of someone who’ll send you that life-changing email or snail mail letter welcoming you to the club? It’s easy. And it’s not. But it isn’t impossible.
Step 1: Write
The first thing you must do is write. I know that sounds obvious, but I know PLENTY of writers who, well, don’t write. They have great ideas. They tell you about them. They may even have extensive notes, an outline, something that says, “Hey, I’m getting work done!” And they may be—it doesn’t hurt to do any of those things before you start the writing process. But until you get words down onto the page or onto the computer screen, you have nothing. You just have a desire to do something, which may as well be the desire to climb Mt. Everest. If you’re doing nothing to move forward, it really doesn’t matter what task you’re doing—you aren’t doing it.
So, write. Use writing prompts if you have to, but sit down in a chair and start putting the words down. One word at a time makes a sentence. One sentence after another makes a paragraph. One paragraph after another can make a chapter in a book. One chapter . . . you get the gist of where I’m going here. But I can’t write what I want to write, you say. My writing is horrible. I don’t know where to start. Who’s going to read my story? What title should I use; all the great titles have already been used! These questions and declarations are what’s known as procrastination. They prevent you from writing. They stop you in your tracks, and so you remain someone who wants to have written rather than making you a writer. Writers write. Period. You aren’t going to get what you want exactly how you want it in a first draft. Or second or third. That’s part of writing. Understand that. Repeat it to yourself. And just keep writing. That’s your job—to get the story down first. Everything else comes later.
Step 2: Revise/Rewrite
This seems like an obvious step two in the writing process, but I see way too many new writers believing that they don’t need to edit or revise. They think that the first draft is good enough, that editors will see their genius immediately, shower them with praise, and then publish them. That all they have to do is run spellcheck or Grammarly or whatever, and what they’ve written is gold. I’m sorry to tell you, but that’s not what’s going to happen. You need to revise your work. Sometimes you need to just trash it altogether. Or work on it for ten edits, twenty edits, a hundred edits. Even those wonderful, magical works that seem to be granted to you from the heavens, where everything goes write from day one and you write thousands of words a day and the story takes shape, the dialogue is great, the scenes are compelling, etc. etc., they need revising. They need someone with expertise and self-awareness to let you know what’s working, what’s not working, where you need improvement in your work so that you can go back and fix what’s broken. You don’t have to take everything they say as gospel, but you must be open to constructive criticism. You must be able to see your work from an outsider’s perspective. And then you must be brutal during the editing process. You’ll have to kill some of your darlings. The goal, remember, is to write the best story you can, and that, unfortunately (or fortunately) requires complete objectivity for something that is, at its very core, subjective. If you want to stand a chance at getting published, this is a must. There’s no way around it.
. . . until you get words down onto the page or onto the computer screen, you have nothing
In 1888, the great short story writer, Anton Chekhov, came up with six tenets of a great story. Here they are:
Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature.
Total objectivity.
Truthful descriptions of persons and objects.
Extreme brevity.
Audacity and originality: flee the stereotype.
Compassion.
Notice how clean, clear, and unambiguous his tenets are? They're good rules. You should follow them, at least until you have a mastery of writing and understand the rules and how to break them.
Ernest Hemingway changed the way writers wrote in the 20th Century. You may not like his masculinity, his stripped-down prose, but it’s hard to argue with him. These were his rules:
Use short sentences. Short sentences are easier to digest.
Use short first paragraphs.
Use vigorous English.
Be positive, not negative.
Do what you want, but I try to follow the above rules (and others from other writers) as best as I can. And my writing has improved because of it. I’ve got more darlings in the cemetery than there are stars in the sky due to these writers’ rules and recommendations.
3: Submitting and Understanding the Rules of Getting Published.
The first thing you have to consider is what it is, exactly, that you wrote. If you wrote flash fiction, make sure the publications where you’re submitting to publish flash fiction. If you wrote a short story, make sure your story fits into what a journal or magazine or whatever publish short stories, and, in particular, short stories “like” the story you’ve written. What I mean is, if a literary journal (many (or most) of which are published by universities) publishes speculative fiction, the chances of them publishing your romance short story is probably zero. So, know your target publications before submitting your work. Know what their word count limits are. Do your research on them, meaning buy/check out/read an issue or five so you understand what they’re interested in (the past is prologue when it comes to who publishes what, and you don’t want to waste your time or money submitting something that’ll never be considered for publication). Many literary journals charge reading fees, and many don’t pay other than provide contributor copies, so do your due diligence when selecting where to submit. Understanding who will publish what holds true for magazines that publish fiction as well. There are exceptions here and there, but most writers don’t have unlimited resources and time, so choose wisely where you decide on sending your work.
If you have a novel you’re looking to get published, you have a number of options you’re going to have to decide on. These days, writers/authors can self-publish their novels, have them published via vanity publishers, submit them with/without an agent to indie publishers, enter contests, or, if you’re extremely lucky, acquire an agent who’ll then submit your novel to the list of editors they know and/or have sold books to in the past at the larger publishing houses. There are benefits and cons to each, and you’ll have to do your research on what you think is the best route to take for your own novel. Self-publishing requires a lot of your own time—time to learn which self-publishing platform you think is best for you in terms of difficulty, features and benefits, cost, time commitment towards your marketing activities, and so on. Vanity publishers cost money—sometimes so much that it’s cost prohibitive to the writers considering hiring them. Winning contests requires paying to enter the contest (though not always), and the time to submit and track your submissions, which you can do in any number of ways, including using your own excel worksheet, submission tracker software like Duotrope or WritersDB and similar tracking products. And then there’s querying agents, which is what you would do if you want to get traditionally published by Simon & Schuster, Bloomsbury, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and so on. Larger houses don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts; they use literary agents to vet authors’ works, so it would be a waste of time sending your novel to them. If you want to learn more about querying literary agents, I wrote a post about it a while ago. Just click the link.
Querying agents is a long, involved, tiring process, but there’s no way to get around the work you’ll have to do to catch an agent’s eye. Do NOT query an agent if you don’t have a completed work of fiction. It’s different for nonfiction, but for novels, you’ll need to have a polished, completed novel, a great query letter that adheres to the agent’s/agency’s submission guidelines, which vary. If you don’t follow their rules, chances are they won’t even look at your submission. Know who and what they publish. Find out if the agent you’re querying is even open for submissions—oftentimes they’re so swamped that they shut down accepting new clients. Check their websites out for updated details. If you don’t know how to find the right agent, you can go to Poets & Writers Literary Agent Database, which is a tool you can use to find agents and agencies, where you can then research who (and if) any agents at their agency might represent works like yours. As you submit, don’t forget to keep track of your submissions. Remember, follow the rules! Don’t submit to multiple agents at the same agency. Stick to their rules on what they want you to send them (just a query and a few pages or chapters, short bio, etc.), how long they’ll take to respond (if they respond at all), and so on. Always be professional. Always submit only what they ask for. Your spouse or mother may think you’re special, but literary agents just want what they tell you they want. Don’t annoy them.
Conclusion:
Writing is a passion. Writers, true writers, cannot not write. It’s a calling that pulls at them daily, day after day, year after year. If you’re a writer, you know that. You know that writing is work. That you’re probably not a genius, even if your friends all tell you you’re the next Shakespeare, better than Stephen King, that you blow Brandon Sanderson or Lee Child or Kristin Hannah out of the water. It’s nice to hear that, but it probably isn’t true. At least not yet. You’re a writer, and so you sit down, and you write. You know you have to write through garbage most times, and that if something catches, you’re going to need to revise and rewrite and perhaps workshop what you’ve written so you can get that constructive feedback that’s going to allow you to revise and rewrite some more in order to get your work to the best place it can be, fiction-wise, which means you have a story, it’s interesting and compelling, you have great characters who want something and strive, despite opposition, to get it (or not), that you have great scenes, a beginning, a middle, and an end, and so on. You know you’ll have days where you believe you’re the worst writer in the world and that you’re wasting your time. You’ll have days where you’ll think you’re the second coming of Tolstoy. All of this is okay. All writers go through some form of everything you’re going through at some point in their writing career. They do. Believe me. And that’s okay. If you’re a writer, and you want to get published, you’re going to need to put in the work. You’re going to have to take the criticism without getting offended by it. Remember, when it comes to fiction, people’s opinions are subjective. Take what you need from the criticism; ignore what you don’t. Once you’re ready to submit, do the research you need to do to not waste your time, but, more importantly, to not waste someone else’s time. Follow the submission guidelines—for agents, for writing contests, for literary journal submissions. Track everything. And don’t get discouraged. Some things take time. But one day, if you’re putting in all the work and doing the things writers must do to be successful, it’ll happen. You’ll see your name in print. And let me tell you, there’s nothing quite like it. You’ll want to celebrate, and you should. Have that glass of champagne. Eat that flourless chocolate cake. Go on a vacation. You deserve it. Then, get back to work. Because that’s what you’ll have to do if you’re a writer. You’ll write. And you’ll write. And you’ll write some more.
Cully Perlman is a novelist, blogger, and Substantive Editor. He can be reached at Cully@novelmasterclass.com
Thanks for the tips! Especially the submission tracker idea. I was keeping them on a word doc and it was not helpful.
Thanks!