Why You Should Always Be Writing and Submitting
Get Closer to Publication
I am currently in the middle of writing a fantasy novel. While it is important to focus as much of my time on the novel as possible, it’s just as important to continue working on other things. When I say “other things,” I mean poems or short stories, and there are a number of reasons why you should. Let’s talk about why you should always be writing and submitting something:
Practice
When writing shorter work and submitting it around, you’ll be doing a lot of querying. Querying skills, to me, are essential. They teach discipline and they help your technical writing skills. All the querying also exposes you to the different expectations from different publishers. Not to mention, while working on different pieces, you get to practice different forms of writing. It’s keep your writing skills up to par and you’ll get to practice querying.
Feedback
When shopping a new short story or poem around, inevitably, you’ll get some rejection. However, sometimes, with the rejection comes feedback. This is a wonderful opportunity to work whatever criticism you are given, into your novel. Not everything they say may be what you want to do, but there may be just a bit of advice that you can use to enhance your writing. Regardless if you use the advice or not, the feedback is still extremely valuable. It gets you a front row seat to what an editor is looking for in a piece.
Earning Praise and Publication Credits
The best part about constantly writing and submitting is when you finally get something published, and the more you do it, the more likely that outcome is. Of course, with publications comes publication credits. So once you start shopping your novel around, you can put in the query letter that you have already been published. Being able to prove that you are a credible author will only help increase your chances of success.
Furthermore, not only will getting published in a journal help with your credentials, but it will help encourage you as a writer. Who doesn’t like getting a little praise? Deep down you may already know you are a good writer, but nothing will help solidify that as fact more than actually getting published. That little boost will help you keep working on that novel through the lulls in the creative process.
Recognition and Audience
Once of the best parts about writing and submitting other work while you are working on a much larger piece is the networking portion. As you shop things around, your name is being passed around. People are reading your work, they’re publishing your work, which, in turn, helps other people find you work. The longer you do it, the more people will recognize your name. From there, you can start to grow an audience. Thus, when you finally get that book published, you’ll already have readers waiting.
Thanks for reading.
Lissy