Acceptance
Birol said:
What can we do to help you get your first elusive acceptance so you can kick yourself out of this semi-permanent pity party you seem to be stuck in?
In truth, sometimes nothing helps, and outside of the usual advice of reading, and studying everything you can get your hands on, and writing each and every day, there are only two pieces of advice I'd offer. If you've already done both, sorry, but they works for many.
The first is simple to say, sometimes difficult to do. Go back to school. By hook or by crook, get yourself into some real writing courses run by real published writers who will demand you work and study hard, and who will bpth push and encourage you.
The second piece of advice works better after you've done the first, but I've seen it work for several writers who ignored the first.
Pick one magazine that you really like. Preferably a mid-size magazine.
Now get your hands on as many back issues as possible. At least a dozen, and two dozen is much better. Three dozen is better yet. Read every story straight through. Now go back with pen and paper in hand and dissect every story. Make a list.
1. What does the main character do for a living?
2. Is the main character male or female.
3. What kind of person is the main character?
4. Where does the story take place?
5. Write a one sentence plot of each story.
6. Do the themes of each story seem to be pro this or con that?
7. How many are third person limited, first person, etc.
8. Ignoring novelettes, what is the average length of the stories?
9. Do most stories have happy endings?
10. How are sex and violence handled?
11. Etc. Write down any otehr question that strike you as important.
Now write a story that changes everything except average length and type of story. Come up with a protagonist who does something different for a living, who doesn't have the usual personality, and who make not look like the average protagonist.
Find a setting/location that didn't appear in any of the stories. And I don't just mean one more big city, unless it's a really unusual big city, and you can paint it as such. Where you live might be the perfect setting. So might some unusal workplace you've been. What may be a commonplace job and a mundane setting to you might well be exotic to an editor and her readers.
The truest saying in publishing is that "editors want something just like everything else. . .only different." If you give them the right "different," your story will jump well ahead of other writers who are submitting.
Now, write a story for this magazine based on the differences and submit it. Then write another and another and another and another, all for this same magazine. Send them at least one story a month for a year.
I do not guarantee a sale with this method, but if you aren't getting some solid encouragement from the editor before the year is up, well, you're really doing something wrong.
Writing publishable fiction does come easier for some than for others, and many never can learn to do it. Just a shade over 90% of all who try writing fixtion will never, ever sell anything. But whether it comes easy or hard, the same elements go into it. That's why the platitudes are there. They either work, or it's likely nothing will work.
But the thing is this: Yes, I had no trouble breaking into fiction. As a high school dropout, and with no knowledge of grammar, and with no dream at all of being a writer, I studied grammar for about three wekks, wrote a short story in two days, and it sold first time out to a national magazine.
I don't know why or how I was able to do this, or why the next couple of short stories and a novel written in three weeks all sold just as easily. I don't believe for a second it was because I had talent oozing from my pores. I strongly believe it was because I did have an innate sense of what a story really is, and what editors really wanted.
I don't believe talent can be learned, but I do believe a strong, accurate sense of story and structure and of what editors want can be learned. And I believe much talent is wasted because the writer doesn't put enough importance on education, and on study, dissection, and specific targeting in order to learn more about story, and more about what editors really want.
I also know this beyond doubt; to keep going, to stay successful, to sell to more and more markets, I had to take both pieces of advice. I had to get more education, and I had to read and dissect magazines, and learn how to consistently give editors the kind of stories they wanted, only different.
