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Writing Tips from a Writer in the Trenches
Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Started Submitting My Writing
A few tips to help new writers avoid the same mistakes I made.
When I returned to an old passion of mine, writing, just under five years ago, I was hopelessly uninformed about pretty much everything about the writing world. All I knew is that I loved to put words down on a blank page, creating something from nothing. I figured that was the hard part.
Ah, the bliss of ignorance.
I’d always written, but never with the aim of publication. But after I took my first online class—writing for children—and wrote a few stories my family and friends seemed to enjoy, I began toying with the idea of submitting my work.
I took a few more classes, and read a few books, and by a few, I mean two. On Writing by Stephen King, and Writing Irresistible Kidlit, by Mary Kole. I played around with some short fiction and a couple of narrative nonfiction pieces wrote one I was rather proud of and decided I had it all figured out.
Time to submit.
Sigh. So many things I still didn’t understand about the publishing world. So many things I did wrong and wish I could go back in time and do over.
