By Ottavia Paluch
Late in 2017 I decided that 2018 would be the year that I took my writing seriously. This became my New Year’s resolution, and over the course of the subsequent 12 months, I committed myself to doing as much as I could to improve my writing. Looking back on my progress, I (surprisingly!) am quite proud of how far I’ve gotten. The 2017 version of me would be shocked to learn that I now have eight publication credits under my belt (with more hopefully coming soon!) and that I managed to become a member of the BWO organization, writing blog posts like this one. I still have a copious amount to learn, but below are eight things I learned over the course of 2018 that might help you in the years to come. 1. Reading about writing is extremely beneficial. My local library system doesn’t necessarily have many poetry books, for instance, or many books on writing. Yet there are so many great websites that will teach you plenty about the written word. Poetry Foundation’s Teens section is excellent. Also recommended: sites like Lit Hub, Electric Literature, DIVEDAPPER (who publish awesome interviews) and The Rumpus. Even The Paris Review publishes free content, like Poetry Rx. Journals often run the coolest blogs; look at Frontier Poetry’s interview with editors like Talin Tahajian, for example. Which leads to my next point: 2. The Internet is an amazing tool. You might already know that, being that you’ve found BWO. And if you live somewhere where opportunities for young writers are few, the Internet is your best friend. There are entire novels and Shakespeare plays that can be found online. There’s an infinite amount of slam poems you can listen to on YouTube. There are lists all over the Internet for publications that aren’t The New Yorker and, like BWO, accept work by teens. NewPages (another great resource) made this list which I may or may not believe is god-sent. 3. If you want to become a better writer and get published in literary journals, you actually have to—get this—read literary journals. Early in the year, I came to the realization that publications essentially expect you to read their publications first before you submit to them. Take time to become familiar by reading an issue or two full of work they publish. Don’t just submit work to them without having gotten a general grasp of what they like. Chances are, they’ll reject you. 4. Subscribing to email lists/newsletters featuring/about writing is a good idea. If you’re like me, you probably get a shot of endorphins every time you get a notification or a beep that signals you’ve gotten an email. In April, I signed up to receive daily emails of new, contemporary, and classic poems from the Academy of American Poets (who run Poem-A-Day) and Poetry Foundation (who run POETRY Magazine), and I haven’t looked back. Though my inbox can sometimes get flooded, I read more poems than I thought I could, and my writing benefited greatly from it. If you’re more fiction/nonfiction oriented, sign up to get weekly emails from The Writer—emails full of great content sure to help you power through that first draft of your novel/short story/who knows what else. Plus, writing prompts! 5. It makes a lot of sense to track your submissions with an Excel spreadsheet or something of the like. Making an Excel spreadsheet to list every submission of mine was worth the time that it took to make. Say you submit to a journal that has previously rejected you. With a basic spreadsheet, you can double-check that you haven’t included any pieces that you sent in your first submission. If you get rejected from another journal but the editors still thought positively of your work, you can mark that submission as a tiered rejection, so that if that email gets lost in your inbox, you’ll still have the name of the journal on file so that you can submit to it again. You’ll thank me later. 6. Taking risks in your writing is hard, but you have to do it in order to succeed. I’m still learning this: to write candidly, to kill your darlings, to write what you haven’t written before. To try your hand at flash fiction if you haven’t written much prose. I’d say more, but speaking of email lists, David Shields, an internationally best-selling and critically-acclaimed author of fiction and nonfiction, did a fantastic interview with The Writer that I found through their newsletter a while back in which the hits the nail on the head regarding the importance of taking risks in your writing. 7. Rejection is part of being a writer. There’s no other way to put it. Can I say it again? REJECTION IS PART OF BEING A WRITER. As of writing, I have been submitting work to publications for a year and a little under a half. My submissions spreadsheet currently has eighty rows filled up with data. It might sound like a large number, but in reality, it’s not. So far, I have only made eighty attempts to give my work a home, whether that be online or in print. Because wouldn’t you love to have your words available for the world’s viewing pleasure? In order for that to happen, you have to get over the hurdle of being afraid to send your work out only to get a rejection in response. Yes, rejections suck, yes, they sting, and yes, you’ll feel disappointed, but you will learn and grow from them in more ways than you’ll ever notice. Sometimes, publications might even send you tiered rejections, encouraging you to submit again. Oh, and here’s a tip: once you receive a sizable amount of rejections, print them out and throw darts at them. The ultimate remedy. 8. Acceptances are wonderful, so celebrate them. It’s funny, my first acceptance letter was from BWO. This was in early March; I had already been submitting my work for eight months, which made receiving my first one so much sweeter. Speaking of celebrations, rewarding yourself frequently is helpful. In fact, I encourage you to go reward yourself now, since you’ve taken time out of your day to read this article.
1 Comment
Ashanti
2/21/2019 03:04:24 pm
This is great.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |