The Creative Writer's Survival Guide: Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist

The Secret to Getting Published

79 The Secret to Getting Published . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I’m going to let you in on the biggest secret to getting published. Ready? Here it is. There are no secrets. It’s good old-​ fashioned hard work, combined with serendipity, luck, chance, or whatever else you want to call it. And perseverance. Keep working on improving your craft, and keep sending out your work. I’ve had stories rejected fifty times before they were accepted bya good magazine. I knowa writer who collected sixty rejections on a short story before it was accepted by a superb magazine and then reprinted in the prestigious Pushcart Prize anthology. The story later appeared in his collection of linked stories, which was eventually made into a movie. For me, the secret to getting published is to keep working on new stories or to forge ahead on a new novel while the older stories and novels are circulating. That way, I don’t have to fixate. Remember those excruciating days in high school when you sat by the phone and waited fora call from a girl or boy you had a crush on—or, worse: the boyor girl who had broken upwith you—and you were paralyzed to the point of being unable to do anything but wait by the phone? It was debilitating, wasn’t it? Well, what you learn when you’re an adult is that you need to stay busy to keep your mind off the thing that’s plaguing you. And so if you find yourself checking your e-​ mail’s in-​ box every few seconds, peering out the window all day for the mail truck, or clutching your cell phone like it’s a grenade that will explode if you let go of it—you need to get back to work. ...