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Penguin Random House has developed a free online resource on how to get published, offering practical information and inspiration for unpublished writers on the publishing process. Highly recommended, although the focus is on the UK market, so some of the information is most useful to British writers.
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IMPORTANT PUBLISHING OPPORTUNITY FROM ASSOCIATED WRITING PROGRAMS
I just received the following notice. Don’t be shy: submit!
If your New Year’s resolution is to get your book published, you’re in luck: The 2026 AWP Award Series is officially open for submissions! Submit your book-length manuscripts in creative nonfiction, poetry, the novel, and short fiction by February 28. Ten finalists and one winner in each genre will be announced around late summer 2026. Winning authors receive an honorarium of $2,500–$5,500 and publication by one of our partner presses.
Submit to the 2026 AWP Award Series! Details here.
Kiese Laymon will judge the Sue William Silverman Prize for Creative Nonfiction. The winning author will receive $2,500 and publication by the University of Georgia Press.
Maggie Smith will judge the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. The winning author will receive $5,500 and publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Justin Torres will judge the James Alan McPherson Prize for the Novel. The winning author will receive $5,500 and publication by the University of Nebraska Press.
Weike Wang will judge the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction. The winning author will receive $5,500 and publication by Mad Creek Books, an imprint of The Ohio State University Press.
The AWP Award Series is an annual competition for the publication of excellent new book-length works. The prizes are supported by the AWP Award Series Endowments. The competition is open to all authors writing in English, regardless of nationality or residence, and is available to published and unpublished authors alike. For full submission guidelines and a complete list of prior winners and judges, visit the AWP Award Series page on our website.
Best of luck!
James Tate Hill
Senior Publications Editor -
Writing genre fiction? Check this out!
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Indie presses seeking new manuscripts of poetry, fiction, and more!
Red Hen Press → Open for submissions
The mission of Red Hen Press is to publish works of literary excellence, to foster diversity, and to promote literacy in our local schools. We seek a community of readers and writers who are actively engaged in the essential human practice known as literature. Red Hen publishes approximately twenty-five books of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction each year, with over 550 books released to date and distributed internationally. Representative fiction writers include Aimee Liu, Martha Cooley, Donna Hemans, Judy Grahn, Yuvi Zalkow, and Andrew Lam. Representative poets include Chris Abani, Katharine Coles, Camille Dungy, Eloise Klein Healy, Brynn Saito, Peggy Shumaker, Doug Manuel, and Francesca Bell. The press also publishes ten imprints that highlight underrepresented authors from diverse locations and backgrounds. Collectively, our imprints have published over 350 titles.Find details on querying Red Hen Press here.
Alice James Books → Open for submissions
Founded as a feminist press, Alice James Books is committed to collaborating with literary artists of excellence whose voices have been historically marginalized by producing, promoting, and distributing their work which often engages the public on important social issues. Alice James provides a platform from which to elevate exceptional literary artists and is dedicated to helping its writers achieve purposeful engagement with broad audiences and communities nationwide. We help writers tell their stories and connect with readers. We envision this work making continued contributions that sustain American literary and artistic culture and to growing a more understanding, equitable, and just community through literature.Find details on querying Alice James Books here.
Black Mountain Press → Open for submissions
Black Mountain Press strives to find and publish works that aspire to a higher ideal, many times written by unknown, first-time authors, without agents representing them. All too often their works are ignored by the corporate publishers who are more interested in serving up their chain store consumables for a public lost in our mass produced, fast-food induced art world.Find details on querying Black Mountain Press here.
Persea Books → Open for submissions
Persea has published hundreds of engaging and consequential books covering a wide range of subjects, styles, and genres, including poetry, fiction, essays, memoir, biography, and revived classics. Our list focuses on contemporary issues expressed through individual experience. It reflects the rich diversity of American literature, from Native American onward, and includes a wide selection of works in translation. Persea’s poetry editor, Gabriel Fried, has successfully introduced a new generation of contemporary American poets, including Molly McCully Brown, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Mitchell L. H. Douglas, Randall Mann, Patrick Rosal, and Lisa Russ Spaar, among others.Find details on querying Persea Books here.
Mayapple Press → Open for submissions
Mayapple Press is a small literary press founded in 1978 by poet and editor Judith Kerman. We celebrate literature that is both challenging and accessible: poetry that transcends the categories of “mainstream” and “avant-garde”; women’s writing; the Great Lakes/Northeastern culture; the recent immigrant experience; poetry in translation; science fiction poetry.Find details on querying Mayapple Press here.
North Dakota State University Press → Open for submissions
North Dakota State University Press has given the region a voice for more than seventy years. In March 2025, we will celebrate our 75th anniversary. Since 2016, by means of our Contemporary Voices of Indigenous Peoples series, we launched our voice into the national and international scene. In the spring of 2019, we initiated our Certificate in Publishing, approved by the State Board of Higher Education and attended by undergraduate and graduate students at NDSU and the Tri-College area. Through classroom and hands-on learning, students gain working knowledge of the history, business, and practice of small press and university press publishing. Our dual mission is to publish scholarly and literary books and to provide experiential learning for the next generation of publishers.Find details on querying North Dakota State University Press here.
Unsolicited Press → Open for Submissions
The vibe at Unsolicited Press is rebellious, relentless, and philanthropic. All of the net profit is funneled back into the business to maintain operations. Additionally, we love supporting non-profits that are doing so much good by donating a portion of our proceeds to support their missions. We embrace being quirky and love helping authors launch and/or further their writing careers. We are open for submissions year-round.Find details on querying Unsolicited Press here.
Wayfarer Books → Open for submissions
Wayfarer Books is a fiercely independent, trans-owned press publishing bold, genre-defying literature from the wild and societal margins. Founded in a fair-trade café in Boston’s North End during the summer of 2009, the press officially launched in 2011 under the name Homebound Publications and expanded in 2012 to include Wayfarer Magazine. From the beginning, the press focused on works rooted in spirituality and ecological consciousness, carving out space for reflection and stillness in a chaotic world. In 2024, Homebound Publications became Wayfarer Books. Against all odds—and through a collapsing industry, a global pandemic, paper shortages, shipping disruptions, and the looming dominance of Amazon—Wayfarer has not only survived, it has endured. The press remains committed to amplifying voices often silenced by the mainstream and continues to publish poetry, essays, and nonfiction that speak truth from the wild margins of both landscape and culture. Wayfarer Books exists to champion the feral, the subversive, and the silenced. These are dangerous times, but they are also sacred. The press is still here, still printing, and still refusing to look away.Find details on querying Wayfarer Books here.
Nine Arches Press → Closed (Open Oct 1–Oct 31)
Nine Arches Press are an independent poetry publisher and a poetry development organisation based in the West Midlands, UK. We publish, develop and support the some of the most exciting and talented voices in contemporary poetry, nationally and internationally. Founded in 2008, Nine Arches Press have published nearly 140 poetry publications and more than 30 issues of Under the Radar magazine. We have created poetry books which have gone into the hands of over 30,000 readers since 2016. Our Director / Editor is poet and tutor Jane Commane.Find details on querying Nine Arches Press here.
Black Lawrence Press → Closed (Open Nov 1–Nov 30)
Black Lawrence Press is an independent publisher of contemporary poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. We also publish the occasional translation from German. Founded in 2004 by Colleen Ryor, Black Lawrence became an imprint of Dzanc Books in 2008. In January 2014, we spread our wings and became an independent company in the state of New York. Our books are distributed nationally through Independent Publishers Group to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and various brick and mortar retailers. We also make our titles available through our website and at various conferences and book fairs.Find details on querying Black Lawrence Press here.
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Everything Nobody Tells You About Querying
This is from an extremely useful writing site called Sub Club. It’s a Substack site, so to get the full benefit of it you’ll want to consider subscribing.
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Handy hints for getting your poetry and short prose into the right publications. Make the new year productive out of the gate! https://westerncoloradowriters.org/how-to-choose-publications-for-your-poetry-and-short-prose/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR00Pgqnzbdr2RU8I-YbT1Vj06n77ZpEZWKgMg_W8jzg8-8qRkjkc1ktal8_aem_O6KWcFNXz7uENV_4sJeORw
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If you’re writing creative nonfiction, give one or more of these publications a try!
Best of luck!
Joe
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Check out this publisher seeking fiction, especially chapbooks (5000 to 10,000 words), novellas (10,000 to 40,000 words), and short novels (up to 60,000 words).
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Check this submission manager out. Brand new and looks very useful!
Cheers!
Joe H
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A new short story is out!!!
This is hands down the story I’m proudest of :). It got accepted a few months back and is now finally seeing the light of day~~
Here it is, sweet friends. I know it can be pretty quiet on here, but I really value each and every one of ya and keep writing in the hopes that we all make it bustle!
https://www.bourbonpenn.com/issue/26/black-hole-elvis-by-nikita-andester
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Some great advice here on the process of submitting a book manuscript: The Seven Most Common Manuscript Submission Mistakes.
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Just saw this!! I had a literary agent reach out to me earlier this year (!!!!!!!) who requested to read my manuscript. I’m giving her pages in the next month and a half or so and will absolutely be combing through this for advice beforehand.
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Worth looking into!
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A very useful idea for those who have the resources. I, for one, hate the manuscript submission process, so….
Anyone who decides to give this a try, please let the group know how it goes!
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Joe,
Talk about kindred spirits! That is my submission process to a tee. This essay hit home. I’d love to hire someone to do that submitting work for me, in my dreams. I’ve tried setting aside a time each week to work on submissions, but always end up in a Submittable nightmare. Where is the “help a writer get published” job board?-
I know I’m not someone who can ~do it for you~, but I’ve upped my game the past few months in submissions and would love to send you a list or chat it out if ya want! I routinely dig around on Duotrope and have two short stories in ten spots each (!) for consideration, which is a personal record. Is it the looking or the querying that’s hitching you up?
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If you do a search on “writing program virtual assistant manuscript submission” you’ll get plenty of sites to consider. I’d look for one where you can hire someone for a few hours—say three—a week to do manuscript submissions for you. It’s a pretty specialized task, but if you can connect with a student in a writing program, you’ll really be doing both of you a favor! The question is whether you want someone to merely handle submissions or someone to research the market and do submissions. The latter will be more expensive, I’m sure. So I guess the first step is to figure out exactly what kind of support you want, write up a concise description of the job, then do your search.
Let us know how it goes!
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Hey, y’all!
I hope the writing world has been treating you kindly. I know I’ve been going at it like Mozart at the end of “Amadeus,” all wild and half-sick and unable to fathom stepping away (can you tell what movie I watched this week?).
ANYWAY, someone sent me this fantastic, organized list of places to publish. They’ve ranked the spots by tiers and given you some vital info about what they publish. It’s specifically for fiction, but I thought it was a fantastic little thing regardless.
Joe H., it may even be something to share with students! I don’t know; just thinking “out loud.”
Hope everyone’s having a fantastic day/week/month :).
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Terrific, Nikita! I definitely will pass this along.
I give up. Which movie was it?
Take good care!
Joe
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Check these out….
Hope summer’s going well so far with all of you!
Joe
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Hey, all! I have to apologize for not being engaged for so long. I’ve been stricken with pandemic fatigue—a fogginess-and-lassitude combo that’s been pretty darn frustrating. Anyway, I came across a contest that looks like it might actually be useful. (You may know that I hate contests on principle: art is not a competition!) It’s not just winner-take-all, and it may help to get your work in front of interested agents. Here’s the link:
Again, I can’t personally vouch for this one, but it does sound promising.
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This is an interesting infographic:
How Long Did It Take to Write the World’s Most Famous Books? -
Here are three related posts from Writer Beware regarding misleading sources of information about traditional vs. self publishing. Important to keep in mind!
https://accrispin.blogspot.com/2018/07/how-predatory-companies-are-trying-to.html
https://accrispin.blogspot.com/2019/06/how-predatory-companies-are-trying-to.html
https://accrispin.blogspot.com/2019/12/how-predatory-companies-are-trying-to.html
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Joe and Nakita,
These three short posts were enlightening. I’d just seen a commercial on TV for one of these types of companies, and they made it sound soooo easy.
I’m trying to decide whether or not to query some agents. I particularly want to get the second novel I had published by a small publisher back out there. They went out of business about two weeks after they published my second novel, so it wasn’t not really out there for long. I think it has a lot of potential but I’m not sure how the fact that it was published will play out.-
Oh, that’s an interesting question. I guess it depends on how small-scale the publisher was. It’s always worth a go to have it sent out again for publishing. Do you plan on revisiting it at all/editing before you start shopping it around? If so, you know I’m always available to give some feedback :).
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I always feel like work needs a thousand new reviews, and you’ve probably grown so much as a writer since you last looked it over. I know there’s the chance of working something to death, but it’s always worth reviewing and seeing what parts make you say, “heck yeah!” and which ones (if any) have you cringing and tilting the computer screen a little more shut 🙂
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Don’t let the click-bait headline fool you. This is a useful article….
Just Because Walt Whitman Self-Published, Doesn’t Mean You Should, Too
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Given the name of this thread, I should admit right now that this link goes to an article about rejection—but rejection reframed.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/26/rejection-authors-writers-creative-process
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Oh, and I listen to the podcast “Writing Excuses” while making dinner and/or working out several times a week. It’s a great podcast that helps you work through a lot of story problems. Even though the writers are all scifi/fantasy on the podcast, I find I get a LOT out of it even though that’s not my genre :).
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Nikita,
You are a wealth of information. If I can ever get off my duff and start digging, I know I’d be a much happier writer. Your insight on my novella has been wonderful and the resources you keep posting here are amazing.
Tell me what you did to begin, like day one.-
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Wow, thank you, Sally! That means a lot :). I try really hard to make everything I do get me to my writing dreams!
So while I was still in our program in late 2017, I signed up with Upwork and got my first gig by discounting their asking price by 20%. In hindsight, it wasn’t great because I did several gigs that paid peanuts for hours of work, but I did get articles (and even a few stories!) published in my name through them, which was great for credibility. They’re kind of known as a low-grade content mill, but if you dig, you can find good ones. I have a client who pays me $.07/word for 10, 1000-word articles a week through Upwork, which is wonderful.
I wasn’t able to land clients that let me earn a full-time wage at part-time hours until this year after listening to the woman at Creative Revolt (she has wondeful, free YouTube videos!). Once I started following her advice, and positioning myself as an authority on the niches I want to be known in, jobs really started coming in. Seriously. In March I had one client who gave me sporadic work at an OK rate, and within 6 months I now have four consistent clients that comprise all my income, plus an upcoming article in an online magazine I really admire! All with time to work on my novel a few hours a day!
It helps that I stay focused and just apply to things relevant to sex/relationships/endometriosis or the environment (my two niches!). I know the environment doesn’t fit the theme, but I care so much about it, I can’t not! I leverage my degree and other writing I’ve done to apply for gigs through Pro Blogger, and I only look for Upwork jobs that pay well and professionally. It’s interesting, but the more I’ve ~pretended~ to be a professional who should be paid well, the more people have treated me like one, even though I have major impostor syndrome, haha.
I also read articles on how to pitch, how to become a writer, and how to land clients almost weekly. When I started ramping up my business this year, I read those articles daily. I search things like “Best Freelance Writer practices 2019” or “best pitching practices 2019” or “how to land a great writing client.” Sometimes I read the same articles several times over a few months to make sure I really got everything I could from it.
So in a nutshell:
1. watch the Creative Revolt videos and do what she says (even creating a website, mine makes me look so much more credible when I pitch/apply)
2. carve out a specific niche in what you want to write articles about
3. read as many articles or watch as many videos as you can on being a freelance writer!
4. Maybe start an Upwork profile, but I’m torn about this since it can be such a content mill.
5. I don’t compromise! I make sure I always have time to work on my novel for at least an hour a day, five days a week.I hope that all helps. I know this is long, but I just care so much and know that if I can do it, then we all can. I’ve worked so hard to create a space for me that’s finally panning out – and I can’t imagine not sharing all the info I’ve gleaned so far with my cohorts!
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Hey, y’all!
I didn’t know if I’d shared all the places I’ve gone to start publishing articles. I’ve found that writing articles has helped me develop different voices, which has helped me as an aspiring novelist (it’s pretty sweet to get paid to become a better writer!). Anyway, here’s all the places I look and apply for gigs through:
A great site for HQ positions: ProBlogger. I’ve gotten two major gigs through here that are recurring and in positions I care about.
A great place for getting your sea legs/first few pubs: Upwork. I have two clients here, too, which make up the bulk of my income, but you have to dig (and be diligent!) to get ones that can scrape together a good livin’ without working 60 hours a week; I work about 25 :).
Another one: Clear Voice. I haven’t honestly had success on this one, but I spoke to someone who works here and he said my niche of sex/relationships/the environment was a little too niche to get regular clients! I’ve heard of other people getting great gigs through it though.For cold pitching, I always reference Who Pays Writers to get an idea of what rates they find acceptable per word.
FINALLY (last one, I swear), I watched a lot of videos from Creative Revolt. I’ve definitely cherry-picked her wisdom to adapt it from being a copywriter to being a creative writer, but a lot of her sentiment in taking yourself seriously and working hard at building up exactly what you want to be known for has carried me a long way and been a major source of inspo.
Anyway, I hope that all is helpful to someone out there!
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Nikita,
I’d love you to take a look at my novella. How can I get it to you. I know how you feel about social media. I deal with Twitter, but that’s it.-
Sally, send me an email: nikitaandester@gmail.com. Generally I give feedback the way we did in the program: in-line and then a letter at the bottom. Let me know if that’s too much!
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Nikita,
I think I need to spend a week with you to see what you do! It sounds like you know what you want and what you have to offer, you believe in it, and you get it done! -
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My update here is that I finally finished revising/editing my novella. I found some beta readers through my contacts on Twitter and have gotten one response, but am waiting on one more before I make any final changes and begin the submission process.
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Joe, that’s an awesome rejection! They are such an exclusive publication, judging by the data Duotrope has on them. It’s so awesome to hear that you just went for it with your own story in mind. Where else do you plan on submitting it?
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Hey Nikita,
Thank you. I try not to pay too much attention to a publication’s status because it’s too easy to let it intimidate you which then dissuades you from submitting (and by “you” I mean the universal you). So, call me crazy–hey, an unintentional segue–but I also submitted my story to Crazyhorse, AGNI, and The Gettysburg Review because I’m all in on doing my writer thing. As well, I’m seriously considering submitting to The Chestnut Review.
And congrats on your work! I’ve read all your articles and I really liked the camper DIY article. My wife and I have talked about doing something similar and your article was a great introduction to the work involved. Keep up the good work.
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Yes! You gotta go all in! I’m so happy to hear you’re just going for it. After all, we never know who will say yes. I pitched to a magazine I really admire called Salty, which is a sex-positive magazine for queer and disabled/chronically ill people/people of color, and they took my pitch! I had been so intimidated, and after I sent it off, I felt so silly for pitching, but they got back to me :). It’s a big career move for me, and it just goes to show that we have to go for the big ones!
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Yes, Sally … a really good rejection for Joe! Most arrive without comment and therefore shrouded in mystery. When editors bother to report on the reader reports and ask to see more, you are definitely on the right track! It makes one hopeful about the other editors who have the submission in hand as we speak. Keep us posted, Joe!
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Joe,
What a great response you received, and I’m with you on the not being so “writerly” and just telling the story. I love the quotes you shared to help us define “completion.”
I am curious about how you decided on The Missouri Review.-
Hey Sally,
I found the Carver book at a library book sale and what a find! There is a wealth of insight for writers in Carver’s essays.
I chose The Missouri Review after reading a story in the archives of a publication I had intended to submit to. The author’s voice, some elements in the story were in some ways reminiscent of mine, and TMR was listed in his bio as one of the publications where he’d been published. So I thought, What the hell!
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Thanks Joe,
I’ve been beefing up my Twitter presence by using #amwriting and #writingcommunity and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the vitality of the writers who are there. I read a lot of Tweets about what other writers are doing, what agents are saying, and what people are writing. It’s fascinating, but I also have to be careful that it doesn’t suck up too much time.
I’d been approached to beta read part of novel for another writer and I did and that was an interesting experience. That was how I discovered that kind of exchange was going on, so I posted a tweet that I was looking for some beta readers and I chose two people that I felt had some good integrity based on their tweets. We exchanged emails addresses through the twitter direct message avenue. One got the work back to me within 48 hours, but I felt like it was all too good. She didn’t feel I needed to change anything. I’m still waiting for the second one.-
I’m always so wary of a beta reader who doesn’t want me to change a thing! If you want eyes on it, I’m also more than happy to be a beta reader :). I’ve thought about getting involved with Twitter but am so overwhelmed by how big it is and how much I feel like I’ve “missed” by not getting on before, but it’s refreshing to see how much engagement you get!
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Hi All,
Joe, I can relate to the is it ready/is it finished conundrum. Earlier this year I submitted a memoir piece despite the little voice in the back of my head telling me, “it’s not ready!” I waited a few days after submitting then re-read it. Oh man, I was not at all pleased and I didn’t think to withdraw the piece. Not surprisingly, it was rejected. But I kept revising it and revising it and getting more and more frustrated until I was ready to say screw it and move on to the next project. Then I stopped and re-assessed my process. I asked myself: What am I trying to say, what exactly am I trying to relay to the reader, and why am I having such a tough time saying it? I realized I was trying too hard to be writerly instead of just telling my story. This reminded me of a lesson I’d learned in martial arts. At first, my movements were stiff, mechanical, almost robotic, and Sensei would tell me, “Just relax and don’t think about what comes next. You know the techniques. Trust your training,” and as I progressed my movements became much smoother until they flowed almost effortlessly. This is what I told myself in re-assessing my process: I learned at DU to, as Raymond Carver says, “say what I wanted to say and to use the minimum number of words to do so”; I just need to trust my training. I continued to revise until finally I reached a point where I felt satisfied with the piece and submitted it, this time simultaneous submissions to multiple publications. Here is the first response I’ve gotten; it’s from The Missouri Review:
Dear Joe Menchaca,
Sincere thanks for sending us “”All He Left Us Was Alone”: A Memoir” for consideration. Our staff especially admired the emotional resonance of the piece. Though we’ve decided not to publish this piece, we are quite interested in seeing more of your writing and hope you’ll send other work in the near future.
Still a rejection but note the positivity in the email–a huge difference from the previous rejection which was essentially a literary version of don’t call us, we’ll call you. Thus, I see this rejection as a win, a sort of validation of my revised writing process and of the 56 revisions following the previous rejection (I number each revision in the file name). How did I know the piece was finished? I didn’t. It just felt complete, but complete is an abstraction, so how do I define complete? Once again I turn to Carver: “Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going back through the story again and putting commas back in the dame places.” Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the final feeling of completeness is summed up by a quote from a Checkhov story that Carver kept on a three-by-five card: “…and suddenly everything became clear to him.” That’s how complete felt: When I read the piece and everything was clear–words, sentences, paragraphs, the structure, the flow, the story as a whole.
All this is not to say that I think I’ve mastered the techniques of storytelling; I haven’t, not by a long shot. However, this story is a beginning, a process I must now learn to apply to further writing, and judging from the positive note from the editors of The Missouri Review, I think I’m on the right track.
Carver, Raymond. 2001. Call If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose. New York: Vintage Books
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Joe M,
Thanks for info on the Carver book and I guess I just need to pluck up more courage as I consider who to submit to! I mean they can only say no, right?! -
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Let me tell you what I’ve always done, for what it’s worth. When I feel that the work is solid but maybe not perfect, I go ahead and send it out. (I’m talking journals here, not book editors or agents.) While it’s gone, I focus on other, less solid work. Journals rarely respond in less than 6 weeks, so I get 6 weeks of work done before the rejection arrives. Or worse: the acceptance! When something’s accepted, I immediately notice everything that’s wrong with it. SO … here’s a real example. I had a poem accepted by the South Dakota Review, but I decided I wanted to tweak a couple of lines, which I did and sent the revised poem on to them along with my permission-to-print letter. The editor wrote back to say that he thought the change weakened the poem and that he wanted to use the earlier version. I said ok, of course, because whenever the poem gets collected in a book, I could always update it. But when the poem came out, I saw that the editor had been right: the revised poem was weaker. But I’ve also had it happen the other way: a poem comes out and I cringe: How could I have missed this or that terrible line or phrase? So when you collect it in a book, or submit it to an anthology, you fix it. I say all this to suggest that there is no such thing as perfection! Even after a work appears in print, there is a fluidity, a potentiality, a range of possibilities. If they don’t affect your “finished” work, they’ll find a way to influence your future work. Perpetual improvement! The “finished” works are markers along the path….
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I just saw this and I love this approach. It kind of goes back to what Joe M. was saying about how he was too focused on making his work *writerly* (forgetting his exact wording here). Sometimes I get bogged down by the details of making it too perfect, but at the risk of losing its livelihood or authenticity.
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Absolutely. I had a painting teacher who would look at me hesitating in front of my canvas and tell me, “don’t be precious with it!” Having some preparation in hand about what’s coming up for this book down the road keeps me from being too scared to try! I definitely made that mistake with a few short stories, haha.
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Yes! Always best to be early to the game. It’s partly psychological: if you work away at a novel for 5 years until you have it in a shape you consider “final,” it makes rejection (usually inevitable at first) and suggested revisions (from an agent or interested editor) more difficult to swallow. Think of “early shopping” as a proof-of-concept phase. After all, you’re ultimately asking a publisher to invest 20 or 30 thousand dollars just to take your novel to market. Doing the early groundwork is a good thing….
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