Click the book cover to read more

How’d that bint get published then?

Everyone will have different ways that they have managed to receive publication, and you own experience will be different to mine. But I have included this little bit about how I have been published in the past to take some of the mystery out of it. I remember reading books when I first started writing and always wondering how people do it, where did they start, how did they manage to get that published? (I am still in the dark as to how people find agents and manage to get novels published, because I don’t know any prose writers who have shared this information, but if I find out or anyone knows, I will be delighted to share the pearls on this site.) I remember once attending a seminar in which David Almond was discussing writing, and he mentioned a looking at books in Waterstones and just wondering how all these people had managed to get published, when he had been writing for years and still hadn’t managed it. This was hugely encouraging to me, the notion that a writer who is a successful as David Almond was once like everyone else, had years of writing and not finding the publication he wanted. This doesn’t mean it will never happen, there is hope. My own story isn’t as inspirational as David Almond’s, granted, as I have been published by small presses in the North East- and you won’t find these books in Waterstones or Borders (the truth is bookstores only stock the big names in terms of poetry, as it doesn’t sell. Of course, one of the reasons contributing to this is that the books aren’t available for people to see, and buy unless they know a particular writer's by name and can order it from the press or INP for example. It’s a vicious circle.) Nonetheless when you have been working away on your writing it helps keep you going to have a goal or something to work towards, and publication is something very concrete that can keep you writing to improve your work and complete it.

I managed to have some poems published in poetry magazines here and there, during the year I was sending work out. Eventually, I stopped doing this, as I felt I was running out of places to send to that hadn’t already rejected me, or used my work (though this isn’t recommended, more ballsy writers will send work again to magazines that have rejected them after a suitable period of time, and this makes sense. Ok, so that work didn’t appeal to them, but the work you have written since may be much improved, and different in tone- so why not? If you are expecting rejection, there is nothing to lose.)

Oddest rejection letter:

“Dear Miss Readman,

We read your poems with more interest than usual, but no.”

(Eh? What’s that supposed to mean?)

Funniest rejection letter

“Dear Miss Readman,

We enjoyed reading your story. However, it is the policy of this magazine to publish stories containing only sexual acts of an enjoyable nature.”