Natasha Ewendt's Blog - Posts Tagged "dionie-mcnair"
Author Showcase Guest Post: Dionie McNair – Don't be so precious, writers
Author Showcase features authors sharing their wisdom a range of writing-related topics. Today’s post is by Adelaide young adult author Dionie McNair, on how Eyre Writers helped her become less precious about her words so she could at last become a published author.
Don’t be so precious and you just might get published
I remember with angst and embarrassment my first effort at a long story. It was in year nine high school when I wrote a 32 page story about an undersea world inhabited by mermen and mermaids and how they ruled the oceans. It was an illustrated story with chapters.
On presenting it to my English teacher she promptly told me that such things just did not happen and my story was too long and go away and write something more suitable for the assignment she had set. I was devastated and from then on kept my stories hidden.
I never showed my writing to anybody for more than twelve years but then I had the good fortune to join a community writing group called Eyre Writers.
By then I had my first manuscript in hand - a 100,000 word family saga based on my family history. It was my baby. I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread and I just knew it would get published and become a best seller, making me rich.
Since my first crushing rejection I had been a closet writer, but now in the esteemed company of other writers I began to reveal my project. I even sent it away to a publisher and then came the rude awakening. A short blunt rejection letter. I tried again and again until this manuscript had enough rejection letters to wall paper my desk.
By now I had been in Eyre Writers’ company for a while. Finally as I grieved the death of my bestseller dream I began to listen to the wisdom being shared at the meetings. How hard it was, how to take rejection, what editing and re-writing really meant. I pounced on the opportunity to do workshops with those touting more rejection letters than I had and perhaps a contract or two.
I absorbed the wisdom, the hints and the criticism, squashing down my pride and my ego. I re-wrote, edited and re-wrote. I began new projects, I got more ruthless and less precious about my words. If they had to go they had to go.
Come what may I wanted to be a writer. I wrote, I re-wrote, I edited and I crafted my words. Finally there was a glimmer of hope. My words were concise, the characters well rounded, the story rich with action and emotion. Now I was writing.
Even then rejection came calling. Each time I took it as feedback so I assessed my work, edited ruthlessly, polished and tweaked. I persisted and persisted until finally that precious contract came – at last I was an author.
Find my YA books at http://www.dionie-mcnair.com/ or
fb: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dionie...
Dionie McNair’s first book a young adult novel The Scorpions Heart was published as an ebook by Silver Stream Press in August 2013 followed quickly by Wear Orange to Conquer Demons. She lives in Adelaide with her mother, three cats and a dog and at times two adorable grandchildren.
Natasha Ewendt is the author of This Freshest Hell, a vampire novel released in 2013 by Lacuna Publishing. Also a journalist at the Port Lincoln Times and the director of Port Lincoln Copywriting Services, she is reluctantly addicted to coffee and The Walking Dead.
Don’t be so precious and you just might get published
I remember with angst and embarrassment my first effort at a long story. It was in year nine high school when I wrote a 32 page story about an undersea world inhabited by mermen and mermaids and how they ruled the oceans. It was an illustrated story with chapters.
On presenting it to my English teacher she promptly told me that such things just did not happen and my story was too long and go away and write something more suitable for the assignment she had set. I was devastated and from then on kept my stories hidden.
I never showed my writing to anybody for more than twelve years but then I had the good fortune to join a community writing group called Eyre Writers.
By then I had my first manuscript in hand - a 100,000 word family saga based on my family history. It was my baby. I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread and I just knew it would get published and become a best seller, making me rich.
Since my first crushing rejection I had been a closet writer, but now in the esteemed company of other writers I began to reveal my project. I even sent it away to a publisher and then came the rude awakening. A short blunt rejection letter. I tried again and again until this manuscript had enough rejection letters to wall paper my desk.
By now I had been in Eyre Writers’ company for a while. Finally as I grieved the death of my bestseller dream I began to listen to the wisdom being shared at the meetings. How hard it was, how to take rejection, what editing and re-writing really meant. I pounced on the opportunity to do workshops with those touting more rejection letters than I had and perhaps a contract or two.
I absorbed the wisdom, the hints and the criticism, squashing down my pride and my ego. I re-wrote, edited and re-wrote. I began new projects, I got more ruthless and less precious about my words. If they had to go they had to go.
Come what may I wanted to be a writer. I wrote, I re-wrote, I edited and I crafted my words. Finally there was a glimmer of hope. My words were concise, the characters well rounded, the story rich with action and emotion. Now I was writing.
Even then rejection came calling. Each time I took it as feedback so I assessed my work, edited ruthlessly, polished and tweaked. I persisted and persisted until finally that precious contract came – at last I was an author.
Find my YA books at http://www.dionie-mcnair.com/ or
fb: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dionie...
Dionie McNair’s first book a young adult novel The Scorpions Heart was published as an ebook by Silver Stream Press in August 2013 followed quickly by Wear Orange to Conquer Demons. She lives in Adelaide with her mother, three cats and a dog and at times two adorable grandchildren.
Natasha Ewendt is the author of This Freshest Hell, a vampire novel released in 2013 by Lacuna Publishing. Also a journalist at the Port Lincoln Times and the director of Port Lincoln Copywriting Services, she is reluctantly addicted to coffee and The Walking Dead.
