It’s a Long Road to Publishing, and Most Writers Aren’t Prepared for the Journey

By Eva Langston

Like many writers, I’ve wanted to be an author ever since I was a child. So, nineteen years ago, at the age of twenty-five, I wrote my first novel.

The manuscript was terrible, and I knew it was terrible, but I didn’t know how to fix it. So I started studying in an MFA program, thinking this would teach me how to be a better writer.

And it did. I wrote some great short stories that were published in literary journals. But, after graduating with my MFA in Fiction Writi...