"How to Get Published" by Dorothy Cummings McLean

IPNovels.com

When I was a child, I was greatly inspired by Canadian author Gordon Korman who wrote his bestselling This Can’t Be Happening At Macdonald Hall when he was thirteen years old. I thought that I too would become an overnight child success, but I did not.  Although I wrote story after story, I never had the courage to send them away anywhere, or to enter contests, or to ask if there were periodicals or contests for children’s stories.  I assumed some trusted adult would eventually take it upon himself to introduce me to the literary world. I assumed wrongly.

Rule 1: Write. Write a lot.

Thus, it was not until I was 20 or so that I finally dared dip my toe in the wide Sargasso Sea of publication and sent two poems to the most intelligent of the University of Toronto student newspapers, The Gargoyle. They were accepted, and so before my dazzled eyes appeared in print my deathless verses beginning, if I recall correctly, “Ophelia didn’t jump/Hamlet pushed her.”

Rule 2: Send stories, poems, opinions, book reviews, etc., to those journals and magazines that welcome them. Publications belonging to your immediate community, like your college newspaper, are ideal.

After that, I took to the Spoken Word stage where, instead of reading poetry, I read comic short stories, often of dubious taste, suited to my raffish audience. And because I was surrounded by other writers, I finally got the courage to send my stories to short story magazines. They were all rejected.

Rule 3: Read your writing aloud to people who care about writing, and listen to them read their work aloud.  This could be at “Open Mic” events, or in a Creative Writing club. Become known as a good writer but also, very importantly, as a good listener and supporter of others’ work.

I most liked being rejected by The Atlantic. I preserved their rejection letter, typed on exquisite paper, for years. I least liked being rejected by Blood & Aphorisms, for the then-editor sneered, “Have you even read Blood & Aphorisms?” I meekly replied, yes,  it was my favourite fiction magazine.

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