Thanks to all of you who left comments for the chance to win a copy of Laura Cross’s eBook, The Complete Guide to Hiring a Literary Agent.
I really enjoyed reading all of your responses to the questions:
- Why is it so important to you to have your writing published?
- What’s the very best advice you’ve ever received on how to get there?
It was difficult to choose a favourite, but the free eBook goes to Amy.
Here was her response:
Hi Suzannah,
I love to write. I am not the best verbal communicator – far from it – but when I write, I feel organized and in control. I love having story ideas swimming around in my head, and I love the challenge of finding the right words to share those ideas with others.
I write for children. Books helped me so much while growing up. It feels right to try to give back.
My writing means a lot to me. Getting published says that maybe my writing can mean something to others, too.
The best advice I’ve received on how to get published is to read, write, and learn. Like just about anything, you can only get better at your activity with practice — so you need to write. Reading published books will help you learn what kinds of stories get published. You can be a good writer, but not all good writing will be published at all times. You need to learn about the business, too, if you want to be a part of it.
Congratulations, Amy! I hope you get a lot of new knowledge from this resource.
I’ll send you your eBook shortly.
If you’d like to preview or purchase a copy of The Complete Guide to Hiring a Literary Agent, you can do so here.
Have a great weekend, everyone.
Congrats, Amy! 🙂
.-= Read Lydia Sharp´s last article ..52 Qualities of the Prosperous Writer: Number Six, Passion =-.
I’d like to wholeheartedly agree with the “best advice” offered above, with one addtion and a suggested reordering of the three words “read, write, learn.” I humbly submit that an even more powerful application of this advice looks like this: “read, learn, write, repeat.” We need to keep this cycle of learning going — too many writers read a piece of instruction and then just start writing, without an understanding of how it is applied in practice (which comes from reading the work of others)… other writers read a novel and think it looks easy, and they, too, just start writing, without a good understanding of what they’ve just read at a design level… others read writing books almost exclusively and attend every workshop they can find, all without doing hardly any writing of their own.
This model — read, learn, write, repeat — is the best approach to keeping your learning steep. It is the magic that arises when you apply what you’ve learned not only to your own writing, but to your critical analysis (deconstruction) of what you read. When you do that consistently, it becomes the essence of yourlearning curve. We need to become story engineers — which implies not only the study of theory, but the study of real world examples — before we can become effective writers of fiction. Only then can we become true artists.
.-= Read Larry´s last article ..Deconstructing Avatar – The Second Half of Act II =-.
Thanks for this observation, Larry. What you say makes perfect sense–that we must continue this cycle, well, basically forever. To keep growing, we must continue to read, learn, and write. Thanks!
Congrats Amy.
.-= Read Southpaw´s last article ..Bleeding Heart for Valentine’s Day =-.
Thanks, Lydia & Holly. And thanks again for the book, Suzannah.
And I really like that — Read – Learn – Write – Repeat. Each part is so critical to the whole process of growing. We may modify some of the pieces as we grow, investing more time in certain parts than others, and then rebalancing later. And of course we all have our own strengths. But if we ever get to the point where we think we can leave one of those out — well, that’s a very dangerous place to be, isn’t it??