Publishing Your Writing Online

I have to admit I'm old school when it comes to books and publishing. I love paper. I want to read from it, write on it and I want to be published on it. 

There is something most satisfying about the experience of reading a paper book, though when I was breastfeeding my youngest in the wee hours of the night I did reread the Sherlock Holmes stories on my phone as it was easier in that situation. I couldn't turn on a light, I was lying in an uncomfortable position and I didn't want to make much noise turning pages, ect. It was a stop gap and I have gone back to paper since. 

I also ideally want to see my work published on paper: in magazines, anthologies and books rather than online. While I still tend to focus on sending my work to printed magazines, I no longer avoid online journals. They have established their place in the world of publishing over the past decade and I am happy to see my work online from time to time. It's a double-edged sword; it widens the potential pool for finding a place for your poem or story but also means that you can be lost in an even bigger crowd of wanna-be-writers. 

I am not a total technophobe, sitting here writing my blog on my laptop, but I'm still wading out into these new-for-me waters. Looking at my Writing CV, I have been published on 6 online sites since 2004, four of them in the past 4 years with another one accepting 3 poems today - Writing in a Women's Voice. Thank you, Beate. Your blog is inspiring reading. 

Online magazines can come and go as fast as printed ones, but often their virtual presence exists long after the editors have downed tools which has its good and bad points: your poems are out there for everyone to see, even the ones you may have fallen out of love with. 

Publishing your work online means you have an immediate presence that prospective publishers can check up on. Getting your work into magazines and journals can be an important stepping stone to getting a book published, especially with short stories and poetry, but unless they subscribe to the magazines listed on your bio or they have somehow come across your work it's hard for editors to know if you really have the publishing record you claim.

I'm not going to go further and talk about self-publishing online here. I really don't have enough experience in the subject to offer any advice, but there are plenty of opportunities out there. Just tred cautiously, there are also a lot of scams out there.

Finding homes for your work online offers more chances to get that 'published' tick after a poem, but I still prefer to get that copy in the post and flip through to find my pages. It feels more real, I feel published, but while building up my CV, I will continue to take advantage of all opportunities to give my work a small showcase. 

Taking the Hits - Criticism

My mentoring session with WoMentoring started this week and though I knew what to expect it was always going to be an emotional journey.

The basic idea of mentoring is you work with a more established writer for a short period; getting advice on how to move your writing career forward, receiving feedback on your work and assistance in whatever areas you are struggling with. It is usually very individualised to your needs.

A big part of my requirements for my mentor was critical feedback on my writing. I have been in Finland for 7 years now and I've fallen away from the old writing groups, courses, literary circles I used to rely on to gauge responses to my writing. I still submit pieces to publishers so their yes or no responses are a rough guide, but not helpful in any real sense. 

I've submitted my work to group criticism almost from the beginning of my career. While at Uni pursuing my English degree, I joined a writing group and attended any workshops that visiting writers were offering. In Scotland, I took advantage of similar experiences: the great Scottish poet Tom Leonard ripped my poems apart back in 1992 and I still look back on it with a weird sense of pride. 

I know what to expect and how to handle it, but like I said, I'm out of practice so that first reading of my mentor's comments on my poems felt like a kick to the stomach. I did send an email afterwards explaining some missed references, but then I just left the poems alone. On paper at least, I was rolling them around in my head constantly. I was gutted, I always wish for gushing praises, but I know that's not what I really want or need. I need someone to look critically at my work and point out the weak lines, the problematic areas, the chaotic jumble of ideas in need of a focus. 

I did a free writing in a cafe while waiting for my son that evening and I did rant a bit about how she couldn't see this or understand that, but after an hour my conclusion was she couldn't see my references or understand my images because they weren’t clear enough. My writing was at fault. 

Criticism is personal, it is the critic's opinion and they are flawed and human, just like us. The critic brings their own style, interests and experiences into a poem and this colours how they respond to it and how they criticise it. And even a writer as good as Tom Leonard may have a bad opinion of a poem that does work for other people. Just because they suggest a change, it doesn't mean you have to follow those recommendations to the letter. Though Tom was right on the money with my work, I was a young, naive writer who had received nothing but praise from my University lecturers over the years and I needed to see where my work was failing. It was a brilliant wake up call, if very scary. 

Over the years I have learned to take in criticism and use it to re-examine my poems. I don't automatically change everything they point out, don't rip away all the lines they don't like or rewrite as they see fit. If I did, I wouldn't have much of the poem that was mine and I wouldn't be following my own writing instinct.

So yesterday, I re-examined my mentor's comments and went back to the poems. There were lines I agreed were forced, so they went, to some extent. Sometimes I kept part of a line as it had something needed saying, just in a different way. There were lines that were just filler, so they went. 

Two of the three poems she critiqued went back to bare bones and I'm still trying to figure out which way to go with them. I need to recapture the original spark that caused me to write them which can be difficult years after the fact. The other poem I kept most of what she didn't like because there was a major reference that wasn't clear, so I'm rebuilding, focusing on that metaphor.

Finding someone who provides good criticism of your work is hard. I tend to avoid family and good friends. They usually don't have the knowledge to respond to poetry in a helpful manner, don't want to hurt my feelings, think that praise is helpful. I go with writers whose work I admire and whose opinions I trust, writers I know who won't let their egos or professional jealousy colour their view. Writers I've worked with for years.

Praise is good when it’s deserved and specific, so you can see what is working. General praise of the ‘it’s nice, I like it’ variety doesn’t help you improve. Vague critical comments are equally unhelpful. You need to know what lines aren’t beautiful, which aren’t getting their point across, aren’t carrying their weight. Fix-its needed to be given sparingly, don’t tell a writer how to fix their poem. Point out what isn’t working for you and let them find a solution, in their voice and style, if they feel it's needed.

When I had my first collection accepted I paid a poet I knew well to review it. Her comments and criticisms pushed me in the right direction to make the collection the best I could. Positive critical feedback helps you grow as a poet, negative feedback can stunt your growth.

Writing groups are not always the best atmosphere for improvement. I have been to some where all they wanted was praise. Any comment that was critical was automatically shouted down with more praise. No one walked out wanting to improve their work. I’ve been to others where the comments were so negative and full of ‘fix-it my way’ type feedback that everyone left hating their work, they could only see the negatives. Finding a group that offers a good balance is difficult and I’ve been very lucky to work with facilitators who know how to create a good group atmosphere and with fellow writers who know how to provide helpful feedback.  

Accepting criticism of your work and using it to re-evaluate your writing is a necessary and important step to moving into the more public realm of writing and being published. Learning to deal with the fear and exposure can help strengthen your voice, so it's worth building up that slightly toughened skin. But don't be afraid to stick up for your writing, sometimes you are the expert of your own work. 

Good luck 

Publish or . . . Goals

I had two poems accepted for publication this week and I won't deny that it felt like a major accomplishment. I came back to my writing after almost a week off for the winter holiday (all the kids and other half at home, who can focus on writing) and have to admit I was dragged a bit down seeing two more rejections waiting for me. The editors who added a personal touch to my acceptance the following day were most appreciated. 

I've been sending my poems out constantly in the past 6 months or so. Almost as soon as they get rejected I'm sending them out again. Submission portals like Submittable help with this immensely. I am so glad that magazine publishers are moving away from postal submissions, especially as everything I send has to go abroad now. IRCs are an absolute pain in the proverbial. 

Electronic submissions are more likely to make their destination and are usually dealt with more quickly. You also have this permanent record of your rejections. I currently have 28 rejections and 2 acceptances in Submittable since 2015. That doesn't count the submissions I made via email or occasionally snail mail.

Although publishing has never been my major goal, I do want to get published. Ten years ago I had my poetry collection published and it was a rush to see the copy in my hands, my name of the cover. I am aiming towards that again, but I dither about how important getting published is to me.

I love getting my work accepted. Some of the joy is getting to put the little mark on my submissions file to show that the poem is no longer available to send out. To add it to my publications list, to know that someone else thinks it is a good piece of writing, but it is a fleeting excitement. Even when I get a copy of the magazine and see the poem in print, it doesn't have that same buzz. The magazine gets read, put on a shelf and forgotten. Getting a collection published or the ultimate goal for me one of my novels published, of course, is a greater prize than a magazine printing, but it's not why I suit up as often as I can.

I believe I get more enjoyment from writing and finishing a poem than from getting them published. When the writing is going well and I find a phrase that is just right, the buzz is much stronger, longer lasting than seeing my work in print. Everytime I reread what I think is a good poem or section of fiction, there is that sense of satisfaction. Of knowing that I have the ability to say what I want, to make it special. Having someone else see that beauty and talent is so reaffirming. I write even when all I see is rejections, month after month. The glimmers of hope last for a long time.

So I keep writing and I keep sending my work out for publication. I submit my novel to the occasional competition or to agents, I make up chapbooks or poetry samples for competitions, I'm finishing up a poetry collection so that can go out to publishers. 

I write to be heard, but my first audience is myself. The desire to continue writing has always been with me, it waxes and wanes with the phases of my life, but even when the literary world is saying No, I continue to push on. 

Away from the Desk

After a week of feeling like I've had no time to work due to appointments or illness, I've sat down at the computer to realise I have 3 poems hiding in the mess of scribbles I've been doing in my wee pockets of free time.

I've been taking my notebook out more and more when I have a moment and doing writing practices, just stream-of-conscious writing not part of a poem I'm working on or my novel. I start with describing interesting details about the scene around me and then just let my mind wander, follow any thought I get attached to. If I get stuck for ideas I go back to my 'I Want to Write' List or notes in my writing journal. If I have more time, I go through these practices and write out lines that work or have potential and start to expand on them.

One of the poems is connected with notes I made earlier on my third culture theme. I sifted through the lines that were good and started to shape the poem. I must have rewritten all of it or some sections up to three times in the 45 minutes I had while I waited for my son to do his guitar lesson. Typing it out today I realise this poem is pretty much done, though I will leave it for a while and then go back and tinker with it before I'd consider sending it out for publication.

The other poem about my trip to Ireland to do genealogy research is only partial but it has a direction now. Again it comes from a previous writing practice. 

The third poem is from random writing I made while sitting in a seaside cafe for an hour before a meeting at the hospital. I started with the scene but then got caught up in the conversation of two girls across the very small room. They were American and Australian, travelling the world, very loud and full of their youth. The poem is about me looking at them from a position of 'been there, done that, now older and my priorities have shifted'. It is almost done as well.

I've been struggling with lack of inspiration and material, so feel quite chuffed with myself that I've managed to get so much accomplished from a week when I thought I hadn't been able to sit down and write. 

One thing I love about my craft is that it is portable; you can sit anywhere and write. Laptops and tablets make it easy to write out and about on the computer, but I still prefer my journal and pen for practices. Less of a sense of needing to be correct, no spell checker or automatic editing, emails or alerts popping up. 

As a teacher I constantly pushed for my students to take up the habit of doing writing practices, sit still for at least 10 minutes and write about anything. These can be the fodder for future material or can just be a good way to making writing part of your life. 

I had fallen out of the practice because until this autumn I always had a child with me that needed attention. I love being able to go to cafes on my own now and just curl up, soak up the scene and write. I like a bit of activity and people around me, but not needing to be involved with it. And cake is also a good incentive. 

Museums and outdoor places are also ideal for being witness to the buzz of life but to also be able to single out any detail that takes your fancy. Find a favourite place, go to new and unusual haunts, places that clash with your style or theme. Embrace the silence or immerse yourself in chaos. 

And write. Let your mind wander and follow with your pen. Don't edit yourself if you go off topic or seem to say silly things. This is a practice, it's supposed to be rough and disorganised, it's supposed to delve and engage in fancy. 

If you get stuck, start to describe something near you or jump to a prompt like 'I remember' or 'I wish' or if your a fiction writer use your character to remember, wish or try to forget something. Use some of the conversations going on around you, pick up words from the text on the newspaper next to you. Borrow, embellish, expand, adapt. Enjoy. 

Have a good writing week. 

Rewriting and Second Drafts

In some ways I love rewriting and editing my work. With poetry I'm always tinkering, a poem for me is never done until it is published in a book. Then I don't look at it again. But as I'm trying to get it published in a magazine or anthology, I'm always changing a line here or a phrase there, sometimes overhauling the whole thing if I really feel it's not working. It’s fine work, but finite, close-up and intimate.

With fiction rewriting is hard work. I edit as my paying 'job' so I don't mind rereading things, fixing grammar and syntax, but it's a big step from writing a novel to that final editing stage. First drafts are hard work, but fun: pushing to the finish, seeing where the characters take me, the satisfaction of completing a chapter or the entire novel. 

But then it's not really done, it's tens of thousands of words that need to be re-examined, picked apart, enhanced, tightened, expanded, reworked before you can just correct grammar and tidy it up. I usually set a novel aside when I finish the first draft and then come back to it when I feel fresh. There is a sense of exhaustion and relief when you complete and the thought of going back to it to start again is something I face with dread. Until I get going.

With my second novel there was a 6-year gap between my first and second drafts. I'm not sure when I started writing it but in 2008, according to writing journals, I was working hard on it. I finished the first draft in 2010 and went back to it in 2016. Not all novels go this way, my first novel was much quicker and one continuous process with shorter gaps. 

Part of it was the unusual situation I found myself in: moving country with a young family, being heavily pregnant during the move, trying to settle into our new country and language with a newborn and a child who was struggling with previously unknown special needs. I couldn't focus on anything longer than a few lines of a poem at a time. I looked at the novel contemplating revision at least once, but couldn't summon the energy required. 

So when my youngest started nursery and I reread the novel properly for the first time in years, I realised I still loved the characters and could see the potential in the story, so I knew I was ready to start the second draft. Reworking a novel is almost as hard as writing it, especially the way I wrote this one. This novel didn't have a plot when I sat down. I had a setting, a main character with a question I needed answering and a format I wanted to work in. I wrote each chapter with no plan other than what the characters wanted to do. 

My novel has two narrative points of view from the same character, one as a teen and one as an adult and I alternate between the two. It was hard to write the adult POV as I didn't know the answer to the teen's question which was the crux of the story. I knew her choice would have repercussions on her adult life, so allowing both timelines to evolve simultaneously meant I was writing the adult sections blind for the first chunk of the novel. 

As you can imagine it didn't flow smoothly. When I started the adult narrative was going to be a minor reflection of the events of the character's past, the bulk of the action was taking place when she was a teen. But when I sat down to start to stitch them together in the rewriting stage I realised that the adult section as as important and needed a great deal of catching up, expanding and elaborating, so I've done a lot more writing with this edit. 

Rewriting also has to fill plot holes and sort what seemed like minor problems in the first draft. Yesterday I was doing some research on things I hadn't examined properly and realised that my timeframe for the teenage part of the novel doesn't work. I wanted it set in the spring and early summer, but I now realise that may not work without giving up some ideas I had. You can't change nature or deadlines and as both play important parts in the timing of the novel, I'm going to have to have a rethink about some important elements. 

Rewriting is frustrating, challenging, time consuming, enjoyable and invigorating. I work on print-outs, on the computer and in my notebook, depending on what sort of work I'm doing. My first draft was 65,000ish words, my current count is 88,000ish. I still have a lot of writing to do before I can get to the tightening stage. It's a slow intensive process, but each step reveals a lot about the story and myself as a writer.

So time to post this and get some real work done. 

Fiction and Poety

I mostly write poetry, but I have written/am writing 2 novels. I've discovered I can't write short stories. Not sure why, they just never work. I've never really tried much else except journal/diary and blog writing.

I have another novel idea percolating, but it's still nowhere solid enough for me to really start working on it, but I do write about it occasionally. I have two writing journals: one where I write whatever I'm working on and one where I write about my writing. 

This second journal is all about my novels and contains ideas, sketches of plotlines, information about characters, details about their past. I also ask questions and remind myself to expand and write about certain things. Often I just journal about what I'm currently doing. I have misplaced the one I used for my first novel and my first draft of my second and I miss it terribly. It was the chronicles of writing those first novels: raw, hopeful and frustrated. I hope it's stashed in the loft in Scotland as I hate losing writing. 

Fiction and poetry writing are very different processes for me. When I was working on the first novel I got a SAC grant to write it and it was almost like a full time job, I wrote every morning for hours, then had lunch and went to the allotment and spent a few hours there, sometimes writing if the weather was poor and then I'd come home and type up what I wrote and did some rereading and editing. Then it'd be time to make dinner. I did this for a month, I think and I really enjoyed it, but it was hard work. Editing and rewriting the first draft was even harder. I need longer blocks, much more time and commitment for fiction.

Poetry I can do in small parcels of time. I rarely sit and write a whole poem or finish one in a day or even a few days. I write a line or two here, go and edit another poem that's still in progress. I do some free writing around the subject and then pick out the good phrases that could be used as the backbone of a new poem. Poems take months, sometimes years to feel solid. And then I still reexamine and edit them a bit before I submit them for publication. 

Rewriting and editing happens as I write poetry, I'm always tinkering with lines, where I usually leave big edits in fiction until I've finished the complete project. 

Two books I'd recommend for getting started with writing is Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones and John Gardener's The Art of Fiction. They are very different in style, but both equally useful in their own way. 

Goldberg's is more to do with starting from scratch and getting into the habit of writing. It's good if you're a beginner or if you have a project you're starting. It's less about technique but more about state of mind and getting your bum of the seat. She's more 'spiritual' about writing, but is still all about doing the work.

Gardener's book is more about craft: technical and more academic. It starts with an essay and then moves to common problems and techniques. It also has a section on plotting which I found invaluable as it's not my strong point. 

You have to be wary about buying and reading books about learning to write. I don't believe anyone can teach you, but they often can give you inspiration, direction and assistance. But it's easy to spend a lot of time (and money) buying and reading these books rather than writing. 

I prefer the more practical books that have lots of exercises or writing prompts. My favourite for myself and for when I was teaching creative writing was A Writer's Book of Days by Judy Reeves. It had a hundreds of prompts that worked for poetry and fiction and could be used to just get into the habit of writing but to also work on a piece already started. 

I've actually just put it in my basket for my next book order as my copy has been in Scotland for 7 years and it has now been revised so a new copy is definitely needed to help me get back into the swing of things. 

Changes

I've decided to move this blog's focus onto my writing, so I have deleted a lot of my old posts and changed the intro. A fresh start. 

I have been trying to work all this week. I've printed out the first 100 pages of my current novel and am rereading and editing them. I've done some free writing in my journal, on subjects from my To Do List and just random writings. I've written a bit on the poems I'm working on. 

It may seem I'm all over the place, but with the limited parcels of time I have to allot for my writing, doing several projects in small time periods seems to work, though overall progress is slow going. 

I've received another rejection from a magazine this week and have been scanning sites for new magazines to submit to. I've been submitting work to UK magazines since 1996 and some magazines have rejected my work dozens of times. I have a little notebook where I tracked submissions from 1996-2009 and now I have a computer file that notes where I've submitted each poem to. 

I'm not really bothered by rejection. I worked in publishing for awhile at Chapman magazine in Edinburgh and I quickly realised that rejections were just an editor's personal opinion. Your style may just not mesh with that particular editor. I've had editors that have accepted everytime I send something and other places that have never accepted my work. I just keep sending things out, hoping to hit the right person on the right day. 

I spent a bit of time yesterday on The Poetry Kit site. I mostly use it for the Calls for Submissions, Contests and Magazine sections and for the most part it's quite good. I did realise yesterday though that the UK Magazine section is sadly out-of-date. Just clicking links in the S section more than half of the links didn't work, went to different places than they should have or the magazines have closed down. It makes the already lengthy process of finding magazines that suit your work much harder. I've emailed them about the problem and hopefully they'll work on an update soon. 

The Trish Hopkinson site I mentioned in my last blog is quite good for info about magazines with calls for submissions or info about new or interesting new presses and magazines, but she is US-based and so is most of the things she mentions. She does do lists of international magazines. If anyone knows of a similar blog, please put a link in the comments. 

Thanks.