We all have that thing we’re geared towards or working towards. For some it’s a promotion, for some it’s a kid’s independence, for me it’s publishing. The journey started for me when I decided I wanted to be a freelance writer. Or really wanted to be is stretching the truth, it was more like I couldn’t come up with any other career that I would flourish in. Thus, my entry into the publishing world. Publishing is a little like sitting with your mother-in-law, in the sense that you are scanned or put under a microscope to find faults. If you’ve never tried to publish something, I can only tell you that the process can be very grueling, depending on the editor you’re working with. I currently have six pieces published and each one of which underwent a different level of dissection in order to be made ready for the world. I once had a writing professor who stressed to me the importance of remaining true to your piece in the editing process. He underlined to me how editors can sometimes pick apart your work, wanting to put their mark on it and accordingly completely diluting your message. I would like to say that I kept his words to heart, but really my relationship with the publishing world is like a needy girlfriend. I want all of it, all of the time. But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. If you’re new to publishing or just curious what the publishing world looks like I would like you to know that it’s as diverse as the population of New York. There are good editors, there are great editors, there are people who shouldn’t be allowed within a ten-foot radius of your creative piece. Editing is a weird process whereby your finished piece gets looked over to create something new that is fitting for the particular audience you are now writing at. Every journal or magazine has a customer, and it’s up to you – the writer— to find the right angle to get to that customer. Personally, I don’t follow this rule much. When I write I write for myself, and I imagine nobody reading it so I can be as honest as I want to be. For me writing is truth and there is no point to it if I can’t edit in a way that speaks from the soul. I recently wrote a piece about shopping and envy. In it I attempted to capture the rare instance of wanting to trade places with someone that arises when you have shopping envy. I imagined that the piece would go over with flying colours, as it combined the frivolous and the real, and yet it didn’t get picked up. If you’re already in the publishing process, you know that that is a hazard of the profession. Finding the right place to be heard is a luxury, not a given, and so you have to be patient and try again and again. My personal take on publishing is to just throw everything at the editor. Take out all the stops and just try and woo them with the depth of my prose. My last foray into publishing consisted of writing and editing three tell-all pieces that I just mass sent out in order to get any bites. It worked, to some extent, but left me feeling a little like a corporate product due to the strategy I had adopted. If you are new to publishing, I advise you to start with yourself. Ask yourself what your mission is and what you are trying to achieve. It’s easy to get swept up in someone else’s vision of what the world looks like, so it’s important to know from the beginning what your red lines are. What are the parts you’re not willing to cross out for anyone? After that it’s important to be flexible. You have to have faith that the editor knows what he/she is doing and adapt to the changes being suggested. In one of my poems that I recently published I was asked to take out a word that completely changed the reading of the piece I had submitted. I struggled hard but eventually went with the editor’s suggestion. Now it reads stronger and more mysterious, a feat I couldn’t have arrived at by myself.

If you’re new to publishing I would like to stress the importance of research. As writers we often think that just getting published anywhere is a feat, but really you want to reach the audience that is right for your particular style. Hence, research. In order to get published you need to know who exactly you’re talking to and what exactly you’d like to say to them. I will once again profess that I suck hard at the researching part of publishing. If I find anyone that is looking for some freelance pieces, I immediately jump on them, regardless of what they’re offering. This is a mistake and one I’m still trying to teach myself not to make.

Finally, I would advise to go into it with some heart, but not your whole heart. Publishing requires tough skin, so it’s important to know that it’s not personal. Your editor will say things you don’t like and will ask you hard questions about what you’re trying to achieve. Be honest, but not stupidly so. I don’t know what else to tell you about the publishing world. I guess the best advice I could give is to just give it a shot. You have nothing to lose.

Dedicatedly yours,

Girl With One Earring

A note about the featured image: Obviously, I have not yet written a book and so am definitely not standing next to my own work in this book store. However, a writer I really admire advised aspiring writers to picture where exactly their books would go in a book shop, down to their alphabetical placement between authors. This was one of the first book stores where I found the category I would like to belong to marked so clearly: essay, memoir, creative non-fiction. So while I’m definitely not there yet, look out for me in 6-10 years or so 😉