An end to second -guessing editors

This week I've invested in the 2015 issue of Writers' and Artist's Yearbook.  This weighty tome is essential for trawling through editor and agent listings and trying to find a home for my work.  But the book is also packed with articles offering advice on the world of publishing and the struggle to get published.

One theme leapt out at me from several of the articles.  Rachel Joyce advises 'Take yourself seriously,'. Nathan Filer says 'Take responsibility for your novel. Your opinion counts.'  Neil Gaman says 'write the books you want to write'. Their words have given me a much-needed reminder that I must write what I want to write, what I believe in, and then find an editor who also believes in my vision and wants to publish it.

I've been running up against the rejection barrier again recently, and I seem to be going backwards.  I thought that maybe my feminist stories were turning off male editors, so for my last submission to one of them I switched tack.  I sent him a humorous contemporary faerie/SF mash-up.  And got back a rejection almost by return.

Considering that all the other rejections from him had some words of praise for the story in them, and  this one didn't, I'd guess my idea to stay 'safe' and not to submit controversial stories backfired rather badly.

So I've decided I've had it with second guessing editors.  I've had it with reading published stories that don't have beginnings, middles, and ends, or any narrative drive.  I've had it with studying the market and finding stories where nothing happens.

From now on, I'm writing what I care about.  There'll be no compromises.  And I'll keep throwing my stories at enough editors until I wear one down enough to publish me.  Or I find one on my wavelength who can't wait to take the work of an unknown, feminist, writer.

Wendy Metcalfe is the author of Panthera : Death Spiral and Panthera : Death Song, and the short story collection Otherlives.  Find out more at www.wendymetcalfe.com