Monday, March 19, 2007

Submitting my mss to a mentor.

Hi

I've not had any luck getting a publisher interested to date. I sent off a partial manuscript of my second story to two publishers late last year. A week later I attended an editing workshop and got some great feedback on my first chapter. I phone both publishers as asked them if it would be possible to pull my first submission so that I could send a new reworked one to them. Both publishers agreed. One send me a rejection within three weeks of receiving my second submission. Then surprise, surprise, I received another rejection letter from the same publisher about eight weeks later. Obviously, they didn't pull the first submission. The two letters came from different people in the same publishing house. Oh, well.
The second publisher took nearly 4 months to send me an encouraging rejection and a suggestion that I should send it to one of their new imprints after I have done another draft on my story. Hears hoping.

Currently, I have submitted my entire manuscript to a mentor. I hope this person will help me enough so that when I submit my story to the next publisher, they'll offer me a contract.

I am going to enter a  writing contest with the Australian Society of Authors. The first prize is 30 hours of mentorship and an offer to participate in panel discussions at writers festivals.
I have also entered the 2007 Woman's Weekly short story competition.

Only the published writers didn't give up. The rest decided they were hopeless or were waiting for an opinion that they valued (a publisher/agent) to tell them they were good enough by offering them a contract.
Decide for yourself that you are good enough.

Live each day in the paradise of this earth.
Smell the roses not the exhaust fumes

When you're ten foot under, then it's too late.