Frequently Asked Questions
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Q |
Q. How do you get time to write?
A. I have a husband, two small children, and a home. However it is possible to find time if it is your passion. When I still worked fulltime in the city I found commuting time to be a real bonus but now I seize every moment in the same way. Never distain to use five minutes in a queue or while waiting on hold. Write every day, even if it is only 5 minutes and the time will come because you're making writing important in your life.
Q. How do you keep your submissions level up?
A. try to keep 10 in play. This is an idea from www.fundsforwriters, you always keep 10 stories/articles/whatever on submission. So as soon as one comes back (hopefully accepted!) you have to send a new one out or re-submit that one. It's tough but it helps focus your mind on submissions. I am aiming for 15 this year, but set a level you're comfortable with and yet contains some ambition. Then stick to it.
Q. How do you cope with rejections?
A. There's a forum called the Great Rejection Slip Contest on Holly Lisle's Forward Motion writing community. You sign up at the beginning of the year (or join in later) and for each acceptance or rejection you get points. The idea again is to get you to make lots of submissions plus you get lots of encouragement from the other writers on the forum. For me it has helped me to see rejection slips as something positive. I also maintain a a spreadsheet to track submissions so that I always send them out several times. This has turned stories which were rejected more than four times into accepted stories, often with revisions during the process. I've learnt that not all editors have the same tastes or requirements so it is worth giving stories a few chances before giving up on them, and of course sending them to appropriate markets which you have researched.
Q. Can you give details on the perfect contest to send this story/poem/etc to?
A. No, not unless you want to pay me to be your researcher. If you have a particular type of contest you'd like to see me research then e-mail me and I'll see what I can do.
Q. How much do you earn as a writer?
A. no comment.
Q. Please read my writing and tell me if you like it!
A. I suggest you join CritiqueCircle or another crit-group either online or locally. I also recommend proofreading your word in addition to using a Spellchecker tool as these let items like 'aloud' instead of 'allowed' to slip through. I think exclamation points should be avoided too (particularly double usage of them!!). Read often and read varied material and your writing will improve. Don't be afraid to revise your work, or even ditch it entirely. The more you write, the better you get. There are plenty of links to sites for writing tips and tricks and grammar in my toolkit.
Q. How can I write a good ending?
A. As for writing endings, well that seems to be a common complaint. I often find with fiction that because I know how the story ends I tend to rush the ending. I think the best cure for this is lots of practice.
Q. Writing about topics close to your heart is tough.
A. Yes it can. I once wrote a story during a writing course that I then cried over while I was reading it to the group. Now THAT was embarrassing. Sometimes time has to pass for the writer to gain perspective on sensitive topics. You should also remember two things 1) you don't HAVE to write about it if you don't want to, 2) if you do write about it, it may actually help you with the memory. Many writers would claim that their best writing comes from deeply held emotions/experiences. Perhaps you should try it but don't be too hard on yourself if it doesn't come out the way you wanted.
Q. e-mail etiquette
A. Any e-mail with an empty or strange looking subject line is liable to be deleted unread because the recipient or their spam-filtering software thinks it is the dreaded spam. You might want to be careful of that when submitting to editors. It can also pay to write e-mails (particularly to unknown editors) as if you were writing a business letter. There's nothing like a casually written e-mail with poor spelling and emoticons to create an unprofessional image despite a good the accompanying query or submission.Q. what is your story? When and why did you start
writing?
A. I must be alone in not remembering when I started writing. But I do remember when I started reading - I was always a stubborn child and thanks to an early teacher whom I disliked intensely, I simply refused to learn how to read - I ended up in the class for less-intelligent students. When I was about seven my sister gave me some Enid Blyton adverture stories and I never looked back. By the time I was eleven I was devouring Dickens (and every piece of printed material I could find). By the time I was nine I had a fully populated imaginary world of countries, politics, characters, and plots etc but I never once thought to write those down. I never noticed that I had imagination or that I was the kid who invented the games for the other kids to play. Or that I was helping my sister (who is six years older than me) with her English essays. Or that whenever anybody (adult or child) wanted to know how to spell or construct a sentence they came to check with me. I was called The Dictionary in school (and was proud of it - oh dear, I think I was an English-Nerd)
I wrote in school alright but the focus here (Ireland) is on essay writing (ie. analysis, not creative fiction) so I was about 15 before I tried a short story on my own time. We don't even really have creative fiction degree courses available either - just literature analysis courses. I had about five unfinished novels that only my best friend knew about by the time I left school at 18 and began a degree in IT (I.S. to readers in US) - I couldn't choose an arts degree because both my beloved parents believed (and still do) that to pursue the arts is to sell yourself into poverty. Well, I got my degree (and later a First in my masters - a big Ha! in the face to that former teacher of mine), worked in IT, enjoyed it most of the time (I have the kind of brain that actually needs a 50:50 mix of arts and science) until 2001 when I realised that part of me was dying because I wasn't doing anything creative. I wrote some non-fiction and got it published easily, took a two week writing class and made the entire class crack-up laughing with my fiction (which was a genuine shock to me), and revived my interest in water-colour-painting.
I haven't looked back since. I write a fair bit of non-fiction which satisfies the 'hard facts' part of me, and then do short stories for the other part, but I'm hard at work on the first novel I'm going to finish (well I'm past 20,000 words which is a lot longer than I've managed before) and a non-fiction e-book too. I've also acquired a wonderful husband en-route (another I.T. person) who understands how important writing is to me. Sadly I still haven't worked out a way to tell my parents about my passion for writing or about my publications because I think it will terrify them.
Q. Why did you start writing?
A. I honestly think I would have lost my marbles if I
hadn't
Q. Who influenced you as a writer?
A. a thousand authors of the past and present who opened up a world of wonders to my eyes once I got over my stubborn aversion to books. I now own more books than anybody else I know - and that's saying a lot.
Q. What is your motivation now?
A. Having a two year old son who constantly requests that I
read to him in the 'story-chair' and is learning words at an incredible rate. One day I'll
get to tell him - 'your Mum is a writer'. I can only hope that his younger sister Eleanor
will be just as enthusiastic about reading because I know what it has given to my life. I
know for sure that they'll be encouraged to follow whatever talents they turn out to have.
Q. How can I get started writing?
A. Personally, I wrote during my teens, ditched
it to please my parents and came back to it when I realised that I was miserable
without writing. I wrote what interested me (initially restaurant reviews). I
write a lot better now thanks to lots of ...writing. I get things published
regularly and that came from two simple things...writing and submitting. There's
no great trick to it. Write, write often, submit to anywhere you think might
take the kind of writing you do. Remember you will never meet that editor so
even if they say no, they're not rejecting you, just your words don't fit on
their pages today. If you can take the rejections which will come (and not
everybody can), you will improve with practice and start being published.
If you love writing, then why delay? I know a lot of writers who delayed until their kids grew up/left home etc. I wrote the whole way through both pregnancies and stopped for 4 weeks after each birth. Writing is the "me time" that I carve out of my day. When I worked a 40+ hour week and had one baby at home I wrote on my train commute and during lunchtimes at my desk - giving me 6 hours per week. You'd be surprised what you can achieve in that time.
There is always time to be grabbed for writing but you'll have to cut something else out - sleep / TV / housework etc - work it out to suit yourself. Don't forget that you can get writing done in ten minute slots - fillers / story ideas / editing your words / typing a submission cover letter - all those things are quick to do. Did you check my "Toolkit" page for markets and tips?
It boils down to this - if you like writing, then
why aren't you doing it?
All photography and text on these pages, except when otherwise indicated, are copyright Grace Tierney, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008