Category Archives: The Writer’s Life

Becoming a Real Writer: Getting Published

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Step one is getting published. Technically, I guess you might argue step one is, say, learning the alphabet, but I’m assuming basic literacy and, ideally, solid spelling/grammar. Spellcheck aside, it’s worth learning the basics well enough to write a clean first draft manually. Therefore, step one is getting published, because it’s hard to judge your own work if you’re the only one reading it.

Note that by published, I mean, published by someone else. I don’t mean paid work, but I also don’t mean self-publishing on a blog. In other words, your work should be going through at least one editor who will hold you to a certain standard. Whatever your level of expertise, find a publication that you think you might be able to contribute to, and either query or just start sending in submissions, depending on their own publishing guidelines.

I started out with my university newspaper. Because writers graduate every year, typically you’ll see a general meeting which is open to everyone. Try to figure out which department or departments might be a good fit for the stuff you like to write, and start contributing. Even better, maybe your high school has a paper, but it’s likely to be published less frequently. Other options are school literary magazines, yearbook (more about photography and graphic design than writing, but still a possible in for something later), and newsletters.

If you’re not in school, start searching online. There are an amazing number of places looking for volunteer writers. Only a couple years into my school newspaper career I stumbled across an online review magazine, and sent in an audition review of a movie I had recently enjoyed. Two years of feature writing had honed my skills enough to get me on board, and they started sending me review material. Although this wasn’t a paying job, I was getting free product, which seemed pretty cool to me (school newspapers may receive freebies, too, actually).

Diversify if you can. Having a wide array of experiences makes it easier to customize your résumé to that job you really want. Any time a place you write for gives you a chance to do something you haven’t done before, breaking news coverage, writing for a different section, interviewing or profiling someone, that very piece may be the writing sample you pull up later to prove you can get a job requiring that skill.

But you can’t start building a portfolio of samples until you have someone to a) give you the assignment, and b) publish it. So get in somewhere, and write just for the fun of it.

Oh, and while you’re at your first writing job, there’s something else you should be doing: get better. Look at the writers, magazines, newpspapers, or whatever that you like, and strive to write something just as compelling. When inspiration comes, and you find you’re writing something a little over the top, just go with it, and edit afterwards.

Experiment with style, humour, and subject matter. Eventually you may write a piece and say to yourself, “Wow, that could have been published in [prestigious publicatilon]”, and it will be one of your go-to writing samples for later job applications.

Plodding Publicist

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For the second time in a few months, I’ve had the same one-sided conversation with the same publicist from the same publishing house. One of the review publications to which I contribute received a press release asking for reviews, I volunteered to take a look, he proceeded to ignore the e-mail from my editor, the e-mail from me with my mailing address, the follow-up e-mail asking if he was still planning on sending it.

In both cases, the books are niche titles, an odd little non-fiction, and a translation from a foreign author that is not known here. These are the kinds of books that struggle to get enough exposure, and being one of eclectic interests, I try to do my part. Both times, the same series of e-mails from me to him. And never a response. Not one.

Now you know why you’ve never heard of these books. What a slacker.

Time For a Fresh Look at Assessment?

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The latest issue of Canadian Teacher Magazine is hitting teachers’ lounges everywhere, and it may be early enough in the school year that some of those educators still have the time and energy in their day to read my article.

I haven’t even gone through it myself to see if there have been unexpected changes. This is my first time appearing in a national circulation magazine, specialized though it is, and right now I’m just basking.

This article was the culmination of some very basic questions that had been bouncing around in my head for awhile. It was also really nice to get back into feature writing — that special combination of essay- and editorial-writing I used to do all the time but have let lapse for the arts and culture scene.

Becoming a Real Writer: What’s a Real Writer?

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Even defining oneself as a real writer is a tricky proposition. Are we talking professional versus amateur? Well, by the strictest definition, professional writers don’t exist, as writing doesn’t fall under the definition of a professional career (i.e., a certain set of formal training requirements, a professional association which is in charge of accreditation/licensing, as well as disciplining its members if they break their professional code, as with architects, lawyers, physicians, etc.). Sure, there are journalism degree programs, writing workshops, but these are, to varying degrees, optional.

What about money? If you get paid you’re a real writer, right? I once received a cheque, very early in my part-time writing, for under $5.00 for a story I had written. Was I a pro from that point forward? SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) has specific guidelines before they’ll recognize you as a pro SF writer, which includes selling a certain number of stories to markets they categorize as professional, all of which pay more than $5.00 per story. So, according to them at least, no.

What if you quit your day job and make enough money to live on just from your writing? Well, that certainly seems reasonable, at least on the face of it. It’s not about getting paid, but getting paid enough, and getting paid consistently that matters. It’s the only way you’ll be able to do it as a living, after all. But if you’re living in your parent’s basement and not paying rent, then getting enough money to buy frozen burritos and slurpees may not be the same as being a real writer.

Having said that, though, plenty of great writers don’t get to ever quit their day jobs. Lots of the magazine articles you read come from freelancers, who may not make enough sales to quit their bartending job. This has been particularly true in the last five years or so where staff jobs are harder to find, and many newspapers and magazines are cutting back or shutting down. On the fiction front, even novelist Steven Gould started writing full-time only very recently, 20 years and half a dozen published books in. What did it for him? His first novel, Jumper, being turned into a movie. But I considered him a real writer long before that.

So, I’m inclined to say you’re a real writer if you write, and people read what you write. Maybe you’re a part-time writer, maybe you’re a writer with a day job, but if that disbars you from being a “real” writer, then there are actually far fewer real writers than most people realize.

Reviewer Cred

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I’ve made somewhat of a surprisingly realization recently. I don’t need to pay for books anymore. It turns out that if I ask, publishers will pretty much give me what I want for free. I found this out a few months ago when the publicist for a book I was looking forward to passed over all the outlets I normally review for. I decided to take a shot at simply contacting the publicist and asking if I could have a review copy, providing links to a couple recent books I’d reviewed for that publisher, and basically saying I could publish the review wherever they wanted.

I wasn’t sure I had the reviewer cred to pull it off, but the book arrived shortly and, emboldened by my success, I went down my Amazon wish list and started grabbing publisher imprints and sending e-mails. So far no one’s turned me down. In some cases there was no e-mail response, but the book and press kit still arrived promptly. I’ll still buy books — I read as much stuff from decades or centuries ago as recent releases, and that’s what used bookstores are for, after all — but for those brand new titles that still have publicists working them, I’ll hit them up for a copy.

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Although my first foray into writing for an audience was in my student days, for my university newspaper, I’ve been reviewing books for various online magazines nearly as long as I’ve been writing news articles. And I still enjoy getting advanced reading copies of work I’ve been looking forward to. I thought it was a pretty sweet deal as a student still in my teens, and it still seems like a good deal to me today.

I know that technically I could save the two hours I typically spend on a review for paid writing work instead, and then buy the books I want with money left over, but you have to break it up. Some of my paying gigs are of a technical and very constrained nature, utilizing my scientific background and following very specific style guidelines, and it can get tedious. I need to always remember that I enjoy writing, and a good way to do that is to write things that I want to write, not just what I’m being paid to write. This blog should also ideally fall into that category.

And there is a balance. I prefer a certain degree of scheduling tension, which forces me to do this “for the love” writing within a reasonable time-frame, and on a regular basis, and that’s why I commit to a schedule for my unpaid writing just as I do with my paid writing. Agreeing to review something is a perfect example of writing for the joy of it, but still being committed to a reasonable turnaround time. Of course, there is a little more leeway in my schedule than with my paid work.