Current Issue

"RULES ARE MADE TO"

Maybe you’re a writer who thinks that rules are made to be broken. This may be true, once you’ve tried the rule, gleaned the value it has to offer, and then decided to break it and do the writing your way. So, go ahead and break a rule or two, and good luck to you. But remember that many writers find that a few writing rules hold firm, no matter how many years a person has been writing. One of those rules is:

KEEP YOUR MANUSCRIPTS CIRCULATING

Few editors are going to buy a manuscript from your desk drawer or your steel file cabinet. They buy from their own desktops after they’ve received your manuscript through e-mail or snail mail. You’re wise enough to know that few stories sell the first time out. Yet, when you receive a rejection slip, it’s really easy to drop that rejected manuscript into your file ( if not the round file). You’ve worked days, weeks, or months, on that piece, and here some stranger has rejected it. It’s easy for you to think your writing is rotten or that you’ve failed yet again.

Remember that no two editors think alike. Writing that may not appeal to one editor may be the exact thing another editor has been looking for. Few beginning writers brag about their rejection slips. Yet all writers have heard tales from best-selling authors about the book or short story that sold on the 26^th submission and went into hardback, trade paper, large print and mass market paperback. Maybe it even hit the NY Times best seller list. It happens. It could happen to you—but only if you keep your manuscript circulating.

One way to give yourself a kick-start to get a rejected story into the mail again is to study market books carefully and make a list of possible editors who might be interested before you send the manuscript out the first time. Sometimes it even helps to address an appropriate envelope and put a stamp on it. Hold it just one little minute! If the manuscript sells the first time out, you’ve wasted that second envelope and a stamp, right? Forget that worry. It’s a chance worth taking.

If your story gets a rejection slip, shove it into that ready-to-go envelope and send it on its way again. You can cry (or swear) later. And the next envelope you receive may contain a contract or a check!

Award-winning author Dorothy Francis writes short stories and novels for children and adults from her home studios in Iowa and the Florida Keys. In 1999 “When in Rome,” won a Derringer award from Short Mystery Fiction Society. Two of her children’s novels won “Best Children’s Book of Their Year” awards from the Florida State Historical Society. Five Star Publishing will release her third adul mystery, COLD CASE KILLER, in 20007. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and Society of Children’s Writers and Illustrators.