Today I am going to talk about writing and getting published. It is blooming spring here. My garden grows more beautiful each day, more like each passing minute. Trees are festooned with blossoms.

Recently I attended a workshop at a writer’s organization. For discretion’s sake, I won’t say where or who here. The workshop went well. However, one thing stood out to me as shocking-and unnecessary.

A person participating in the workshop mentioned, albeit innocently, that a writer starting out in her career trying to get published should hire an editor. This is false. If a hopeful writer hires an editor to clean text for the person, that writer will never gain the skills or enough of an objective perspective to their own writing. It costs a lot of money to pay an editor. A writer must learn the knack themselves. Knowing how to clean text comes with practice. Skill is developed over time. I have had more than twenty magazine articles published and more upcoming, and I have never had an editor unless it was the editor of the magazine, change the text for me. That taught me how to edit my writing. Now I know what you’re thinking, a novel is a different story, no pun intended. You still have to learn to do the editing yourself. You are the one who knows your story. I know it is hard to sit and edit. I am experiencing that as I type! Yet an editor may sense you have enough confidence in your abilities to not need to rely on an outside editor and that does matter!

One way to gain confidence is to try to write smaller pieces at first then try a novel or novella, once you feel comfortable with it. I confess that I had to relearn how to write novels when I began writing my second paranormal novel. It was years since I wrote my vampire novel. Frustrating, oh yes. I hate not knowing something. It is my peculiar human nature. I don’t regret the amount of information I gleaned in the last nine months. If I feel I absolutely can’t work on it, I try a different genre-or this post! Poems, diary entries are practice. Practice. Eventually like learning to skate or ride a bike, it becomes easier.

There seems to be a criticism or a attitude that lurks under the surface toward unpublished writers. I really hate it. Once a writer is published, that writer seems elevated to an elite pedestal and the unpublished writers’ chins are jerked upwards to honor these new gods. I don’t buy it. It’s a farce. They struggled too, and while perhaps that attitude wont’ be changing, it doesn’t have to be liked.

Do not feel awkward or bad for not having a novel published or like you have to compare to Tolstoy. I know that too is easier said than done, but try. J.K Rowling and Stephen King have their own voices, their own styles. You have your own voice, your own style. That should be something to be proud of. Keep trying. Let your words grow like the flowers in the gardens blooming everywhere. Blessings!!