Get Your Work Out – Where?

If you are writing for an audience, or ever hope to – unless you are going to keep your writing to yourself forever – at some point you have to get your work in front of people. Does that mean only the lofty goal of finishing a novel and sending it to an agent or editor?

Not necessarily.

Your stress over this should decrease when you remember you are in charge. You are the writer and you get to decide who sees your work. So where do you want to start? Arguably, the easiest place to start is with a trusted friend. This person is someone who has already shown an interest in your interests. If you’re writing fantasy, this person likes fantasy and has wanted to read your work. If you write romance, this person reads romance and has wanted to read your work. See the theme? They already like you and your genre. This is someone you think you can trust with balancing how much they love your work (every writer needs a few of those people) with ideas or thoughts on improvements.

As you get comfortable sharing with one person, you’ll want to branch out. Look for a writing class (an adult education class or something at a library will probably be the least expensive) or a critique group or writing group. The idea here is that you will be presenting your work to the group for feedback. A critique group or a workshop will often be led by someone (or a few someones) who are far enough along in the process to be helpful to you. A group that feels like the blind leading the blind may not be what you’re looking for. (On the other hand, people in that group will eventually learn to see and they can help each other learn together.)

Along the same lines, joining a larger organization (Romance Writers of America, Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, etc.) and/or going to a writers conference can often be a big help. You meet more like-minded people. You have greater access to learning and to avenues for feedback. You may get to hear speakers who can help direct your writing. You can also take online classes, some of which give feedback on student work. (You generally don’t have to be a member of a group to take a writing class. Most online writing classes charge members a lower rate, but open the class to anyone.) Or, like me, you may decide to get quite formal with your educational process and enroll in a degree program in creative writing.

Most of these choices do not involve very much of the dreaded R word – rejection. Work through some or all of these options to improve your writing before you send it out. There’s a good chance that work will improve your odds of selling your work.

This year, I sent out a proposal to teach a workshop on Routines for Writers to the Romance Writers of Australia for their national conference. I received a very nice rejection email saying they had more proposals for good workshops than they were able to use. (As is usually the case with rejections, it’s hard to say if that means mine was otherwise good enough. But there were more workshops proposed that the conference committee deemed better than mine, so I am looking for ways to improve it for next time.)

I also sent a short article to Writer’s Digest magazine early this year. I haven’t heard back from them yet, but I’m determined to react maturely – a quick scream if I get a yes, a quick swiping at wet eyes if I get a no.  {grin}  In any case, I plan on sending more work out this year. No matter how difficult it is to – and this is the big one for me – decide if it’s good enough yet to be published.

I’ve reached a place in my writing where the only step forward is to get my work out there. See what happens. See what is said by whom. What sells? What doesn’t? Is it the writing, or is it less-than-perfect choices in who I’m sending the work to?

What stage are you in? Are you still trying to get up the courage to let someone read your work? Or are you sending it out to potential buyers? You certainly don’t have to send your work out. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. Unless you want people to read it. Even then, perhaps you’d be happy to have a blog that your friends and family read. Or to write stories for the children in your life. I’ve done both of those things, and I got a lot of satisfaction from them. But if you’re like me, and you want to be published – for the sake of being published or because you want to influence the world for the better – you need to start thinking about your strategy.

Do you have one?