How to Get Published

I made a new friend today named Jo Colvin. She is a witty and clever journalist at the Echo Press in Alexandria, and she interviewed me for an article on May Day to run March 10th. I hope she's good at separating the wheat from the chaff (i.e. making me sound smart). It was a good time. Jo and I decided three things:

1. It's hard to be a single woman in rural Minnesota. If a guy is upright and has pants on, he can get a date. The prospects are not so good for the single woman.

2. I look like the chick from Becker (the TV show starring sunken-eyed 1980s hunk Ted Danson). I've heard that before, and it supports my theory that we are all merely clones for famous people, who will harvest our faces and livers when they get all leathery. In an ironic twist, the famous person who will be enjoying the benefits of my spleen in 50 years was also in the movie The Island, which had a similar plot line. Doodle-eee-oooh. Who is your famous doppleganger?

3. Everyone wants to know how to get published. I actually teach an online Creative Writing course every fall at Alex Tech, so sign up to get started on being part of a writing group and to learn (and practice) the rudiments of stepping into the publishing world. It's not magic, getting published--you write the best work you can write, you get a writer's circle to give you feedback, you edit, you hire a professional editor to give you feedback, you edit, you write your query letter and edit it (making sure to use marketing language) and shop it around to agents and small publishers you find by going to Preditors and Editors, Literary Marketplace (your local library should have a subscription), the AAR, and by looking who publishes the books you like/you write like (look in the acknowledgements section of any book that is similar to your style to find out who their agent was), and then you get prepared for a lot of rejection but you never give up. Easy squeezy. For the record, I was rejected over 300 times, and look at me now? I have a thermos, a chair, and a computer. Dreams really do come true.

Hope she doesn't mind that I stretched out her future stomach.