A Writer On Writing: Easy Reads – D.C. Thomson
"If you’ve got something languishing in a bottom drawer – why not get it out and search for a market? If you don’t submit then you’ll never get published. But if you do submit…who knows what might happen!'' writes Sally Jenkins.
Many moons ago I started writing a My Weekly Pocket Novel. At that time they were 30,000 words and I thought that was an achievable target. When I was part way through, the required word count went up to 50,000 – so I adjusted my plot and carried on. I reached 50,000 words and the end of my story. Then I lost confidence in what I’d written and decided it was so bad that I couldn’t possibly send it out.
So it sat gathering virtual dust on my hard drive.
Then the news came from Maggie Seed that My Weekly Pocket Novels were being replaced by the new Easy Reads imprint and she needed manuscripts. I decided it was now or never. So I wrote a synopsis and polished up my first 3 chapters and, with nothing to lose, emailed Maggie.
A week later, I nearly fell off my chair when she replied and asked to see the rest of the manuscript. Unfortunately the rest of it was still in ‘first draft’ stage. So I’m now busy editing and trying to knock it into a coherent shape.
Of course, there’s still a high probability that the whole thing will be rejected so I’m not sitting here with rosy coloured specs on planning my launch party. But it’s nice to know that the basic idea, outlined in the synopsis, was not total rubbish!
So if you’ve got something languishing in a bottom drawer – why not get it out and search for a market? If you don’t submit then you’ll never get published. But if you do submit…who knows what might happen!
For more information on Easy Reads have a look on http://www.aquickread.net/index.php
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