To Publish Or Not To Publish
This post is about a dilemma. A writing dilemma we all face at one time or another, if we’re wanting to be published. Do we save our best work for competitions? Or just get it published?
Here’s the scenario: you write a short story that is quite good, you wonder whether you’re going to write anything as this again for some time. Then somebody offers to publish it on a non-profit, little known website, but you wonder whether or not you should hang onto it and try to win some competition somewhere or another. Would it be futile to hold out? Or is it a matter of the more the better when it comes to publishing?
I voted for “the more the better,” and agreed to have my personal favourite short story “falling” be published in my university’s creative writing journal Sitelines. This is a site where only Curtin students and alumni can submit. However, many great up-and-coming WA authors have been involved in it, and it is currently being edited by 2005’s Vogel Winner Julienne van Loon. This is flattering in itself, to be asked personally by Julienne van Loon to submit. So I figured it was best to have my story out there and published rather than sitting on my hard drive, not doing anything much at all. And I’m sure I’ll write another good story again one day.
My buddy, on the other hand, chose to hold onto her story. She is hoping to do something a little bigger with it, since she’s not a prolific writer and is more interested in editing than creative writing. So she strongly believes that she might not write anything this good again (which is not true, because she’s extremely talented and brilliantly funny, so she just has to make sure she still makes time to write once she’s a big name editor!).
So now we’re having an msn discussion of the conundrum, and I figured the best thing to do was to turn to my friends on the web and ask:
What’s the best thing to do? Be published the first chance you get, or keep sending out till you get the best offer possible?