The cold hard truth: There will always be someone doing whatever you are doing for more accolades, for more money, more nimbly, more stunningly. There will always be someone whom the crowd you long to join—publishers, editors, fellow writers—embraces more than they embrace you. Unless you’re the reincarnation of Shakespeare or Jane Austen, this is the world you live in, and the internet makes it worse, because now you know about everyone else’s success. But one way you can distinguish yourself from other writers is by being easy to work with. That doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice your integrity to be published, but it does mean taking a beat to really think about edits, suggestions, helpful rejections before you object to them on principle. Maybe they will make your work better! Probably they will. It also means, perhaps, spending some time reading slush to experience the other side of the pile, or imagining what it’s like to be a busy, overwhelmed editor (all editors in all genres are busy and overwhelmed) and picturing how your e-mail will land in their inbox. It means being polite, gracious, responsive, and clear when articulating your needs so they can get met without fuss. It means boosting and supporting the publication or press which published you. Imagine your editor or copy editor or art director saying “I’d love to publish them again!” Doesn’t that sound nice?
—Sarah Seltzer, executive editor, Lilith Magazine
Photo credit: Kurt Sneddon