Opinion Worth

Having written since I was a kid, I’ve met many authors, writers and journalists along the way. While we don’t all fit the stereotype of the robed, sleepless, alcoholic writer hunched over a typewriter in the attic, we do have much in common. In addition to being the winners of spelling bees and hoarders of dictionaries and other books, we love words. We love to read them, hear them, speak them and write them. We love them to a fault.
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Okay, so you’re an aspiring author or a wannabe writer and you’re staring at the blank white page, wondering what to put on it. What would be the best thing to write about? What are publishers looking for? Hmm, tough question. I know, check out a few websites. Look at the home sites of well-known Traditional Publishers and see what they’re putting out at the moment. That’s easy. Here’s a few romantic novels, some spy stories, and a quirky new translation from the Spanish. Your head’s whirling, but you sleep on it and soon come up with an idea. You commit to paper, print out your creation and pop it in the post. Astonishingly, several months later, it comes back. Unwanted. Worse, there’s a little note stuffed inside the envelope. It reads, ‘This is not what we need at present’.
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