Write. Edit. Submit. Repeat.

This became my mantra. Story after story. I never kept a writing schedule, but I’d say I put in 10-20 hours a week most weeks. I would write on the go, in a coffee shop, libraries, at my tiny desk, at work, in bed.

Over the course of two years, I wrote probably 50 stories and published 20. Each story HAD to be different in theme, main character, genre, form, style. It was as if I needed to prove I could write with variety. And it wasn’t that my prose was looking for its natural home. Sure, I’m better at some genres than others, but all that matters is that I cover more ground.

I discovered how Litmags work: They are generally run at a loss by passionate writers. Eventually, all of them fold, and you find few readers. Still, they do fantastic work giving writers a platform and helping share challenging stories.

In my experience, it’s all about fit and timing. If you want to get your story published, submit it to a magazine that perfectly matches the genre, ethos and style of your work. Most will pay a token amount (if anything). It’s also good to find magazines with editors who care about making your work better, and to find them before other authors mail in 50,000 submissions! Use platforms like Chill Subs or The Submissions Grinder to find outlets.

The other route to payment and publication as a short story writer is competitions. These are ‘pay to enter’ opportunities which are judged by industry professionals, Litmag editors and often other writers.

It’s crucial to adhere to the rules, read previous winners’ work, understand the judging criteria and who the judges are. My tip is to save stories until the PERFECT competition arrives. I’ve won a couple of competitions and been runner up or shortlisted in a dozen or so. I learnt to search for emerging competitions and not to get lured in by the big prize money opportunities. My biggest payment was 250 pounds for a competition on the theme of ‘dark-wild sea’. I already had the story written, and the judge agreed it fitted perfectly in the anthology.

Through all of my successes (and my many failures), I learned that established writers can easily judge the authority of other writers. They read your stories. They know the editors of certain magazines. They hang out in the same forums and attend the same workshops.

But newer writers and non-writers have no frame of reference other than a book. If you introduce yourself as a fiction writer but you don’t have a book, that doesn’t make a lot of sense.

And so, as my work moved towards helping English learners with their writing, I decided it was time to get some writing authority. At the end of 2018, I published my first book.

#unphiltered