Writing Advice

I have written stories and poetry for many years and as usual I have had glowing feed back from friends and family. But that is what you would expect though isn’t it. Writing stories and poetry seems to have to pass through several stages to become a “Real story” or “Real poetry”.

Before we get to the bit of advice I want to give to you. Please just take a little of your time to have a read of two of my poems from my poetry book, Landscapes and Wordscapes, printed by blurb.com.

I was pleased by the end result of my book; I hope you will be as well. If you go to the link at the bottom of the page you will be able to have a look at more of the poems that are in my book and you will also see how the book layout looks. In my book I suggest that you look at the pictures that are there to enhance the pleasure of reading each poem and to cleanse your mind from the words of the last poem. So I have added two pictures here so you can test out the theory for your self.

That one teardrop in my eye,

holds back the flood of emotion.

When I think of times gone by,

words thought but never spoken.

The things I would never try,

never bringing them to completion.

Lost chances to say sorry,

are the scourge of my condition.

That one teardrop in my eye,

signals the end of hesitation.

******

The gaping heart of my soul,

is bleeding love.

What was once keeping me whole,

is draining all what was good.

I shake my head in disbelief,

as my life fades away.

Soon my soul will be empty,

my love has passed away.

I know in my broken heart,

soon you will be mine.

Time will heal my gaping heart,

I will be fine.

****

Now for a few words about “a writers journey" as experienced by myself. I have not included any names of publishers or links to other sites. They will be different for each of you. It is but a small matter of Google searching for your local sites.

Stage 1 - Let all your friends read your poetry and get their feed back, all good I am sure.

Stage 2 – The stage where you bite the bullet and ask someone outside your immediate circle of friends. This could be the local English teacher at a near by school or collage. You hope that you will get a good response from them but rarely do. If you have a reading circle at the local library it is also a good place to try out your new anthology of verse on them as they are usually a benevolent bunch of good people who won’t like to hurt your feelings any less than your friends do.

Stage 3 – This is the one.

In this section lies the "Holy Grail” of writing, getting published. There are many ways to achieve this and thank god there is. Don't discount "vanity press" just because you have been told they are a rip off. You will read that in the press all the time. This is usually followed by call for you to try another company of publishers who when you look into it are just as shady as the vanity press but more subtle at relieving you of your money. I have used the vanity press to have the pleasure of seeing one of my poems in print. And I was well pleased by the the result. At the company that I used they even went to the trouble of printing my poem on the first page (And everybody else’s I’m sure), how cool is that. So If you want to get being published out of your system, then go for it. The cost to me was £25, for that I got a lovely keepsake. The only draw back is the repercussions of the dreaded emails that try to get you to believe that you are the next poet lauriate. But all you have to do is ignore them, they will eventually go away.

Then of course you will have a multitude of print on demand companies who will for a charge print you a single copy of your masterpiece, or as many as you may need. The only draw back of these companies is they will print your book exactly as you have written it. That means all the spelling errors or formatting mistakes will be there for everyone to scrutinise and let you know about it. So take extra care and go over your document with a fine tooth comb before you commit it to print.

Finally in this section you have the real deal, get published by a real publisher. At this present time I have not reached a point where I could send in a manuscript for publishing. The best thing to do is have a look on the internet at some publishers, see what they offer in the way of information but be aware do not give them your email address or phone number unless you are sure about it. Some tend to pester you all the time as to if you are ready to publish your book yet. I used Google to search to look at the options available to me, just type in “book publishers” and add a location in your search so that you get relatively close hits to your locality.

Best of luck on your writing journey and I hope I have given you some food for thought