Hi! I’m Alyson. I’m new here.
When I say “new,” I mean that I’m new to this mythical place of “Being Published,” not new to writing things. I’ll tell you how I got in, though, if you want.
I have always been an avid reader. In preschool, I firmly requested that my teacher give me the power to read. When she tried to explain that, no, reading didn’t come until the following year in kindergarten, I put up quite a fight.
Finally, she caved. Soon I was reading everything I could get my hands on, and by the time I hit kindergarten, my ‘outside’ reading selections included E.B. White’s “Stuart Little” and “Charlotte’s Web” as well as the usual Dr. Seuss fare for our age group.
My kindergarten teacher was surprised, but lenient at first. It was not until I was in the midst of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” that she made a move. She sent me home that day with a note which said that while I was clearly very eager to advance my literary education, my selections were “becoming increasingly demoralizing to the other children” who were reading at ‘normal’ kindergarten levels. I stopped bringing my ‘big’ books to class, but I kept reading them at home.
At least, that’s how my mother tells it.
Also when I was in this formative and youthful stage, my grandmother gave me a journal and urged me to write. Whatever I wrote didn’t have to be ‘good,’ she said, it didn’t even have to be about anything in particular.
But if I wrote something every day, I would have a lifelong outlet for creativity and emotions. I could journal true things or fictitious ones, and I could write prose or poetry. As long as I allowed myself to write, it would be a habit to carry me through the rest of my life and be a source of comfort as well as a skill to hone.
So I started writing every day (or nearly every day) and she was right. The habit of journaling carried me through the emotional turmoil of middle and high school, and the freedom of fiction gave me things to strive for in my own future.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m determined. I knew that I was missing out on something big, so I demanded to be taught to read. When my grandmother explained the benefits of keeping a journal, I saw beyond that and into the potentiality of not only reading great stories, but someday writing them myself.
That seed of determination, once planted, grew to become a mighty tree within me that has become a source of great strength and support for me. It is, quite honestly, one of the primary foundations of who I am.
As of right now, I am now twenty-five years old. I did not go to school for creative writing. I didn’t even have an English minor; I hold a BA in Theatre with a minor in History from Loyola University of Chicago. I have participated in National Novel Writing Month four times (three “wins” included).
Even though my education and my interests have taken me to new paths, there has never been any doubt in my mind that I would continue writing, and so I have.
Every time I have ever been in a situation to ask advice of a “real” writer, or read an interview where someone else asked it, the answer has been pretty much the same across the board: if you want to write, write, and do it every day. Even when you think you don’t have time . . . you really do.
To take an example from my friend Rebecca Enzor, use a sticky note. If you think you don’t have time to Write Every Day, try to fill one sticky note every day, whether it’s with actual prose or just planning or word vomit of ideas. All of that still counts.
Prior to my first publication of a short story, my attitude was simple: there was just no room in my head for doubt or self-deprecation. I wanted to tell stories, and come hell or highwater, I would do it somehow.
Take Jo March in “Little Women.” Jo is full of stories to tell, so she tells them. When people reject her work, she is concerned but not utterly discouraged. She fights back and keeps trying. She doesn’t question the one thing she knows to be true about herself: that she is meant to write.
Hello, GPOY.
This is all a roundabout way for me to say that I don’t have a method or a trick or a leg up on getting published. I knew what I wanted and I made myself open to the opportunity to receive it by learning, developing, practicing, and not giving myself the option to stop trying.
I got hooked into social media and read as many blogs and magazines about Being A Writer as I could. I talked to people who had been published long ago and I talked to people who were new to it. I read what was new and popular, I read what I liked, and I read what I didn’t like (every now and then). I found out what agents were shopping for, and what they weren’t.
I plugged myself into the Internet and let the information stream wash over me. I found calls for submissions that struck my fancy (and a few that didn’t) and submitted . . . to all of them.
I allowed myself to fail. I gave myself permission to suck and be a mess. As my family at the Bristol Renaissance Faire say: allow yourself to fail, and fail beautifully.
Failing beautifully is a massive part of any creative process. If your writing is being rejected time after time, don’t stop because you ‘aren’t good’ at writing. Take it and move forward, and find out what you have to do to grow and be better. Failing isn’t an option, it’s a necessity.
So that’s how I got in, over the last year. I have just never stopped writing. And I probably never will, to be honest. I like it too much. I even enjoyed the editing process—although maybe that’s just because XP has a stellar team that communicates incredibly well.
Sure, this is only my first time around the block, and it was only a novella, but it’s a start. A real start. And I have a lot of work ahead of me. Delicious, delicious work, and failures galore.
That’s how I got in. It might be how you will, too.
Alyson Grauer’s not-so-short story, “Lavenza, or the Modern Galatea,” was released as the cap stone of Mechanized Masterpieces: A Steampunk Anthology in April, 2013. “Lavenza” has received rave reviews.
Amongst her many talents, Alyson performs live theater and plays the ukulele. You can listen to a recording of her “Ballad to Mary Shelley” here.
