Writing With A Day Job

I wrote this, originally, for the SCBWI newsletter, after reading articles about how you can make the best of your working day as a writer and others about how the education industry was still pretty good (not for me, or for some others I know, not for some time now). I never got around to sending it, so decided to pop it up here instead.

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In Australia most writers have day jobs. The population is too small to buy a lot of books. The few who don’t have other jobs are usually married to someone who can support them as they work from home, at least until they earn enough to help pay the bills.

There are, of course, a few bestsellers, some more who have grants and the lucky few who are still selling education books; the market for that has slowed down here in recent years. One artist who had depended on the education industry for his bread and butter told me he was getting less and less work. I have had no luck in this area myself lately, despite having written several books for an education publisher, books that have done well. I did finally manage to score some literacy cards, after a lot of nagging, and that paid very well, but I don't think I have the energy to go back and nag again.

I work full-time as a teacher-librarian. That has some advantages, but mostly means I can forget about school visits, because I can’t get time off for visiting other schools! When my publisher invited all his authors to attend a writers’ festival at a rich private school last year, I was teaching English while everyone else got to promote and sign their books.

So how do you write let alone promote when you leave for work at 6.30 a.m. and get home at 6.30 p.m., to eat quickly and prepare classes?

If you have a car, leave it at home. Write on the train. I write late at night and listen to radio talk shows. Then I write some more on Sundays. If I’m having trouble focusing, I go out to a cafe and write there - but only on weekends and holidays. As a writer of mostly non-fiction, I can break up the work - research each individual chapter, draft, edit, then do the next one. It does, of course, take a lot longer to write a novel than if you don’t have to prepare classes and mark work. Try thinking of what’s happening with your hero when you have to mark Year 8 assignments, attend meetings and jump through hoops for the Education Department’s latest bright idea!

But I do have advantages when it comes to promotion. As a librarian and writer of genre fiction, I can get on panels at science fiction conventions, where sessions on children’s and YA fiction are the most popular. Everyone has an opinion on children’s books and would like to hear others talk about it. At last year’s World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne, where I live, I didn’t have my new novel, Wolfborn, which only came out in December, so I asked my publishers for some goodies and they came through with bookmarks, posters and sample chapters. I asked to do a reading and a signing and when everyone was in a long queue at the next signer’s table, I smiled sweetly and said to those at the end, “As long as you’re waiting, would you like a sample chapter? A signed bookmark?” Quite a few people happily came over for the freebies.

At school, I can arrange a launch for the students and call in the local press. I don’t have to get the librarian on-side - I am the librarian! The Principal loves it because the school is promoted when I do this. Before the launch, I run a themed trivia quiz - spies or crime or, in the case of my novel, werewolves and folklore. The winner gets a signed copy of the book. Some others get signed posters or bookmarks.

Because Wolfborn is a medieval paranormal novel, I had the chance to get the history teachers involved. Year 8 studies the Middle Ages. I invited the kids to check bits of the manuscript for historical accuracy (I’d done my own research, but it was a fun activity for them). Those who responded got extra credit, a certificate, a signed copy and a mention on the thank you page.

I do feel jealous when I read chirpy little articles about overcoming writers’ block and arranging your writing day; it must be so nice to be able to concentrate on the writing!

But I work with my readers. And they’re proud of me. They borrow my books - I rarely have to shelve them before the year is over - and sometimes buy them. One girl said, “I’m going to borrow it from the public library during the holidays, Miss, and I’m going to say, ‘My teacher wrote this and I am so proud!’ ”

How many people who write all day and go jogging between chapters to overcome the writers’ block can boast of that?

On Writing and Agents

I write. I haven't got one. An agent, that is. I did have one, sort of, for a short time, a nice lady in Perth, who did try, but didn't get anywhere with selling anything for me and went out of business soon after. Well, she wanted to concentrate on her own writing. among other things. I got her through an introduction from a friend who had already signed up with her.

All I wanted was to have someone to concentrate on doing the business side of things and send my stuff around so I could get on with the writing. For this, I was happy to surrender a percentage of any money they got for me.

Also, publishers even then were announcing that they would not deal with anyone who didn't have an agent. This is a lot more the case now.

Strictly speaking, as I discovered, this wasn't quite true. If they knew of you, they would at least take a look at your MS. And by the time I tried getting an agent I had already sold a couple of books. I had a manuscript for a novel that I felt passionate about. It was a YA werewolf fantasy called Bisclavret, pinched from the story by Marie De France and I still think it's good, having come back to it after years. In fact, I nearly sold it a number of times. Nearly.

But when I tried all the big names - you know, the ones people dedicate their books to, "To my wonderful agent Jane Smith, who believed in this book", etc. - the various Jane Smiths were simply not interested. I guess they were running a business and a business works best with a sure thing and a sure thing is someone who has a much bigger track record than mine. But you'd think they would have had the courtesy to reply, at least, or even look at the MS. Those who did reply said that their books were full, so sorry. One even said, "I know of you, you're a good writer, I just don't have space on my books." At least she gave me a little egoboo.

Then there was the Big Name fantasy writer who, having offered to introduce me to a certain Big Name agent who represented him, never replied to any subsequent emails I sent him about it. So I set out to find her myself.

She was Selwa Anthony, praised by so many writers. I Googled her and tried all my librarian research skills, but she was elusive. I finally managed to contact someone who did know how to get in touch with her and was told that she might at least consider me if I got a couple of referees. I did. One was my friend Natalie Prior. The other was Lucy Sussex, who had been the commissioning editor at Hodder and thought highly of my novel, though Hodder had not taken it for their own reasons, unconnected with the quality. At least Ms Anthony did take a look at the MS, though she wasn't interested. She was the only local agent who did give me a go. From overseas, there was Cherry Weiner, who did read three chapters, but said it would have to be at least 100,000 words long and a trilogy for her to be able to get anywhere with it and from what I have seen in recent years, she is right.

There was the Big Name agent who took a year to reply to my simple query, when I persisted, and then with nothing relevant to my inquiry. This was one of the Jane Smiths whom her Big Name clients so raved about in their introductions. Well, whatever her fine qualities, courtesy wasn't one of them. She couldn't just say no?

I contacted a couple in Melbourne. One said, "We're full." The other said no because while I already had a book contract and just wanted her to negotiate for me, possibly followed by other representation, she explained that it was an education contract and she wouldn't touch one of those with a ten-foot pole. At least she gave me a little free advice on the phone.


After doing the rounds for a couple of years, I simply gave up and have been doing it myself since then. It's not as hard as it seems, as long as you have already got some track record. If you haven't, agents are unlikely to take you on anyway.

Mind you, I have come across some abysmal first novels whose authors have raved about their agents, who must be pretty good to have gotten them through and they obviously had no trouble with agenting first books - but not usually by Australian writers. Maybe I should check those out, if I want an overseas agent.


I'm writing this after having seen yet another request for opinions on agents on the Pass It On e-newsletter. The last time there was such a request, I wrote a reply on why you can manage without one and it turned out the lady didn't really want opinions on the necessity of agents, she wanted an introduction to one. So I'm not going there again in Pass It On.

For anyone starting out and trying to get published, there are still publishers out there who will at least look at your manuscript as long as you send it according to their guidelines and as long as you don't mind waiting a while to hear from them. And they're not all small presses. Allen and Unwin's children's section in Australia will read your MS. So will Penguin. There are others. You need to check out their web sites.

Once you're a Big Name, perhaps the Jane Smiths will even come to you. But for the most part, you can live without them.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SLUSHPILE#2 By a grumpy Andromeda Spaceways slusher

I am still reading slush for Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (aka ASIM). I read them as a reader, not as an editor. I ask myself, “What would I want to read in a magazine?”

People are still asking me why I do it, given how many of the submissions are truly awful. And I’m still saying it’s because I’m an optimist and always hope that the next story I open is going to be wonderful. And I have still not found more than a handful of wonderful stories in all the years I have been slushing. Some are good, or very good. But very rarely do I come across one that moves me deeply, or touches me, or makes me laugh for all the right reasons.

Still, you never know - the next one, maybe...

Meanwhile, here are some things I love about slushing and far more that are pet hates. Hopefully, someone thinking of submitting may be reading this and it will perhaps give them food for thought. We do buy good or very good stories, after all; it’s too much to expect that every piece is going to be a potential Ditmar or Hugo winner. There is a blurb on the web site about “what we’re not looking for right now” but there are still people not reading it before sending us their works of genius. Maybe a surf for markets might find this.

Things I Love About Slush Reading:

1. Every now and then, there is a truly wonderful story to read (see above)

2. Sometimes there is a good or very good story and it might even be the next one you open.

3. Once in a while, a story I got in Round 1 slush (we have two rounds - the second is “refined”) wins an award and I know I chose well. Of course, I didn’t select it for the magazine, because I haven’t edited an issue yet,, unless you count #38, which I finished off, with a lot of help. But I know I helped the story get into the slushpool, where it was chosen by someone else. (The slushpool is where we keep the stories that are considered good enough to be published).

Things That Cheese Me Off When I Am Slushing:

1. Non-spec-fic stories that I just know came from some mainstream writing student who has simply fired off the piece to every single market on the list supplied by the writing class, whether it’s appropriate or not, in hopes that one of them will take it.

Come on, guys, didn’t your teachers ever tell you to check your market? I bet they did tell you how much publishers loathe multiple submissions. Okay, there are times when multi-subbing is justified. I’ve never done it myself, but I know the frustration of waiting six months and sending inquiry letters only to get the thing back squashed and not reusable, with a printed slip.

But this is not a problem with ASIM. The very most you will ever wait to hear from us is two months and that’s only if your story made it into the slushpool. Otherwise, you’ll get a reply in a matter of a few days - by email, so you don’t have to buy reply postage (and there are plenty of publishers who still want their submissions by snail mail). And you get it with helpful comments.

Of course, you know all this if you’ve bothered to check us out. Also, I repeat, we are a speculative fiction magazine. Don’t send us your mainstream fiction. We won’t buy it. And don’t multiple submit. Keep that for the markets that make you wait six months.

2. Stories that are full of mistakes in spelling, grammar and/or punctuation. I see red when I get a story that can’t even punctuate dialogue correctly. I reject them automatically, only allowing a couple of mistakes in case they’re typos. If you think I’m nitpicking, I’d like to point out that editing is not about fixing your errors, it’s about making a good story look its best. If you don’t care enough about your work to check it or have a friend check it, I don’t care enough about it to finish reading it, let alone pass it on to the next round.

3. One-joke stories that go for several thousand words. Even if it’s a shaggy dog story, you shouldn’t telegraph the fact. It should be a good story that suddenly hits you over the head with an unexpected punchline.

4. Stories that assume you know what the author is talking about, but which only make sense if you come from the same country. I’m sorry to say that the worst offenders in this category - at least in the slush I have read - are Americans. We certainly see a lot of US films and we get a lot of American fiction too, but in the end, a story that has them rolling in the aisles in New York may not make a lot of sense in Sydney or Auckland or London. There’s nothing wrong with sharing your culture with others, but remember you are writing for an international market and don’t assume we know what the joke is.

5. 20,000-word stories which should have been about a quarter the length. Sometimes a story has to be long. Most of the novellas I have slushed are just self-indulgent, written by someone who hasn’t edited. Bear in mind, too, that while we have occasionally published stories of this length, they have been brilliant. Each issue of ASIM has a fiction “budget” of 40,000 words. If your story is going to take up half of that, it has to be something about which the editor is passionate. After all, how would you like to buy a magazine which had one very long story you hated? A story that took up half the issue?

6. Cutesy themes that are the entire point of the story (see above, one-joke stories). It can be short. It can be very short - as long as the punchline suggests there is more. For example, the famous world’s-shortest SF/horror story. “The last man in the world sat alone at home. Suddenly, there was a knock on the door.” Think about it.

7. Really good stories that are let down by their endings. When a story has kept me gripped right up till the last page, then suddenly ends illogically, I say, “Huh?” Then I leave it overnight just in case, but thinking about it, I usually realise that there are other bits of illogic in the story. Before you submit, put the thing away for a few days and re-read.

You may find the same thing I would have found if I had read it, and have time to fix it before this grumpy old slusher rejects it!

Further musings on the slushpile and rejections

I'm one who has seen the slushpile from both sides - I have made a number of sales, books, short stories, articles, though I have received enough rejection slips to wallpaper the smallest room in my house, and I have also done slush reading for Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Once, I was called on to do a reader's report for a book proposal. The writer concerned was a personal friend. The publisher wanted to publish it if they could, but had problems with it. However, they wished to be fair. As it happened, I felt that there was nothing wrong with it that a bit of chopping and changing wouldn't fix, about two hours' work. I said so, the publisher agreed and the book was duly published. Just as well - I would have hated to have found it unpublishable!

As a member of the ASIM list, I have found a bunch of people who feel terribly guilty every time they have to turn down a piece and have long, long discussions about what we should and shouldn't be considering in our reading. But with about 8200 submissions over the years, we just haven't been able to take everything, not even everything publishable.

Most submitters understand this and appreciate receiving comments, even when they hurt a bit. Occasionally we get someone who is so angry that we have called their baby ugly that they complain about it on their blogs. One, recently, referred to ASIM as "an amateur" publication in Australia - sorry, semi-pro, which means that everyone gets paid for their work except us - and us as "those clowns" because his (already much-rejected) masterpiece had been rejected again and he hadn't liked the comments and - shock, horror! - had been kept waiting for a couple of months. I admit that we rarely keep anyone waiting for longer than a couple of weeks, unless they are in our "slush pool", which means they have some chance, at least, of being published. This was an unusual case, but there was good reason for the delay. In this case, my opinion is that the only amateur was the author. Such unprofessional behaviour is unlikely to get him published by one of the bigger magazines, and if he does succeeed, it will probably be once only, after which his behaviour will get the hard-working publishers offside.

My experience with rejections has been varied. In the early days, there was the printed slip. I usually get a personal response these days, though occasionally still a printed slip. Once, I even got a slip, in an envelope, from a publisher to which I had not actually submitted anything! Well, I had, a couple of years previously, but that MS had been returned and I had had a phone call from the head honcho, who explained that they didn't publish that kind of fantasy, but that she had liked it very much and did I have anything else to submit? I was very flattered! She had CALLED me! No doubt, there are some folk out there who would have been upset by it. Anyway, when I got the puzzling slip two years later, I wrote to ask what it was they were rejecting, and received no reply. To this day, I don't even know who sent it.

Once, I got a printed slip from a publisher which had published two of my books - now, that did hurt, but I am prepared to believe that there had been a mix-up somewhere along the track as I had handed the MS to the publisher in person. She must have dropped it on the slushpile, from which it was given to a reader, or lay around the office, and some publishing assistant who was new to the company sent it back without comment. In any case, I didn't take it too personally and that company has since published another of my books.

It also hurts when the MS is returned after you asked the publisher to dispose of the MS and just send you a yes or no in the supplied envelope and postage. If it's covered in coffee stains, at least they probably read it, but you can't re-submit it anyway, so why return it if they have been asked not to do so? It hurts when you do your calculations and figure out that it was sent back the day they received it. I don't try any of the tricks people do to see if something was read - publishers are on to the hairs and such. I just check the postage date.

My usual reaction to rejections is to mutter, "Stuff you!" and submit it elsewhere - immediately! That way, I can hope again.

In the end, I don't take it personally. I may not agree with their decision, but I just get on with it and I smile at the publisher if I meet her at some event, and talk about other things. (One lady felt so guilty about turning down my MS, twice, that she avoided me at such events for some time, until the company accepted my next MS, then it was all smiles ... poor woman!) You just can't afford to take it personally. If they send you comments, you have to be flattered - they liked it enough to tell you why. When the company gets several thousand MSS a year and yours is probably the latest of a huge pile that this particular editor had to look at in a few days, you just have to be pleased if they took that trouble. If you don't want to be hurt, there's no point in submitting. Self-publish or leave it in your bottom drawer.

Bjo Trimble once said you should cherish your rejection slips, because they prove you're a writer. Only writers get rejection slips. By that definition, I am many times a writer ...

By the way, on an unconnected topic, I would like to thank the person who took the trouble to say something nice about my last published story. Unable to find my e-mail address, he/she sent it to this blog as a comment. (The reviews of that story have varied between the glowing and the utterly negative ... can't please everyone, eh?)