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About not getting paid...
Monday, April 14, 2003I posted this to a discussion on the Write List about whther or not to submit to places that don't pay. Now, usually I don't cross-post, but I thought, foir once in my life, I might have sort of made sense. So here's what I said. Not getting paid for your work is terrible. I could say worse, but I want to keep my email pg. BUT as a person who has recived tons of rejections with hand written messages saying things like, "I really loved your story", or, "Excellent work, but we can't use it right now." I can tell you that getting published for money without credits is very, very, very hard. Now someof you may be thinking, as I did, "Well, I *really* beleive in my work...maybe I'll luck out." And yeah, you might. But I was getting *nowhere*...so I did some "volunteer" work...which I still do...and it's given me payment of another kind. exposure. Recognition. Clips to show to people. A combination of luck and clips scored me a couple article writing jobs at Harper Collins. It's also scored me editing jobs, oddly enough. If someone sees that someone else is willing to take a chance on you, they might, too. At least it's more likely. So, what do I think you should do? Well, try what ever. Try everything. I'm now re-starting to submit my short stories to magazines that pay like, two bucks and a contributer's copy, because I've discovered that SF&F isn't going to take me uinless I can prove I'm known enough. I say this because I won't admit that it may because I'm not specail enough. But that's wandering away from the point. Accept that you may have to send your things to places that don't give you money. It's better to get it read and build up wards in your career than to have nothing. Just make sure, when you choose, that the place you send to will give you *something*...even if it's only a clip from a place that more than five people have heard of. Permalink Cindy scribed this at 4:07 PM 0 comments |