ayanna behin LITERARY

In the academic world, there is a saying “publish or perish”. Simply put, this means that if you want to stay relevant and keep your college or university job, you need to make sure that you publish articles, essays, or books regularly. This saying is no less true for novelists. When you read about any successful novelist their narratives are filled with stories about mass mailings, rejection letters from magazine publishers, and the handful of letters that inspired them to keep writing or challenged them to sharpen their literary skills.

While many of the traditional magazines have eliminated the essay or short-story elements of their products, new venues have opened up online and in print. Find them. Becoming a part of the publishing process at this level helps you to hone your writing skills and move from amateur to professional writer. If you want to make writing a career, then you must take yourself and your work seriously. Put yourself out there and take your lumps and your praise with a grain of salt. Use these experiences to grow as a professional and to learn more about this business you would like to be a part of. Being published also helps agents market your work and has the potential to impact your financial bottom line. Perhaps you will get paid for your essays or stories in the short term, make connections that can last throughout your career, and encourage publishing houses to take you more seriously.

This has the potential to be a tremendous training and confidence-building exercise. Don’t miss it.

Last month, one of the authors I worked with asked me if he should start a blog and it took me a couple of days to get back to him with an answer.  In the past, this had been an easy question for me to answer.  I advised all of my authors to start a blog if they hadn’t already started one.  My thinking was that a blog was a great way to keep writing and to develop an audience.  With a blog, writers can find their audience and exercise their unique writing style and voice. But for this particular author, who writes for a middle grade audience, I wasn’t sure if his audience would read his blog and if he wasn’t developing an audience, why should he blog?
I asked myself the same question when I decided to write a blog.  What was it that I had to say?  Would my blog be useful or just another voice added to the infinite noise in the atmosphere?  Ultimately, my answer for myself was the same answer that I gave to this particular author.  Think about what you want to say, reflect on whether or not your advice and your thoughts will be helpful and try it.
For myself, I have committed to writing entries that I hope will inform writers and help them reach an audience with their work.  I may not blog as often as I would like, but hopefully, when I do blog what I say will make a difference.
For the authors that I work with, I notice that each of their blogs is incredibly powerful and unique.  They ponder the world in such a way that you are moved to see it differently yourself.  Marked with humor, profundity, or common sense, their observations are often insightful and always worth reading.  For an author, there is nothing more important than sharing your writing with readers and blogs are a great way to do it.
Read blogs and see what different ways there are to create them.  Do some research to find out how to attract readers to your blog and find out how your blog can be a part of a larger effort to reach out.  Use your blog to find out what your audience is thinking about and what they think of your work.
If you can use www.behinliterary.com to link to the blogs on this website, do it, you will be in for a treat.
Good luck!
Sincerely, Ayanna

Don’t be afraid to show your work to people

You will notice that in most published books, authors thank a group of people (small or large) who read their books before they were published. This is because writing is a collaborative endeavor between writers and their audience. You cannot write in a vacuum. Not if you want your books to be read.

Pick your early readers wisely. Not everyone has the capacity to give you the kind of feedback that you need at each stage of this process. Some people can give you editorial feedback – they ask questions about why a character acts a certain way, they notice inconsistencies, they catch typos and grammatical errors that you might have missed. This kind of feedback is incredibly helpful. Sometimes this kind of input helps tighten and strengthen a manuscript because you incorporate the comments directly into the book. Other times, it is helpful because in explaining and defending a choice that you’ve made, prepares you for answering questions about that choice to your future publishers. These are the readers that you want to approach after your first draft is finished or when you are stuck at a plot point. They can also help you articulate who your audience is, because you’ll be able to see which readers are drawn to your project and which readers aren’t

Other readers will only praise your work, and can’t give any constructive criticism. You want to use these readers as well. After you’ve made your final edits, approach these people and ask them to read your manuscript. Even if they only give you positive feedback, that feedback will help sustain you and propel you forward in the face of other criticism that every writer faces.

Don’t give up. If you approach all of your friends, family, and colleagues, not all of them will have the time or the inclination to read your drafts. That’s OK. You don’t need everyone to read it, but you do need to have feedback from actual readers.

Before you approach a publisher, you will need to have some quotes from people who have read the book and liked it. You don’t want to wait to get that feedback until the moment you are ready to submit your manuscript to them. This is because it can sometimes take months for a friend, family member or colleague to take the time to read it. So, make sure you start now.

Good luck!
Ayanna

Welcome to Behin Literary!

Hello! I am excited to launch my renovated website. I am committed to making the site a tool for writers in their quest for reaching readers everywhere. I may not post weekly (although that is certainly my goal). But, what I do post on this blog will be whatever professional advice and tips I think will move writers towards reaching their professional goals.

Thank you for reading,
Ayanna