Here’s a positive story for you: a publisher contacted recently asking whether they could publish a story of mine as a chapter book for young readers. When they told me what story it was, I had to think pretty hard. ‘I think I sent that to you quite a while ago,’ I finally said. ‘So, can we publish it?’ Moot point, really. ‘Go ahead,’ I said. When I looked back at my records, it had been quite a while ago that I’d sent that story in – 12 years to be exact! I guess you just never know…
06/08/09: had a request from a publishing house for the whole of one of my manuscripts (after sending them the first three chapters as their website guidelines requested) so feeling pretty good about that.
26/11/09: my article about Janet Frame and her childhood town of Oamaru came out in the December issue of Good Reading.
30/11/2010: I didn’t get a May Gibbs Fellowship for 2011. Sigh.
Ha! I reckon that must be some kind of record. It shows that writers need to be patient!!!!
12 years! Have just joined PIO (used to get it years ago but dropped by the wayside)…So pleased to hear of your news, especially seeing Blake have published one of mine (Well… Aussie School Books in the aussie aussie aussie series 2. AND I have had three with sparklers for about 2 years… Looks like, with your inspiration, I should leave them there!
We live in hope…
Meryl
ps. I have a small netbook too, which goes to Sydney regularly… it also has been to Townsville, Mt Isa and will shortly go to NZ and later in the year to Perth. It’s much more convenient than my heavy old laptop… though I still like it for home. Mine has wireless, though, and I use it for email too, when I’m away.
Hope you’re loving yours.
M
pps… my blog is very neglected… and as yet I don’t have a website. M
Thanks, Meryl: great to hear from you. I’m recently back at PIO myself after a gap of many years. When I found out Blake had taken that story, my son (who is now 16) said to me, ‘Mum, you wrote that when I was into electric trains’ and he was right! I think sometimes our books are more a history of our lives than we think.
I haven’t used my netbook much yet (only for some meetings which wasn’t really what I bought it for) but am having a bit of a lull at the moment in my writing (letting things stew…). Am about to launch into a new manuscript this week and so will be carting the netbook around wherever I go in order to grab the ten minutes here, fifteen minutes there that working mums have to do. I’m never carting my old laptop around again having gone to NZ with it last year. If I was away for any length of time, I’d get wireless but I can’t see that happening in the near future.
Have fun in NZ – my favourite holiday destination.
Hi Pam,
Just wanting to know if you could send me an email about publishing children’s books.
Thanks
Nicole H