{"id":270,"date":"2011-03-05T11:43:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-05T11:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/question-from-a-writer-3.html"},"modified":"2011-03-05T11:43:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-05T11:43:00","slug":"question-from-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/question-from-writer\/","title":{"rendered":"Question From A Writer"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Photo courtesy of Suat Eman <\/span>

<\/span>I recently received the following question:<\/p>\n

I am an African American woman and I feel, like I’m sure that you do, that I have a gift for writing. I have currently completed a work of African American Christian fiction and I don’t know what to do next. Can you give me pointers as to how I can get my work published? There is so much information on the internet that it is difficult to decipher it all.
Thank you,
Rochelle <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

First things first…where do you see your book on a bookstore shelf? Who do you envision publishing your novel? Have you researched publishers, looked up submission guidelines, etc.?<\/p>\n

I realize there is much information on the internet, but there is a quick way to decipher a lot of it if you read a lot of books. Since you’re a writer, and have recently finished a novel, then I’m assuming you read a lot of novels, too?<\/p>\n

I’ve always been a fan of romance novels, so I knew I wanted to write one. When I saw the genre of Christian fiction taking off, and then I noticed a few publishers started Christian romance lines, I knew that’s what I wanted to target. I looked up the guidelines for those publishers to see how I could properly submit my manuscript to them. Also, it helps to be around like-minded individuals. As I’ve said in previous blog posts, you’ll need to join a professional writers organization if you’re seeking commercial publication. You’ll find more information about this subject here<\/a>. Also, if you can find a local group of writers who share your focus, then that could help you, too. I’ve had mixed experiences with local groups, though. Sometimes, you might have a group of Christian writers, but their experiences and goals may vary. I used to be in a local group and I was the only one who was trying to commercially publish my novel. The others were doing poetry, articles, devotionals, and one member was writing a novel, but she gave up pursuing commercial publication after receiving only two rejections. I didn’t glean much help in this group because they didn’t know much about the fiction market – however, I enjoyed socializing with them.<\/p>\n

Also, if most people in the group want to self-publish their work, and you want to commercially publish, then you might not find the group very helpful. That’s one reason why I gleaned most of my help from RWA and ACFW – both groups focus on commercial publication and I knew that was the route I wanted to take with my writing. <\/p>\n

I hope I gave you some pointers that you’ve found helpful. Look for a community of others either online or locally and see what you find from there. It might take you awhile to find the right group though…<\/p>\n

~Cecelia Dowdy~<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo courtesy of Suat Eman I recently received the following question: I am an African American woman and I feel, like I’m sure that you do, that I have a gift for writing. I have currently completed a work of African American Christian fiction and I don’t know what to do next. Can you give […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-related-posts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paovYP-4m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}