Never Give Up...

...Never Surrender!

As I’ve talked about before, when I started writing, I had a lot of rejections for the stuff I’d written for adults. Two full, awkward novels (I had no idea what I was doing), fifteen short stories, and a ton of mostly bad poetry. My first small triumphs were two short stories and one poem, all accepted for publication in literary journals…though one of those folded the month before my story was to print.

Sigh.

One of my all-time favorite movies is Galaxy Quest. It’s a sharply funny spoof of one of my all-time favorite TV shows, Star Trek. I love the internal theme of Galaxy Quest (even more than “Beam me up, Scotty”): “Never give up, never surrender.”

Whether it's overcoming aliens** or human foes or personal hurdles, it’s a great motto.

When I started writing for children, I searched for support. Education. Colleagues and publishing knowledge. I joined SCBWI*, and I went to conferences and workshops, I worked with critique partners, I studied craft books back to front, and I even went back to school for my very expensive MFA.

I amassed a boatload of rejection slips and spent a ton of money while feeling pretty much alone and pretty sad most of the time.

My Rejection Drawer

Actually, I collected a drawerful of rejection slips. I had an empty desk drawer and I made myself a promise. I would keep trying to get published until the rejection slips (they were paper back in the day) filled it so full I couldn’t close it.

I would not give up. Call me persistent. Okay, you can call me boneheaded stubborn - I won’t stop you.

I’m convinced that there is one thing more important than talent, more important than imagination, more important than connections or even than luck in getting your stories out into the world.

Persistence is the key to success in publishing. Actually, I think it’s pretty much the key to success in any endeavor, but this is the one I’m certain of. And that is more true today than ever before.

Please Do Not Give Up

I believe that if you work hard, study the craft, and make it your business to understand the business of writing and publishing, you will achieve success. I believe that if you persist you can succeed. I swear that on my growing stack of published books. Yes, I’m up to 10 and more on the way very soon.

And I’ll add to that my extreme pride in the authors I’ve helped to publication as well. Authors like Brook Merrow and Susan Greenway. And my author Mahmoud Elzein, who just received a glowing Kirkus review for the picture book I helped him revise.

And look! There are now a boatload more ways to find your successful publishing path. I highly, highly recommend that you take a look at Independent Book Publishers Association and download their free resource guide to publishing.

Get Help

Specifically for you picture book writers, I have a brand new course. Perfect Picture Books is my introductory course for picture book writers who want to dig into the nuances of picture book writing, from language to character to plot and pacing. This course is an affordable five-lesson introduction on writing picture books, with craft instruction on aspects of picture book creation including:

• Picture book narrative arc and structure

• Audience, genre, and theme

• Word use and sentence structure, including whether/when to rhyme

• Page turns and pacing

• The marriage of story and illustration

• Marketplace for picture books and publishing industry

Perfect Picture Books includes video lessons, with handouts and exercises for each lesson. You can read more about it here, and here’s a link to a short free and informative teaching video that will also get you to a hefty discount on the regular price, but only for a limited time so please don’t wait:

That MFA of mine was really pricey. I can promise you a fantastic ROI for a fraction of the cost.

Just remember: Never give up, never surrender!

*I’ll be speaking at the SCBWI summer Virtual Conference on “Plot Paradigms For Pantsers”. I’m pretty danged excited about this and hope you’ll check out the conference for all the things you can learn - and for the connections to agents and editors - which is how I found both of my agents.

**Even if those aliens are coming for you: never give up!