Tag: anthology about covid-19

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Some Good News About Rejection!

carolyncordon

Plague Invasion, the anthology I put together last year, using works sent to me from all around the world, as well as my own country of Australia, has been given back to me by the publisher I gave it to, unpublished, and instead of being sad or upset, I am happy!

I spoke with Michael Bollen, from Wakefield Press today, and while he said it was a good anthology, he would not be able to have it ready to be launched in July, for the Gawler and Adelaide Plains Festival of Words (Recovery). In the face of these crazy Covid times, the publishing would is running hot, with many people writing books, and wanting to be published.

So I am both sad the anthology won’t be published by Wakefield Press, but happy to have this ‘baby’ back in my hands, to self publish book myself! It’s been a while since I looked at what I’d said about the terms for publishing this anthology, so I’m going to have to go back and look at it all. I’ll be sending out a form to all of the people whose work I’ve accepted, which will happen I expect, in late March.

So if April comes around, and I haven’t emailed you an author agreement form please contact me on my email address, kittycordo@gmail.com

This doesn’t feel like a rejection to me, it feels like getting my child back, after they’ve been away on a holiday! I have enough pieces for this Anthology to be a fine book as it is right now, so won’t be accepting any new works for Plague Invasion. But if this is a successful endeavour, there may well be a new anthology once this one is launched, sold, loved, and admired!

I have never done such a large project, and while I am thrilled with how this book will likely look, it’s still a very new thing for me, but I saw the time for this anthology was now, and many people wanted to be involved in such a project. The Covid issue has twists and turns, good, and bad, and this process of getting the anthology has been a bit like that too.

But the anthology will happen, and will be launched at the Festival in 2021, and I am so glad. Now, to get onto the artist for the front cover again, and see what he comes up with!

covid 19

Importance of Goals

carolyncordon

When a writer is going to work on a piece of writing, they can either just start writing and see how it all goes, or they can begin with a goal, and follow along, with the various check points toward a finished product. Or, of course, they can do something in between the tow options.

Going ‘freestyle’ and just writing is a way that can bring amazingly rich and unusual results, but it can also lead to a lot of waffle, that needs to be edited out, to eventually bring a final result that works well. It includes a lot of effort at times though, producing words that have no place in any original book the writer wants to be connected with. Waffles are fine in the kitchen, or on a plate, but not in a good book.

The opposite method, or planning, and moving step by step to produce a book will reduce the waffle, for sure, but possibly may bring about a staid and boring book, with no flights of imagination, just dreary facts, with not a single flight of fancy in sight. Boring, boring, boring!

A better way to go might be to have a plan, but be open to new ideas, as things go along, and with the gaze firmly on what is happening in the book-in-progress, what may work better, or has turned out to be a bad idea, or not the best one. An idea that arches over the entire book, the reason why this is the particular book you have to write, right now, is a good thing to hold to, so you can look at each new thing, and ask, does this match the idea, does it add to what I want this book to be, or to do.

If you are writing about growing flowers, but end up on a trip to the desert, and back, with not a flower mentioned, you’d have to ask yourself, what is the reason for that trip to the desert, does it add to my book about growing flowers? If you’d stopped and taken photographs of flowers blooming after heavy rains in the desert, then sure, that was probably an interesting, useful, and relevant side-step.

If there is not mention though. of even a blade of grass, but it’s about camels, or other desert things, but not plant matter at all, it’s in the wrong book. Put it aside, and get back to your original idea, the one that lit your creative fuse. Consider your goal, and go back to it, get back on track, and stay there, as much as you can. A better, and more considered book will result.

Thank you for being here, now I have to get back to working on that book that lit my fuse – an Anthology of responses to Covid-19!