...because you have to just know it.

Persist.

Persistence is key.

People can tell you that, but you have to actually know it in your bones. It has to be part of your personality, and if it's not part of your personality, you'd better acquire it. If you want to be a writer, you have to write. Persistently. If you want to be published, you have to submit. Persistently. If you want to be paid for writing, you have to write and submit, persistently, and you have to research and learn the business, persistently.

At WorldCon 2004, there was a terrific panel called "Tough Love for New Writers." And the panelists laid it out, all of it, and the sum of their knowledge does seem to be "abandon hope, ye who enter here." Ironically, of course, there was one editor who pointed out something I'd suspected all along: if you're persistent enough, you can get something published. There's someone who will put your poorly written poems into an anthology or on a website--and we're talking non-scam someones, even, though there's plenty o' scammers. But, the point is: persistence pays. Maybe not in actual money...

And, oh, this does not tell you how hard persisting can be. Is. I've been persisting every day for eight months now without a sale, and it could so easily be another eight. I've been this close (makes a small space with her fingers) to quitting the submitting process forever and just posting what I write on my webspace from here on in. And you never know, maybe I will, and I'll stand as a representative of all the lame ways a person can fail to persist.

And yet, I suspect I won't. Persistence pays. It has paid in one satisfying way: my writing has become better. It has not yet paid any actual money in the year of 2005, but... really, were you doing this for the money? I sure wasn't... And a good thing, too.

So. Persist. Not that you'll believe me. You either know or you don't.