Writing.

Here I would just like to encourage anyone who is interested in getting their work published to keep working towards submitting it to various Agents' and Publishers'. Each genre is different, so I cannot advise for other areas of work but for my book I had to submit a book outline (chapter details) an overview of the book and a couple of sample chapters. I was initially accepted by my literary Agent on 4,000 words and then he asked me to write another 10,000 with which he secured a publisher's contract.

I started working on 'Beyond the Edge' about 8 years ago. For quite a long time I felt incredibly guilty spending time planning a book that I thought would never be published. In order to work on my writing I had to forfeit other more practical and real tasks i.e cleaning and ironing and I felt really silly taking my laptop to the cafe to indulge in my self-obsession whilst my friends went to their 'proper jobs' or attended to their daily chores!

Yet strangely even though I felt 'called' to write it I kept thinking that all I had to do was plan the book to the best of my ability, write a few sample chapters and when the rejections came in I had permission to forget the whole idea, however it did not work out like that (and if you would like to know how I met my agent read the deleted chapter within this website.)

The long and the short of it is - if you feel God has put something on your heart to write He may well open the necessary doors for you to get published, even though you think that seems unlikely (I failed English Language O' level twice!)  I attended a couple of short courses organised by the Christian Writers Association which really helped me prepare my writing for submission. Hope this is useful.... tell me if it is not!

Hazel