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My Ping-Pong paid off
I've been pingponging a story back and forth to People's Friend for months - they finally accepted it today, whew.
I wrote the first version ELEVEN years ago ... persistence pays or what!
I wrote the first version ELEVEN years ago ... persistence pays or what!
Comments
[quote=ceka] persistence pays or what! [/quote] Fippin' eck ELEVEN years is grade A, first class gold plated peristence.
Child Lily x
(I read the title as "Mr Ping-Pong paid off"!)
well done Miss Determination
it took me 11 years to get my novel into print but your patience and persistence with a story is just amazing!
sorry meant to say should never give up
niddy slouches back into corner and hides
According to my records I wrote it on 28/01/2000 in one initial sitting and it took 4 hours to write. Obviously it then got itself edited but the time span there is not noted. It was aimed at a magazine called 'Horse and Pony' - to which I sent it (then 1800 words) and from which I never heard again despite several letters - five contacts in total over the next 18 months with no result at all - the magazine vanished the following October. I shortened it to 1000 words and sent it to 'Pony' magazine who returned it without comment (Janet Rising, still editor there). Nothing is noted until 2005 when I rewrote and tried My Weekly - nope. Shortened again to 800 words it then went to Brownie magazine (the one about junior guides, they like animal stories ... except they folded as well and I never heard back.
It was completely forgotten about until a competition came up for Derby Houseb last year and while I was looking at the 4 pony stories I'd written for onethat might suit, I thought I might try TPO with People's Friend. That was April last year - it came back with 'no but we'd review it if you changed xyz.' So I changed xyz and sent it back. In September it came back - 'not quite, perhaps try again with xyz in a different place'. So I changed another xyz and sent it back. Between January and now I think it's bounced back three more times with all the redos and retries and tweaks, yesterday the slots dropped into place and it was sold.
Oh yes, and now it is 3000 words long!
Talk about an elastic story. I wish I'd kept all the copies now, but I just overwrote each time.
Persistence Pays!
PS this was my 50th Paid-For story. I know folk like Phots have sold more than twice that but it still pleases me a lot to know that 50 times in MY life an editor liked my work enough to buy from me. I'm pretty sure I'll never sell any of the 11 novels I've written, but at least a few words of mine have been nationally and internationally read!
And if I can't be pleased on here, a writing site, where else can I be pleased? Neither family nor anyone else round the Owlery gives a flying fox's furcoat ...
you're a star
cek-k-k-k-kaaar
:)
Can't think who'd be interested in an article about it, but possibly a short story ... we'll see.
Re the contemporary 'stable companions' of that story: one is coming out in PONY magazine this spring but the other two are still languishing but will I give up?
If all else fails I could always have them read out at my funeral!
Well if you ain't gonna write it, ask BB to, she's good at hearticles, but I do think soembody somewhere WILL be interested, as well as YOU writing a short story about it ceka.
Persistence paid ... and published, now more than 12 years after the first keystrike ...
You was what? Eleven when you wrote it?
Gawd.
Anyone written the accompanying article yet, or do we have to wait another eleven years for that?
p.s. the thread title made me think it was about Bangkok for some reason...
what makes you think that, Dora?
Nah, I've got me 'L' plates now, headin' up the 'ill and sooner or later I'll be over it
too many glasses of rioja I fink
I missed this too, and here's a ditto on the congratulatories. :) Marvellous, Ceka.
[quote=ceka] in the People's Friend Spring Fiction Special [/quote]
The Spring FICTION special, Lolli. I have it in front of me, Page 33, entitled Lost and Found
;)
Naughty. (Actually, the same thing crossed my mind, too. Oops.)
:)
I definitely think this deserves at least a letter to a writing magazine, if not an article - it shows that you should never be put off by rejection or magazines disappearing into the ether, and also that if you believe in the idea, the actual story can be re-jigged, stretched and squashed almost ad infinitum, until it evolves into its final form.
Great stuff.