READY TO BE PUBLISHED?

Yesterday, I did a workshoppish eventish thing for aspiring writers at the Stirling Off the Page festival and I promised that I'd put something from it up here. I'd created a list of questions that I think writers need to ask themselves to assess their readiness for publication. And here it is!

If you find the questions hard to answer, that suggests you and your book are not yet ready for

DOES YOUR MS TICK THESE BOXES?

Of course, writing novels isn't about (and mustn't feel like) ticking boxes. However, when it comes to teaching writers how to write better or how to write a novel that a publisher will want, it's less helpful to say, "Write better, engagingly, tightly, originally, dynamically, wonderfully," and more helpful to say, "OK, now that you've got your idea/outline/first draft, please make sure it has

CHECKLIST FOR GETTING PUBLISHED

I believe that if you can say yes to all of these, you give yourself more chance of being published. Unfortunately, I can't guarantee that doing all of them will get you published, because that depends on what you have written, how well you have written it and whether a publisher believes he can make a success of it. And magic fairy dust.

[This is an updated version of an old post, something