Next step for young writers and poets

Are you a young writer who has a bunch of prose and poetry manuscripts stored in your Google Drive folder just to gain dust and cobwebs? 

Have you ever wondered what could these writings of yours be worth? Of course, there wouldn’t be any answer to these questions if you would not let these magnum opuses’ of yours see the world.

So you might be wondering, what could be the next step?

In this article, I will be sharing with you the next step to build your career as a young budding writer (or poet).

Submit to local publishers or newspapers

While your self-written fanfiction on AO3 or Wattpad could probably see its worth someday, if you are aiming to build your career as a writer, you could also gain a wider audience if you submit to local publishers and newspapers. 

It could be a publisher in your city or in your country. Honestly, there’s no harm in trying, I have been rejected by publishers a lot and it made me numb but at least one accepted creation of mine would immediately burn down all the feelings from those painful rejections. So I suggest, just try and try and try and try...

If you are from the Philippines, you can try YoungSTAR by the Philippine Star, Young Blood by the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and Detours by Rappler.

Just imagine being accepted and seeing your name in a newspaper...just imagine.

Submit to indie literary magazines

While indie means publishers or creators of literary magazines from small companies or organizations, it doesn’t mean that submitting to these won’t lead you anywhere. Indie publishers have websites, and social media pages that have a number of followers that could read your work once accepted. Moreover, the writing community especially the ones in the indie publishing industry has a large number of members, thus, your work wouldn’t lead to nowhere but will lead you to the right audiences and sometimes you would even gain feedback that could strengthen your piece and your skill as a writer. In addition to this, a LOT of indie publishers publish their issues, and if you were accepted to one, imagine your name on a book!

Where to find these publishers? Easy, on social media! Mostly Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

I suggest visiting or having an account on ChillSubs which would make your life easier in finding publishers. This website could even help you filter out the perfect publisher for the genre of your piece! You can even organize your submitted pieces to keep track of what has been approved and rejected. Furthermore, big publishers use Submittable for their call for submissions and this website basically does everything, you submit in their own forms, and voila! All you need to do is to just wait for the status of your submission.

   Chills subs website

Create your Portfolio

Next is to build your own writing portfolio! Let’s say you have gained a lot of published work, you can showcase them in your writing portfolio. It can either be a social media page on Facebook or Instagram or you can even create your own website, you can build your own or create from free web hosts like WordPress or Blogger (just like this one!) you can use whatever platform you are comfortable showcasing your works.

Worried that you haven’t had any works published yet? You can create your own, and publish them on your website or page, nobody will bat an eye! This portfolio is essential in providing proof of work to employers or just overall collecting and showcasing your skills.

Overall, these are just some of the few steps that a young writer like you could take a try to step up your writing career. After these, you can shoot to the moon and submit to book publishers and gain book deals! Why not? The world is your oyster!

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Do you have any questions? Comments? Violent reactions? Or maybe you just want to say, “What’s up dawg?” Don’t be shy and just type it down below! I don’t bite.