How to become a published author: Five tips from Juno Dawson
Juno Dawson is a bestselling young adult fiction author who has written titles including Clean, The Gender Games and This Book is Gay.
She won The Book People’s Queen of Teen award in 2014 for Hollow Pike and Say Her Name.
She divulged her five tips for becoming a published author to 大象传媒 Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.
1. Read as much as you can
“It’s important to see the publishing industry as just that - an industry. It pays to have a working knowledge of which books are selling well.
“Look at the top 10, read as many as you can, work out what you like and if you don’t like it, why other people might be buying it so often. It pays to stay ahead of the business.”
2. Try and write something every single day
“I am not a big believer in setting yourself word counts or word targets, but I think there is something in opening the Word document every day and even if it’s just having a tweak, or writing a couple of sentences every day, you’re working towards that end goal.”
3. Reward yourself at every stage
“Getting published shouldn’t be the only goal.
“Out of all the writers in the world, not all of us get published so reward yourself if you finish a chapter, reward yourself if you do 100 pages and if you do finish a first draft of a manuscript, that is absolutely worth a nice bottle of wine or a lovely bar of chocolate.”
4. Don’t be too hard on yourself
“I don’t really believe in such a thing as writer’s block because I don’t think that all writing happens [at the keyboard]. I think a lot of writing happens [in the mind].
“So if the writing’s not quite happening [at the keyboard], take yourself to the cinema, watch a TV show, read someone else’s book, or my top tip is make a [photo] board with pictures of what your characters would look like. It all counts.”
5. Find someone who is really, really critical of your work
“None of us are going to get better at writing if we can’t respond to criticism.
“Every word we write is not necessarily gold, so my tip would be to find someone who is not a partner, a girlfriend or boyfriend or best friend, because they are not going to be critical. They are going to spare your feelings.
“Find another writer, maybe online, maybe in real life, maybe in a writers’ group, because once you do get published, you will constantly face criticism and rejection anyway, so it’s probably not a terrible idea to get you used to a bit of criticism right up front.”
“Good luck with your writing. So much of being published is about timing and luck. I wouldn’t be sitting here today if it hadn’t been for some really good timing and a big blob of good luck.
“So just you work on making your manuscript the absolute best it can be and that’s all as writers we can do!”
You can listen to the full Woman's Hour discussion with Juno Dawson here.
Woman's Hour is on 大象传媒 Radio 4 on weekdays at 10am and at 4pm on Saturdays. You can catch up on all episodes via 大象传媒 Sounds.
