Janet Cameron

Don't be fazed by rejection. It takes determination to succeed, so believe in yourself and never give up. A now-established magazine short story writer says, “Once I wrote a story for a magazine that the sub-editor loved, saying it was well-written and appealing, but the fiction editor had an enormous choice of submissions and mine fell at the last hurdle. I was so disappointed, but I got over it, and later, I tweaked the story for a writing competition.” The new story was easy to write. The writer had the background and some witty dialogue to work with. “I just changed my main protagonist from a youngish, well-meaning married woman playing a character in a love story, to a rather scary teenage girl,” she explains. Her story became a “sting in the tail”. The teenage girl was more fun to write about anyway and this writer received an award for a humorous story. “The prize-money was small, but it was satisfying to get an award.”