‘Having sent quite a lot of poems out the previous years and having got nowhere with them… apart from getting enough rejections slips to wallpaper a room, I got a handwritten note from the editor of Fire saying that they’d accept my publication, and I think that was the first time that I felt that what I was doing was worthwhile… and that would then propel me forward, and it did, it became quite an addictive feeling, getting poems and short stories published in magazines…’
rob m francis
It took several years until Rob M Francis had his first piece published. Now he’s the author of numerous poetry pamphlets and two novels, Bella and The Wrenna, both published with Wild Pressed Books. He works as a Creative Writing lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton. In this extract, Rob talks about the excitement of getting a piece published and how you can use that energy to keep sending your work out.
Listen to this extract to find advice on:
- Finding the energy to submit your work to different publications.
- The importance of remembering the first piece you ever published.
- Knowing when your writing is ready to be sent out.
‘That sense, that juice, that energy, that drive, that sense of validation that you get through publishing books is quite different [from publishing shorter pieces] because you spend so long on a particular project.’
rob m francis
Connect with Rob:
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