Let's shoot Gramma.

At the unpublished stage of my writing carreer, any encouraging moves me up a notch and gives me more focus, more drive and more confidence. Having a story cherry-picked is a bit of a buz, simply because it confirms that a story that I already belived to be good was also appreciated by somebody else. It's not really important and is won't advance my carreer, but it just greases the pole a little and allows me to believe that what i'm writing is good enough (obviously, though, not the uninspired pile of crap i've just written!)

The above - how poor is that! A case in point I believe...

Oh, so here's the thread that Boojum claimed had been censored off the site. Let's flip thi s on its head. Everyone knows that the way to get published is to send your stuff to a publisher. Anyone here testify that they've had a result from a publisher ? If not acceptance then good positive feedback ? It does happen to some people - Eddie for one must have got some response from publishers, but you have to kiss a lot of frogs and buy a lot of stamps.

Yep, I've had a result from a publisher (and not a few editors) but it's bloody bloody bloody hard graft. Didn't kiss any frogs but did spend a small fortune in stamps/envelopes/printer paper etc...not to mention those dreaded IRC's.

In terms of tangible results - two writers on abctales made it into the last ten of the BBC radio 4 short story contest, which received entries from all over the world. I've had five non-fiction pieces published - okay, they weren't here on abc, but getting honest feedback from people who didn't feel obliged to be nice to me just because they know me gave me the confidence to put my work to publishers. I think Karl's had some success with non-fiction writing too as a result of contacts made here. I know that Ivory and Ralph have both had pieces accepted into presitgious magazines. There are the people who got cash and publication in the abc magazine. There is success out there to be got, but abc can't send stuff out for you - the writer has to want to do this for themselves. I would guess that there are 20 times more people wanting to write than the world has need for writers. But most of those never write anything, most who do never show it to anyone, most who do the first two things never send it off anywhere that it might be rejected. Everyone at abc has taken the first two steps, which increases their chances of getting to the third stage.

Hey maybe this isn't the same as getting published, but still it's positive. I have currently been given some work to do on a website. What I do is I comb through it, correcting spelling mistakes etc. Try and make the content easier to read and navigate - hack away at bits, rephrase things etc. using clear concise language that the reader can understand. There is a skill involved in doing this believe it or not. Have been spending the past few months learning html tags and all that, but knowing html is only part of the skill involved in building web-sites, the other part is making your content easy to read. Which means getting skillful at writing. Well I would never have been able to write in an easy flowing straight forward informative way if it hadn't been for the many hours I've spent writing poems and stories for this web-site. Hacking away and polishing short stoires has given me the skills to do the same thing for a website. I think that is a pretty positive practical benefit from being part of abctales. Hopefully if I make a good job of this web-site, then I will be given more work on other web-sites. This is my first cyber job..hehe So yes there definately is a lot of practical benefits to be gained from improving your reading and writing skills. Maybe not as exciting as publishing a bestselling novel - but I am finding I really enjoy doing this web-site building lark. Also it helps to pay the bills and keep me alive - means I can write for a living now as well, which is soo cool. Hopefully never have to go to the factory vibe again * fingers crossed * So no experience is ever wasted, writing short stories and poems can be applied to many things - parallel learning I think they call it. Anyway I'am dead chuffed about it.

Hey....many congrats on your new career, Funky! Delighted for you...