Read • Contests • Groups • Learn • Forums • Store • Help
 

Forums / Publishing /
Local Flavour or Bust?


  • Barbara
    Aug 27 5:55 PM 2006
    Reply
    I'm wondering if anyone else has found it hard to get something published in their own area....even if the place is looking for local talent?  I find that if one lives in Atlantic Canada, then publishers expect you to write about fishing, farming, coal mining, or some other stereotype.  They want some 'historical' boring book, badly written and guaranteed to put you to sleep in five minutes.  They won't even look at a story unless it fits into their little preconceived notion of what an Altantic Canadian should write.

    I've even found other Canadian Literature companies not wanting to touch something that doesn't have local flavour to it.

    Anyone else have this problem?....from anywhere in the world.....?

  • Kei-Aira
    August 22, 2006
    Reply
    Not so much on the same scale as you,but I come from a small village in South Wales.  Most writing-groups, poems printed in the local newspapers etc... tend to focus on coal-mining and other similar industrial topics.  I have no problems with historical narratives or poems, but it is annoying when people automatically dismiss any work just because of the subject.  Personally, I know I am not good enough to get published at the moment, but it is still demoralising when you work hard on a piece and the only feedback you get is on the subject matter and not on the poem itself (and most of that feedback consists of - "Why are you writing about that?  Why not write about our heritage?").

    • Magic Bullet
      August 23, 2006
      Reply
      Oh dear.  I could think of nothing worse to write about than heritage.  You should start quoting Wales most famous poet at them.  Land of my fathers and all...

  • Nam
    August 23, 2006
    Reply
    I've had that same problem in my area, as well. But it had more to do that I am a male and not a female. I found this out by sending poems to them under my real name and then after multitudes of rejection I sent them the same type and style poems under a female pseudonym (who I actually have been published under more than my real name :( .. and no, I ain't saying what the name is, find out when I'm dead) and they accepted 2 of the 3.

    I wondered if this was perhaps true for other publications and I found, somewhat, that it is. A lot of the publishing magazines/houses etc., would publish poems sent to them under my female pseudonym yet I'd always get rejected under my real name.

    I know this isn't true about all publishing houses etc., but some will only publish female authors even if they accept both male and female submissions.

    Sad but true.

    :)

  • NoUseForAName
    August 27, 2006
    Reply
    It's like that where I am from originally.  The publishers only want pieces about the central valley, and farming- which I have no interest in.  So, I moved. ; )  Well- that's not WHY I moved- but the move helped.  There are journals in my area now that want writing focused on the area, but it's not as exclusive.
  • :