Some people can find help for improving as writers in college; others can’t handle that tuition wise and need to look more in the direction of local writers groups, many of which have free meetings to meet and critique each other’s work.
But eventually you need to grow beyond that and submit your work to an editor. That’s when it pays to be aware of this next bit of advice.
Electronic submissions and other submission guidelines
When it comes to what font to use, don’t get fancy. Some writers prefer Times New Roman as a default, but I tend to disagree. I know of many editors who, by far, prefer Courier, because it’s a monospaced font, rather than relative-spaced like Times New Roman. Courier looks like a typewriter and that’s what editors like to see, for the most part.
Many editors these days also prefer electronic submission over traditional paper mailings. Even those who don’t ask exclusively for electronic documents, at least prefer to get an electronic document along with the paper submission. Usually, burning the manuscript onto a CD takes very little time and money, and makes an editor’s life far easier.
Also, don’t get fancy with writing programs. Over 90 percent of editors looking at electronic submissions want the file sent to be in MS Word format, so even if you’re not using MS Word, make sure your program can OUTPUT an MS Word-formatted document.
Big clue: Editors HATE MS Works files! It may come free with your computer, but NO editor I know wants to deal with it. Same goes for WordPerfect.
If you can’t afford MS Word, at least use WordPad, which will create MS Word-compatible documents for you, is free with Windows, and although it may have a lot less features, it produces flawless MS Word-compatible .doc files.
Finallu, no matter what anyone says, do NOT output in .rtf, .txt. or anything else like that. The .doc format that is native to MS Word is the ONLY way to go.
The key, though, is to query for submissions guidelines so you can meet each publisher’s or editor’s expectations with no hassles.
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