Publication Experience Quotes

I've never been a true fan of the short story and have only published a single example of my own.

I produced some very good work at 'New York' magazine.

Margot [Hentoff] used to write regularly for The Voice, for The New York Review of Books, for Harper's Bazaar, and she really had the most distinctive writing style, even more than mine, than I've ever seen in this business.

I'd never been published when I was young.

At the age of 10, I had my first piece published in what was known as the 'Junior Post,' which was part of the 'Yorkshire Post,' and it was just for kids. I read it every week. And I got paid for it. So I thought... 'I can actually do this. I can get paid to write, and this is going to be fine.' I wrote several pieces for them.

I wanted to just get a job so I could have enough money for my own apartment and be able to get drunk. And I did. Back then, on $125, you could do that in Manhattan. I was 19 years old the first time I got published and paid. I think it was a hundred bucks. I stared at my name on the check for 20 minutes.

I don't know what started me, I just wrote poetry from the time was quite small. I guess I liked nursery rhymes and I guess I thought I could do the same thing. I wrote my first poem, my first published poem, when I was eight-and-a-half years old. It came out in The Boston Traveller and from then on, I suppose, I've been a bit of a professional.

However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition.

Publishing your work is important. Even if you are giving a piece to some smaller publication for free, you will learn something about your writing. The editor will say something, friends will mention it. You will learn.

I was first published in the newspaper put out by School of The Art Institute of Chicago, where I was a student. I wince to read that story nowadays, but I published it with an odd photo I'd found in a junk shop, and at least I still like the picture. I had a few things in the school paper, and then I got published in a small literary magazine. I hoped I would one day get published in The New Yorker, but I never allowed myself to actually believe it. Getting published is one of those things that feels just as good as you'd hoped it would.