Esther Chilton

Check, check, check!

With readers’ letters, busy editorial staff don’t often have the time to let you know if they’re going to use your letter. It’s great if they do as it saves time standing at the newsagents every week checking to see if your letter has been published. But if you don’t check, you may miss your letter  and then the first thing you know about it is when a cheque appears. This happened to me this morning. I can’t really moan as it was a very nice cheque for £100 for the star letter in a Sunday newspaper. Though, if like me, you miss your letter, you can’t then add it to your cuttings file.

It’s also very difficult to know when your letter may be published. One letter I wrote for a magazine took two years before it was published! I’d long given up hope and happened to be looking through the magazine for another letter I’d sent when I saw it!

So sometimes, the only round it is to keep checking. Try and see it as an opportunity. Whenever I’m looking through a magazine to see if a letter has been printed, I take a good look around the shelves to see if there are some other magazines which I could write for. New magazines are always popping up and offer all sorts of opportunities.

I’m off for a week for half-term and so my blog will be back a week Monday. Happy Friday and of course happy Valentine’s Day!