What You Realize After You’re Published

One thing I didn’t have on my 2026 bingo card was having a short story published in an anthology! Being included in the Cai Emmons Short Fiction Contest Anthology has been an exciting surprise.

I don’t typically work in short form fiction, and I’d never submitted my writing to a contest, but I thought, why not? The worst that will happen is I’ll get a polite rejection email. I felt like I could handle that. 

So this past fall, I took a break from revising my novel, wrote and revised a 3,000 word short story, and sent it off to the contest. Three months later, I was thrilled to find out my story had won a prize and was going to be included in the anthology! 

This past week I had the amazing experience of reading my story, Fragile, in front of a virtual audience at the anthology launch event.

Now that I’m able to hold the physical book, see my short story in print, and have read a portion of it publicly, I’ve been reflecting on the experience of being published. 

Here’s what I’ve learned:

Publishing means giving up control

I don’t know about you, but whenever I daydream about being published, I envision my words landing perfectly with readers. I can see now how much that is out of my control. 

Once I’ve released my words out into the world, there’s nothing more I can do beyond promoting my work.

If I find a typo, or I wish I had written a passage more succinctly, there’s no recourse. If I think of a more apt metaphor or a better turn of phrase, well… that ship has sailed.

If I have second thoughts about how I represented a character or a place, there’s nothing I can do to change it. (Luckily, I caught those missteps during the revision process.)

I’m learning that you’re always going to find things you want to change after you’ve seen your writing in print. But you have to find a point where you’re satisfied, and then let the words go out in the world. 

The alternative is to hold them so tightly that no one else ever gets to experience and benefit from them.

This is a place where a lot of writers get stuck, and can end up in an endless cycle of revision. As a book coach, I help writers notice when revising is necessary and when it has become a form of procrastination driven by fear. Having a trusted person to help you realize it’s time to let the writing be what it is can make the process feel less agonizing and give you a sense of peace.

Readers bring their own perspective

One of the biggest challenges for fiction writers of any format (novel, novella, short story, etc.) is that you have the burden of knowing what you’re trying to say. 

You can see the story you’re creating in your mind’s eye, which means that when you read your writing, your mind fills in details that aren’t there.

When a reader picks up your work, they don’t have access to those details. If not done well this can lead to confusion on their part, potentially causing them to put your story down without finishing it. 

But an outcome that I think is even more frustrating is when someone reads your writing and interprets it differently than you intended. 

Here’s an example: I was surprised to learn that someone considered the protagonist in my story to be annoying. They didn’t mean that as a derogatory comment, in fact they said, ‘I love an annoying protagonist.’ 

That gave me pause. I thought I had written a protagonist who was passionate. But as I considered all the details about the character that I had included in the story, I could see how a reader might classify her as annoying. 

Thoughts, behaviors, and character traits that we create can be interpreted very differently by readers, because they are bringing their own opinions, perspective, and world view to the words.

I’m learning that you can’t control how readers interpret your work. All you can do is make your best attempt at clearly conveying your story. 

Quick tip: If it’s important to you that readers feel a particular way about something, use beta readers and specifically ask for their take.

Sharing your writing can be scary… but it’s worth it

Writing is by nature a solo activity. 

You can write hundreds of pages, and if you keep them to yourself no one will ever know they exist. 

That knowledge can be a comfort. You’re in control, you get to choose if your writing ever sees the light of day.

But stories are meant to be shared. Words are meant to be read by people other than the writer. The whole point of putting ideas on paper (physical or digital) is to be able to share information. And I think, deep down, writers do want others to read their words. 

But that means going public. It means being open to readers not ‘getting’ what you’re trying to express. It means releasing control of who talks about your writing and what they say. 

The biggest obstacle to submitting your writing for publishing opportunities might very well be crossing the threshold from private to public. 

I get it, it’s scary to put your words out for others to consume - and judge.

But if you let doubt, uncertainty, and fear of judgement stand in your way, no one will ever read your writing. You’ll never know what you’re capable of if you don’t find a way to move past doubt and give it a try. 

There’s a reason I chose a local writing contest as my first foray into sharing my fiction:
It seemed approachable. 

I could picture other writers just like me, living in my neck of the world, choosing to be brave and submitting their story for judges to read. That made submitting my story a little less intimidating, and helped me to feel a part of the larger writing community. 

Even if my short story hadn’t been chosen for the anthology, just going through the process would have been worth it. After all, my identity as a writer changed over the course of six months. I can now say I’m a short story author who enters writing contests!

It has been a fun experience to write a short story and share it with other people. And it’s something I plan on doing more of in the future, even as I continue to work on my novel. 

I’ve learned many lessons from this publishing experience. That knowledge will help prepare me for the day that my novel is ready to go out in the world, and it will also help me prepare my clients for the realities of publishing.

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