Writing Lessons from Africa--Chasing Elephants

 

Roland and I recently returned from a trip to Africa. Most of our time was spent on safari in the Republic of South Africa, where we saw dozens or perhaps hundreds of zebras, giraffes, and antelope. We also saw hippos, crocodiles, lions, leopards, cheetahs, wart hogs, and rhinos. But something was missing from the list.

Elephants.

Everyone told us we were sure to see elephants on safari. Our tour guide even “guaranteed” it. But everyone was wrong. On our morning and evening game drives at Songimvello Game Reserve, we saw evidence of elephants (primarily their droppings) but no elephants even though our safari guide tried to chase them down by taking us everywhere there had been a sighting in the last few days. Unfortunately, the elephants were no longer there.

We also spent a day driving through Pilanesberg National Park. Our tour guide had “guaranteed” we would see elephants and he passed asked our Pilanesberg driver to find some. But again, although we saw evidence of elephants (their dust in the distance), they were gone before we arrived.

After South Africa, Roland and I went to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. We were only there for one full day, during which we saw the Falls in the morning and took a cruise along the Zambezi River in the late afternoon. When the crew asked us how we liked Africa, we told them we loved it but were disappointed that we hadn’t seen elephants.

We were heading for the top of the Falls on the Zambia side when the captain suddenly turned the boat around. I was confused until he said he had heard of an elephant sighting and was taking us there. Roland and I were grateful to the captain when we saw our first pair of elephants. They were off in the distance on an island but recognizable by the naked eye and well within range of my 300 mm lens. After a while we turned around again and finished our trip to the top of the Falls, or at least as close as it was safe to go. And on the return trip we saw two more elephants. I’m not sure how you can tell one pair of elephants from another, but these were on a different island so we are pretty sure they weren’t the same ones.

So what does our chase after elephants have to teach about writing? I am getting ready to start looking for a publisher for the murder mystery I wrote as my pandemic project, and a writer’s search for a publisher can feel equally hopeless as we submit and submit and submit with no success. But persistence paid off in our search for an elephant, and that’s the writing lesson here. If you don’t give up, you’ll eventually find someone to publish your book.

In the meantime, keep chasing those elephants.

Covid-19 Drags Publishers Into the 21st Century

 

Covid-19 isn’t a good thing, but it does have some useful consequences.

Last week I finished another round of publisher submissions for one of my middle-grade historicals, and it was easier than the previous time I submitted (a different book) to these same publishers. Then, three out of six took submissions by email, while the others required snail mail submissions. This time only one required snail mail submissions. So it appears that Covid has dragged two publishers—or 33% of the sample—into the 21^st century.

I never could understand why publishers preferred hard copies. Some of it may be paranoia about viruses, but requiring submissions as Word or PDF documents makes them unlikely, and good virus software detects and eliminates scripts and any other minor problems that may attach to those types of documents.

Email benefits the writer, the publisher, and the environment. I don’t have to waste money on paper, ink, and postage or spend time going to the post office. Editors don’t have to lug around paper documents but can read submissions right on their laptops or tablets. And if the editor isn’t interested, the submission can be deleted without having to recycle the paper, thus helping the environment.

It’s possible that those two publishers were teetering on the edge of the 21^st century already and would have gotten there without the pandemic. Still, I’m glad the pandemic has caused some publishers to rethink their submission requirements.

But I’ll be even happier if one of them accepts my book.