kids write
55 and Counting
By Jessica Burkhart
When I turned fourteen years old, my parents and I decided it was
time to homeschool. I had attended public and private schools but I
couldn’t devote the time I wanted to writing. I enrolled in
college-level writing course and began writing magazine articles. The
articles were awful. I wrote ten stories about the cats on my farm and
the experiences I had at the local Humane Society. I told my parents “I
can’t write about anything but cats” and they encouraged me to try
writing something new.
I kept writing and taking courses. I enrolled in college at sixteen and
bought dozens of books on formatting manuscripts, writing query letters,
and targeting magazines. I submitted a personal experience piece to
Teen Ink and my first taste of publication made me hunger for more.
I submitted dozens of manuscripts to magazines. Most came back with
rejections. I amassed a pile of ugly, glaring white rejection slips that
filled a cardboard box and taunted me when I looked at them. With every
rejection, I kept sending out more queries and manuscripts. I refused to
take “no” for an answer.
The rejections began to slow and the word “yes” began to be used from
editors. I secured multiple publications in Teenage Christian,
Listen, Teen Voices and a dozen other magazines. I knew that
writing was my life’s profession. I forced myself to write every day,
even if I didn’t feel like it. I wrote pieces I never dreamed I would
write. For a girl who only wrote about cats, I interviewed Miss Teen USA
2004, profiled a methamphetamine addict, and wrote a piece about college
students’ soap opera watching habits.
At nineteen, I now e-mail or postal mail at least 25 queries a month and
have amassed 55 credits in 15 national magazines and newspapers. My
target publications are becoming bigger and my rejection pile dwindles
each year. This doesn’t come from talent or luck, this comes from hard
work and determination to succeed in the publishing industry.
There were many in my life who didn’t think teens could be published.
Friends and relatives didn’t believe I’d see my work in print as a teen,
much less receive compensation for my work. Those people cared more
about my age than editors ever did. Not once in my five years of
freelancing has my age ever been a problem. When I was too young to sign
a contract, my parents signed. Editors didn’t look down on me because of
my age; often they encouraged me. Most rejections I received were
handwritten with a note of encouragement and I realize that’s not the
norm.
Age cannot stop anyone from writing and submitting work. Age doesn’t
dictate intelligence, business sense or writing ability. If you’re a
young writer and you think age is a factor, that’s simply not true. As
Chris Baty, founder of National Novel Writing month once said to me
during an interview, more young adults should write their stories
because once you’re an adult, you’ll never be able to tell those stories
as if you were a teen. Get out there and write!
Jessica Burkhart is a
nineteen-year-old senior at Florida State University. She is currently
seeking an agent to represent her YA fiction manuscript, Freshman 15.
This page last updated on 01 February 2007
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