Amy Holman Amy Holman has worked for 13 years on behalf of poets and fiction writers, educating them about the fair practices of publishing and how to be detectives and get their work published. Amy is also a poet with forthcoming works in Zone 3 and Metropolitan Review .
Some people love to read in the same way that some love to drive sports cars.
I'm astonished when a poet demands publication yet doesn't have time to read the work of other poets or when a fiction writer claims to write like no one else, but can't name favorite novelists. I've counseled poets, fiction writers and essayists for years about the business of writing, most recently teaching how to publish seminars, and even those who are avid readers unnecessarily panic at the thought of finding publishers for their work. If you were going to design a sports car, you'd test drive as many as you could. You'd have owned one sometime in your life. Maybe, you'd work as a mechanic.