Diane Covington Shares Tips: “Never Give Up!”

Diane Covington’s essay “Finding Gilbert” appears in the June issue of Reader’s Digest.  Below she shares the journey she and her story went on to arrive at that success, and she offers tips and encouragement to other writers:

The bottom line?  Believe in your story and never give up!

Diane Covington (right) with her sister and her dad, who was leaving to serve in the Korean War in 1953.

My essay begins in France during World War II, when my father, a Lieutenant in the Navy, took a seven-year-old orphan, Gilbert Desclos, under his wing. During Dad’s four months there, he and Gilbert became so close that Dad tried (unsuccessfully) to adopt Gilbert and bring him home to America.  I grew up hearing the story of Gilbert and after my father’s death, found Gilbert on a trip to France.  He did become my French brother, just 50 years late.

I’d met the editor for a major publication at a writer’s conference.  He was interested in the story, saying that World War II stories were gold for his publication.

I’d written about the story before, in 1995, for the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, when I had just found Gilbert, and then again, in 2005, for the 60th anniversary of the end of the war.  This story was to be about a “last visit” with Gilbert, who was ill. Instead, it became a story about going to Gilbert’s funeral—I missed him by four days.

Diane Covington with Gilbert Desclos

The editor and I emailed back and forth and I sent him the story after my trip to France and the funeral.  He stalled and stalled for months and then sent me a “no” but with a three paragraph letter saying that he thought it should be written in a “short story format”.  His publication has 10 million readers, so I was really hoping to sell him the story.

So I stuck my foot in the door as he was closing it and wrote back:  “If I do that, will you look at it again?”  He said yes.

I hired a writing coach and worked on it with her for five weeks of almost daily back and forth to get it right.  When we both thought it was really good, I sent it back in.  After five weeks (of pins and needles for me), he turned it down with a curt note.

I felt stunned and stung. I’d wasted almost a year with this editor because his magazine has such a high circulation.

But because I’d hired the writing coach, I knew that the quality of the writing was good enough.  So, for whatever mysterious reason, it just didn’t click with that editor.

So I picked myself up, dusted myself off and tried again.  For several months, I searched for other outlets.  At a writer’s workshop, I pitched it to the top guy at another large publication.  He told me I didn’t know what my story was.  Excuse me?  Ooh, I was so angry.  (See pick up and dust off again, above.)

Then, through a writer I’ve never even met, on a list serve of other writers from a conference, I asked for help.  I described the essay and one woman suggested Reader’s Digest and gave me the name of an editor, saying I could mention her name.

Within weeks of submitting it to Reader’s Digest last fall, I had a yes.  The editor loved the story and was choosing which senior editor to send it to.  The editor she chose loved it and called me to discuss the story.

In that first conversation of over a half hour with the editor I was going to work with, we both cried.  Here I was on the phone with a senior editor from the largest magazine in the world and we were crying together about this story of my dad, a French orphan and the enduring power of love.

What I learned from this experience:  don’t ever give up when someone turns down your story.  Try again.  And don’t be afraid to try the big publications. Reader’s Digest was the easiest, most generous magazine I’ve ever worked with.

The director of photography decided he wanted a photo of me for the piece, even though I’d sent tons of photos.  So they sent a photographer and a hair/make-up person from San Francisco and we did a five-hour photo shoot. The make-up person would fuss over me between shots, with hair spray and lipstick.  I’ve never had so much attention in my life. I kept pinching myself, saying “Is this really happening to me?”  It was and it was great.

I am so grateful and so inspired and my thick skin just got a little thicker.  Rejection?  Who cares!  Next!  It can be so easy to be stopped by it, to say, “Oh, it’s me, it’s my writing, it just isn’t good enough.”  But I’d hired the coach and she said it was good enough, so that helped me to keep going.  I believed in my story and I believed in myself.

My editor at Reader’s Digest told me that “No one can read this story without crying.” When the editor-in-chief returned my “thank you” email, she said she couldn’t get through it with a dry eye either.

Reader’s Digest has 38 million readers in the US and 78 million readers worldwide.  Because I didn’t give up, I ended up with a much better publication after all than the first one.

The bottom line:  Keep writing, write the stories dear to your heart that only you can write, believe in your story and never give up!

Diane Covington is writing a memoir about the story of her dad, Gilbert and her part in the story.  She’s currently looking for an agent so will get to practice what she just preached: to believe in her story and not give up.  You can check out more information about the essay at her website:  www.dianecovington.com

Diane Covington 2009