The name of the game for Bermudian writer Lee-Ann Liles is tenacity. For every ten pieces Miss Liles has had published in mainstream literary journals she?s had to suffer approximately 200 rejection slips.

The mainstream literary press business is cutthroat, and for some magazines a writer?s chances are slightly worse than winning a flat screen television in a raffle draw. For a writer to get their name and biography between the covers of Nanny Fanny or Ploughshares is a major accomplishment.

Miss Liles has a Bachelors of Arts degree in creative writing from the College of Notre Dame in Maryland. Her story ?Postcards from the Devils Isle? appeared in the third issue of Caketrain, and she has also been published in Nanny Fanny and Poetry Motel, among others.

?You have to get use to receiving rejections,? said Miss Liles. ?You also have to research submission guidelines. I use to type everything in bold face, because I started I needed glasses. Then the comments from editors were more harsh. Now they say, ?submit again?.?

Miss Liles said she has had a few brushes with the vanity press and self-publishing industry, and is not interested in going this route.

?When I was in my early 20s, I was accepted by two publishing houses,? she said. ?I read up on them and discovered that they were vanity presses. One of them wanted my manuscript and not my name. So I declined those offers. I have worked to find credible publishing companies.?

Legitimate literary magazines do not ask for fees to publish your work. Nor do they hold a huge banquet after your name appears that costs money to attend, or charge you $75 to receive a leather bound copy of your work. Their payment is the privilege of being included, and sometimes a free copy of the magazine.

?Most writers, when they go to small presses, they don?t get paid, they are just happy to get published,? said Miss Liles. ?Rewards are ?recognition? and a gradual process to reaching book publication through learning the ropes and the ins and outs of the writer?s market. ?Presses will recognise you for where you?ve published and that?s a great incentive to be taken seriously as an established writer further down the road. For instance I?ve been published alongside Lynn Lifshin, John Grey and the head editor for Caketrain herself. Writing is its own reward.?

She said many Bermudians turn to self-publishing because it is the easy road. The result is a lot of poor quality work available for sale.

Flipping through a binder where she carefully catalogues her acceptance letters and tracks her submissions she said: ?I have done all of this without self-publication. It has been really hard.?

However, she said once you finally begin to break into the industry and can name drop magazine titles like Caketrain, then it starts to become a little easier.

One of Miss Liles? most important tools in the publishing struggle is the Internet. This provides writing resources, submission guidelines and also access to a larger literary community that is not really available in Bermuda. Three websites that she recommends are www.duotrope.com and and www.firstwriter.com .

?I go online and go to small presses,? she said. ?I have realised that buying books like Writer?s Market is a waste of time. (Writer?s Market lists the publishing guidelines for hundreds of magazines and journals.) You can see the same thing online.?

Trying to publish outside of the United States or another large country has its hurdles, but Miss Liles said that being Bermudian has proved more of a plus than a negative.

?I think that one online website that accepted my work (Miss Liles later turned down their offer) was intrigued because there is not much written about Bermuda. They picked the piece up because I was riding a motorcycle through the whole piece. It sounds normal to us, but not to them.?

To make her life easier, she got an American mailing address through Zipex.

?That way no editor is going to say I?m not going to return this because she is in Bermuda. It might be cheating, but it says in my bio that I am from Bermuda. my bio that I am from Bermuda. I also get friends in the US to send me a bunch of American stamps so that I can include a US stamped envelope. That is how I get my replies.?

One difficulty about being in Bermuda is the lack of a vibrant writing community. There are very few writers? groups, and mainstream writers rarely if ever give talks or book signings on the Island.

?With another Bermudian writer, Keith Caesar, we bounce a lot of ideas off each other. We encourage each other. Writers need people who are going to read their work and be very honest about it. Does it flow? Does it make sense? Are there any holes in the story??

Although she started with poetry, she now does creative non-fiction. A lot of her work has a memoir feel. She said that at first she was worried about what her friends and family were going to say when they realised she was writing about them. Now she is less concerned about it.

?Before the story in Caketrain came out I was worried about that,? she said. ?After it came out I got a burst of energy. I felt like ?this is my work, and this is what I do?. If people don?t care for it then that is the way it goes. You have to be known somehow. You can?t please everyone. I put that aside. I have started thinking about writing racy, post-modern feminist stuff. If someone feels bad about that, then so be it.?

Miss Liles is currently working to get a compilation of her creative non-fiction work published.

?I have had to work to get to this point,? she said. ?It is really scary. This is the first time I have ever put together a book length manuscript. Even with that you have to keep submitting and submitting to different publishers. So you have to know the market. You have to know what editors are actually looking for. So I spend a lot of time scanning websites and researching the market.?

She also hopes to one day go back and get a Masters degree in creative writing. She is also hoping that the Bermuda College will start a creative writing programme here in Bermuda.