Featured Client: Rosalia Scalia | Writer’s Relief

Meet our featured client, Rosalia Scalia! The assistant editor for Narrative Magazine, Rosalia has been published in Amarillo Bay, The Baltimore Review, North Atlantic Review, Pebble Lake, Pennsylvania English, The Portland Review, Quercus Review, and Willow Review—just to name a few. She also won first place in Taproot’s annual literary fiction contest, and has been awarded a Maryland State Arts Council grant.

Read on and watch the video to see how Rosalia accomplished this success rate by heeding the advice of her Writer’s Relief experts: “If at first you don’t succeed…”

In Rosalia’s Own Words

Becoming a writer is like climbing Mount Everest with a pickax: It’s tough going. The writing itself requires discipline and dedication. The submission process is labor- and time-intensive, while the rejections that boomerang back can be debilitating. Writing is the only art—the only product, if you look at it from the perspective of a publisher—that is produced and consumed in private. And so many of us spend time and energy chasing success as fiction writers, poets, and storytellers of all stripes. Writer’s Relief is there with us every step of the way—for those of us who invest in our future success by investing in Writer’s Relief’s services.

Without Writer’s Relief, I would have given up many times—especially at those times when I had no new work to send out and little confidence in my existing work that had already been rejected by literary magazine editors. Without Writer’s Relief, I wouldn’t have more than thirty published short stories to my credit. Several times Writer’s Relief strategists suggested I resubmit an existing story that had collected rejections in the first round. I’d resubmit and, much to my surprise, the story found a home!

In fact, my story “Training Wheels” falls into that category. After its initial voyage around to the lit mags, it sat in limbo in the Writer’s Relief files. I had lost faith in that story…thought it needed a revision…thought it lacked oomph. I thought it was a terrible work and should be buried under a giant rock. But a Writer’s Relief strategist convinced me to send it out in the forthcoming cycle, and much to my surprise, it received an acceptance in that second flight.

I have long considered Writer’s Relief as the best Girl Friday ever, and I never stop recommending it to my writer friends who want to advance their standing in the literary community by increasing their number of publications. I consider it an investment in my future as a writer, because having Writer’s Relief’s services means that I can focus on my work while leaving the time- and labor-intensive research of literary magazines to the skilled experts. The Writer’s Relief researchers make it their business to know all the lit mags. They keep track of submission schedules and personnel changes, along with everything else that helps your work represent you in the greatest way.

Also, their proofing skills are second to none. Despite being decent at grammar, I learned a few things from the Writer’s Relief proofreaders and have called them with questions when needed. This is the reason I’ve been involved with Writer’s Relief for more than a decade—and I hope to be lucky enough in this journey to invite them along with me if my work ever snags a substantial literary award!

More About Rosalia Scalia

Rosalia is a Baltimore-based writer of both fiction and nonfiction. She has a master’s degree in writing from Johns Hopkins University. Her short story “Sister Rafaele Heals the Sick” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her story “You’ll Do Fine” won the Willow Review Award for the issue in which it appeared. She is currently at work on her first novel, Delia’s Concerto.

You can find more information about Rosalia on her website.