Nothing like writing groups that can help you focus your writing, taking it from gibberish to as close to a work of art you can get, from rags to riches, from a loser to a contender. Well, due to busyness with work, kids and
plain old life, that is something I’ll be looking at doing towards the tail end of this revision period I currently find myself in. In the meantime, I’ll be relying on You’ve Got A Book In You, Story Physics, Story Engineering and Revision& Self-Editing for Publication, 2nd Edition, to get me by.
My goal is to sharpen my rusty writing skills far and beyond that they were during college. Especially, I must also believe in myself and in my potential. If I truly did not have any at all, then why would my college professor lean towards me in the middle of my Literary Review board interview (in my senior year, students taking the English Major-Creative Writing track had to put together a portfolio of all their writing since freshman year), to tell me “You should be published.”
I’ve taken the long way around, putting my writing on hold to find a job after graduation, paying off school loans, getting married and having kids, and before I knew it, the years just flew by. But this time I’m going for
it and with a plethora of story ideas under my belt. There will be no questions of when is your next book coming out? or what are you going to write about next? Not when I have two more seeds to grow, one of which I plan to prepare for NaNoWriMo 2014. I’m a bit slow on the progress, but I have no intention of stopping or taking anymore detours. As the Koreans say, Aja, Fighting!
On a side note, today I’ve submitted a poem to Spirit First’s 5th Annual Poetry Contest as well as submitted my poetry chapbook to the L+S Press Mid-Atlantic Chapbook Series 1stAnnual Competition. I’m still waiting to receive either an accepted or declined from Cleaver Magazine and JMWW.
How is your progress as an aspiring or emerging writer so far? Are there any published works you want to shout from the mountain tops? Are you in any writing groups? If yes, what are your experiences? If no, then what have you been personally doing to improve your writing?