So after getting my feet wet with personal correspondence
and some pieces in the local paper, I was itching for somewhere else to test my
skills. It wasn’t too much later that I talked to Tammy Morris, a longtime
friend about the online writing she did. She was writing for several content
sites and beginning to make a little money at it and encouraged me to give it a
try.
I began writing articles for several content sites and while
writing news, articles and how-to’s is radically different than writing
fiction, the experience helped develop me as a writer. Not only did my writing
improve because of the increase in volume I was turning out, I met a wonderful community
of people I had never known existed. Writers are for the most part, a very
helpful and non-competitive group of coworkers.
One of the sites I wrote for sponsored a flash fiction
writing contest. We were to write something from a prompt and keep it under
1000 words, I believe. I entered the contest and didn’t even earn an honorable
mention but my whistle had been whetted. By this time, I had found several
other local friends who were also writers. We agreed to start doing writing
prompts together and began critiquing each other’s work. The feedback was by
and large positive but even when it was negative, it helped me learn and grow
as a writer. I used a series of those prompts to help me begin a novel I had
been mulling over for a while and I was hooked on writing fiction.
I also turned out a few more short stories and posted some
online where they languished in undiscovered obscurity. That’s okay. I didn’t
expect to be an overnight success then, any more than I do now. The novel idea
got shelved as I was drawn more and more into content writing for the immediate
financial reward it provided. And I was a little unsure of myself as a fiction
writer.
In 2010, a group of friends and I all decided to enter
NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month – an event held every November where
you chain yourself to your computer and try to churn out 50,000 words by the
end of the month in an effort to write a novel. It has to be something new, not
something you have already started. So I used October to prepare.
I didn’t make the goal by the end of the month but I did
complete some 37,000, by far the largest body of work I had ever completed. I
was ecstatic over my progress and to me it was success. The book, however, was
also shelved in favor of completing paid work.
The biggest compliment I had received at that time was an
invitation to join a group of writers who were self-publishing anthologies of
short, dark and twisted stories – right up my alley. I was delighted to have
been asked and the first story I submitted provided me with a much needed
reality check. As I opened the email, I was overwhelmed by the red print liberally
splashed across my work from the group’s resident editor. I was initially
inflamed and it took me two days before I could look at it calmly.
It was the best thing that ever happened to me. My
relationship with that editor was a bit bumpy and I didn’t always agree with
his recommendations but I learned a great deal from him about the craft of
writing. I stayed with that group for a couple of years and published stories
in five books with them before deciding to try my hand at doing it solo.
My next post will explain how I go to where I am today and
where I hope to go. Won’t you please come back and read some more?
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