get published

Maybe a short story or op-ed piece. Who knows? What’s a good baby step?

sent my first Query letter out and had my professor read over it. Hopefully I’ll get a bite.

I need to become more comfortable sharing my opinions in writing. Over the past few months I started putting my work on my weblog: http://vacantpropertyurbanopportunities.blogspot.com/ – I have also offered up some content to Rust Wire, which hosts news from the rust belt: http://rustwire.com/ . I am aiming to establish my voice as a source of genuinely interesting material and well-reasoned opinions. Once I feel that I can create this kind of writing regularly, I will start contacting publishers.

I need to get a fiction novel published.

Back in high school a poem of mine was published in the school’s literary magazine. I felt such pride!. I want to feel that again but on a larger scale. I have an idea for a play as well as a novel. I have writer’s block that is motivated by fear. I hope to have a rough draft of my play by the new year.

not yet

still thinking, writer’s block

as I don’t like seeing it in my goal list. I’ve kicked stuff back out the door, and have new work in progress, but I don’t think I want to be reminded of this desire too frequently.

and I’m stumped. I’ve participated in some excellent writers’ workshops in the past, and benefited from the critiques I received. I read the journals I submit to, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I can’t see why my pieces aren’t being accepted. I perceive them as being interesting enough and fresh enough to be found in these pages. I don’t submit to places that only publish people who have succeeded in creating major names for themselves in the literary world.

It’s possible that my work is of an acceptable quality (in both senses), but that there are so many submissions it is like a lottery. It’s possible, but I doubt it. Doesn’t that just mean that I have to ensure my work stands out from even a large crowd of wonderful and interesting pieces? Doesn’t that mean I have to become a much better writer?

I don’t know how to move forward with this. The last time I was at this place, I registered in a graduate level distance writing program with a wonderful writer as a mentor. It was expensive, and delightful to have her feedback, but mostly she found my poems to be satisfying and interesting, and treated me more as a peer than as someone whose poems she felt compelled to rip apart.

Was she dishonest? Lazy? I didn’t get that sense of her from anything else about her work and her career as a prolific and original poet, story writer, journalist, essayist, anthologist and teacher. I don’t know what to think.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to get anything accepted. It’s embarrassing when people ask me about it. (And yes, I rewrite my poems extensively – I’m not sending out early drafts. And no, I’m not receiving any criticism with the rejections. Sometimes they’re quite friendly-sounding, but they still only say, “No.”)

It’s been five years since I wrote SGTA and my writing has developed a great deal in that time. This morning I started a re-write of the manuscript.

This isn’t simply an edit to tidy up the rough edges, but a fundamental overhaul of the entire piece. Fortunately I still stand by a lot of it, but some of it … well I can do better.

10 hours later and ten pages marked up and I know what needs to be done. It’s exhausting work. I should point out that I was diagnosed with swineflu last week, and the last few days have been largely written off to painkillers and feeling sorry for myself, so this might account for the fact that the work is taking it out of me. I’m just going to need to do a little bit each day and then start to submit again when I am happy with it.