By Lacey Gunter
Shout out to all the moms with a mountainous pile of laundry. I feel your pain! This past month my writing soul has been wonderfully enriched, but it has not come without a cost. Visitors beware, my house is a disaster zone and I am more than a wee bit sleep deprived. My only hope is that my hubby and kids are feeling an extra dose of Valentines love and will forgive me of my shortcomings.
Amidst all this progressing mess and chaos, I am happy. I recently signed up for my first writer's conference and I am very excited! It will be in the summer and I welcome all your advice. I have also had the chance to participate in several new writing and critique activities that have buoyed my writing resolve and helped me to meet people who have encouraged me and helped me grow. I feel very blessed.
So here is what I have learned this month. A lot of writing advice talks about getting your work out there, participating in critique groups, doing lots of submissions and getting lots of feedback. This is sound advice, for sure. But it is also really beneficial to get yourself out there, and I don't mean just digitally.
Getting out and meeting other writers and sharing your experiences with each other helps you to feel
more connected and can give you the strength to weather through the difficult aspects of trying to get published. With all our busy schedules, this takes time, I know. But if you are really serious about writing, it is worth the time. And you may be surprised at how friendly and kind the people you meet are. I know I have been.
Rejection letters, difficult to swallow critiques and a sea of internet literature emphasizing how unlikely it is you'll get published, can make this industry feel like everyone is against you. But as I have met and talked to people personally, all I can seem to find are down to earth people who are happy to be a friend.
So, get yourself out there. Your laundry and house cleaning may suffer. But all that means is you'll just have to meet up at your second favorite place, the library. =)
Shout out to all the moms with a mountainous pile of laundry. I feel your pain! This past month my writing soul has been wonderfully enriched, but it has not come without a cost. Visitors beware, my house is a disaster zone and I am more than a wee bit sleep deprived. My only hope is that my hubby and kids are feeling an extra dose of Valentines love and will forgive me of my shortcomings.
Amidst all this progressing mess and chaos, I am happy. I recently signed up for my first writer's conference and I am very excited! It will be in the summer and I welcome all your advice. I have also had the chance to participate in several new writing and critique activities that have buoyed my writing resolve and helped me to meet people who have encouraged me and helped me grow. I feel very blessed.
So here is what I have learned this month. A lot of writing advice talks about getting your work out there, participating in critique groups, doing lots of submissions and getting lots of feedback. This is sound advice, for sure. But it is also really beneficial to get yourself out there, and I don't mean just digitally.
Getting out and meeting other writers and sharing your experiences with each other helps you to feelmore connected and can give you the strength to weather through the difficult aspects of trying to get published. With all our busy schedules, this takes time, I know. But if you are really serious about writing, it is worth the time. And you may be surprised at how friendly and kind the people you meet are. I know I have been.
Rejection letters, difficult to swallow critiques and a sea of internet literature emphasizing how unlikely it is you'll get published, can make this industry feel like everyone is against you. But as I have met and talked to people personally, all I can seem to find are down to earth people who are happy to be a friend.
So, get yourself out there. Your laundry and house cleaning may suffer. But all that means is you'll just have to meet up at your second favorite place, the library. =)
That is so cute! I think I have space for one on the corner of my desk! ;O)
ReplyDeleteWhat a darling, simple idea!
ReplyDeleteGreat post, Lacey! And I'm going to my first conference this year, too.
ReplyDeleteSo which conference are you going to? And I think conferences are lovely and fun and very motivating. So hooray!
ReplyDeleteKaty, are you going to ANWA? If so, I will have to hunt you down so I can meet you!
ReplyDeleteI am going to Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers (WIFYR). I have heard such good feedback from the kidlit community around here. I can hardly wait!
ReplyDeleteGood luck! Hopefully we will both have great experiences! When is yours?
ReplyDeleteJeanna, ANWA sounded fun, but with the trip down it was too expensive. But speaking of meeting people, I met Betsy Schow this past weekend at a writers event. It was great to finally meet one of us. Wish I could meet the rest of you!
ReplyDeleteYes! Let's meet up for sure! I don't know too many people going, so it'll be nice to see a familiar, (clever, talented, lovely) face!
ReplyDeleteThat's cool that you met Betsy! It would be neat to meet everyone somehow, sometime. :)
ReplyDeleteJealous! Oh how I wish I lived back in Utah again. If I want to go to Utah conferences, I have to fly out. I've heard that conference is fabulous, and I know some of the presenters--and they are fabulous people. You will have such a great time!
ReplyDeleteYeah, we're kind of spending a lot of money on my writing this year (I'm flying out for two conferences!). Fortunately, the ANWA one is also counting as a family vacation because my hubby has a sister living there that we'll visit. :)
ReplyDeleteI got to meet Betsy very briefly last year, and I thought she was just fun and spunky and awesome. And yeah, it would be nice to get us all together. Maybe someday, when one of us strikes it rich--she'll have to foot the bill for all of us to get together. :)