It's hard to be a writer. Sometimes you have to contend with people who don't take you seriously or think of it as 'just a hobby.' There are some out there that get that from their own family or at work or from friends. I have been blessed with a great supporting cast around me. Even my boss is excited about what I'm doing! And still, the idea 'I'm not good enough,' or 'this is too damn hard,' or 'who do you think you are?' or 'I'll just take today off,' or, you get the idea swirls around in my head.
Plus I'm back to work. The creativity that goes into starting a new school year and taking last years ideas and either tweaking them or trashing them or shortening them or expanding them is, at least for me, fun and exciting. And then there's the meetings where we dissect data and discuss where we're headed and of course the usual 'let's have another great year!' speeches designed to get us mentally prepared for the students. As with any job some of it is great, some of it is okay, and some of it makes you literally want to pull your hair out! The problem lies in the fact that after spending the day doing that followed by needing to get ready my own classroom quite frankly, I'm tired.
You have to write through all that. You still need to set aside time to continue to do the 'so-called hobby.' Unless of course I'm going to take a huge leap of faith and quit my job to become a full time writer. Not an option. I love my job and want to be BOTH a writer and a teacher. Plus I'd miss out on a great source of material.
And so I have finally finished the rewrites and editing and will be sending my manuscript on to the editor. Another step closer to the goal.
Since school begins tomorrow I have given myself a much smaller project to work on to keep my writing going. There is a writing contest at Writers Digest for short fiction that I plan to enter. The deadline is November. I am taking the advice of one or some or maybe many of the books I've read on writing and plan on putting aside the novel while it is in the hands of the editor. I don't even plan to read it until just before I get it back from them.
But I do plan on continuing to write...
And I will be 'writing' here as well. I will concentrate not only on how well (or not well) I'm doing on my writing but also the research I begin to do investigating the world of self-publishing.
I hope to be of assistance to those aspiring writers (like me) and entertain the rest of you!
God Bless...
RSS Feed
