Getting Started as a Writer

It is easy to say, a long walk starts with one step.  Or, in the case of writing, it starts with one word.  Ah, but it isn't as simple as that.  Getting started is having something to say that people will want to read.

I was a writer for many years, a reader for many more.  My biggest problem was that I thought I could write something just as interesting as the novels I was reading.  I hoped and prayed each time I mailed the piece of myself I'd just written to an editor that it would be loved as much as I loved the things I was reading.

I was in for a long line of rejection letters and disappointments.  Fortunately, I got a few that actually had notes.  Albiet the notes weren't often very positive, but they were lessons learned.

I grew more and more confused as I would take those suggestions and make changes to my stories, only to have new suggestions made by the next editor.  At one point I realized the one thing these editors didn't do was ask to see my manuscript again after I'd made those suggested changes.

The realization that I was acting like a fish out of water, just flopping around on the ground, uncertain which way to go.  People could shout at me, telling me which way back to the stream, but hey, I was grounded --clueless how to get there.  Besides that, how could I get there without help?

Ahha!  I finally learned a valuable lesson.  I needed help.  I had to throw my ego out the window and get ready to see red.  yes, red pencil on my manuscripts.

I'd heard one who went to college to learn to write should forget everything they learned if they wanted to get published.  That was no problem for me, I hadn't gone to college.   With my new realization that I needed to learn, I started taking classes: night school, votec, college, any class I could find that had anything to do with writing.

I embraced the concept of red corrections and notes written all over my carefully prepared assignments.  And I learned.

Watch for my next article "Seeing Red".