Showing posts with label aspiring writer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aspiring writer. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

#IWSG for August 2016



The Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG) is the brilliant idea of Alex J. Cavanaugh. The purpose of the group is to share doubts and insecurities and to encourage one another. Please visit the other participants and share your support. A kind word goes a long way.

The awesome co-hosts for this month's IWSG are: Tamara Narayan, Tonja Drecker, Ellen @ The Cynical Sailor, Lauren @ Pensuasion, Stephen Tremp, and Julie Flanders!

This month's question: What was your very first piece of writing as an aspiring writer? Where is it now? Collecting dust or has it been published?

I was writing since I could make sentences. I still have a poem about the moon I wrote when I was five which won a ribbon in my town's fall festival. I have the binders of short stories I wrote about the neighborhood kids from when I was eight through my teen years.

The first short story I tried to get published was rejected, and I threw it away. I was eighteen, and I had very thin skin. I remember it was about a college aged psychopath killing the boys who didn't love her back, and who really didn't know she existed at all. That rejection kept me from letting anyone else see my writing for over twelve years.

I did keep writing, though. When I finally started submitting stories to venues again, more rejections came my way, but I was older and wiser more stubborn. I kept putting myself out there until a little drabble about alien pet care was accepted. My first acceptance. And I made a dollar from it! I would have been ecstatic without the dollar, but I keep it in a frame on my desk to remind me to never give up.