On Writing

I’ve been a busy girl these past few weeks. Now that there is a lull in my personal writing project, I’m itching to start another. The process has begun. With me, a lot of writing happens in my head before it ever flows from my fingers onto the keyboard. When I was in high school, I took a creative writing class. In the evening, I would lie back on my bed and consider what I would write for the next assignment. My sister would ask, “What are you doing?” To which, of course, I would reply “I’m doing my homework!” I don’t think she ever really understood.


The current project I have just finished is a short story about an incident from my childhood. Short stories are what I seem to concentrate on most. I’m not really sure how authors come to write long novels. I hope to one day write a novel, but for now, the short story genre is all I have in me. I have colleagues that tell me about the books they’ve written, all technical. It’s interesting to hear them speak about what their struggles were, compared to what challenges me.


In the busy few weeks that just passed, I attended my first meeting of the Monadnock Writer’s Group. http://www.monadnockwriters.org/ They had a guest speaker, who naturally, was selling a copy of his book afterwards. Someday, I hope to stand and speak about my book, and sell a few copies too, so I bought one of his. At the beginning of the meeting, we are asked to introduce and tell a little about ourselves. In doing so, I mentioned my published article in Biker Ally. I had a lot of questions about how I came to be published in the magazine. I explained that I felt the story was published because of the editing skills of my friend Tim. “Would he edit their stuff?” I was asked, and “How much does he charge?” Tim is happy to hear this, as freelance editing is a dream of his.


I have also begun in earnest the wiki project Tim told me about last May. Wiki is new to me, and I’m on a learning curve. All I’ve managed to accomplish at this point is to add a page with a short description. We are all trying to understand the intent, look, and how to manage content at this point. It is slow going until I can grasp the concepts they have in mind. It’s exciting to be a part of this project.


My short story is off to four different destinations. I feel the content and style are worthy of publication. Tim seems to feel that since it reverberated in his mind, it is a sign of a good story. I feel Tim’s instincts are good, and I’m optimistic about the outcome. Because this is a story from my childhood, it was sometimes difficult as the emotions return with the writing. That, however, may be what gives the story life.