My grandma was a writer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Small time writer of small town folk stories. A small press published 300 copies of her story collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I always knew that writing was in my bones. When I was a preteen I started novels. When I was a teen I started journals. Nothing went beyond a few pages. The only finished thing I had was a novella that my best friend wrote and gave to me as a birthday gift. That handwritten novella, held together by a pink hair clip, was proof that girls can write. And finish. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For my 40th, I promised myself to actually <\/em>write and finish something. That year I wrote my first short story, for the 12 short stories challenge, by Deadlines for Writers. It was too long for the word count and I couldn\u2019t cut it down, so it didn\u2019t get posted. But I finished it. The next year I wrote 12 short stories. I developed a theme for a collection of short stories and many of them came from that time. I went on to write many more stories and am currently editing them with an editor. I also blogged on and off for a few years. Mostly off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I feel like I got the hang of the writing thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I found an editor I love and am learning to work through the edit process, without procrastinating for 2 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My strategy to build a name for myself so that I could eventually find a traditional publisher for my short story collection is to publish my stories in journals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Insert screeching brake sound here. This is where my process falls apart. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I really struggle to submit stories to journals, or even post stuff on a blog. I have written many blogs, mostly not posted, hidden in my google drive. I forget the address of my blog, I lost the login to my medium account. I have 2 followers on my social media blog. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I have been struggling with this for a long time. Even though they\u2019re anonymous blogs and I write under a pen name. I\u2019ve talked to my therapist about this for 2 years. I know that it comes from a basic fear of showing myself. I know where the fear comes from. I know that publishing on my blog is something within my control I can do to practice showing myself. But. But. But.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to transition to seeing myself as a writer, an artist, rather than associating myself with my day job (from which I no longer derive satisfaction). And although I have 40 stories and 20 blogs in the bank, I can\u2019t think of myself as a writer. Because I know that<\/p>\n\n\n\n Writers write<\/p>\n\n\n\n Writers edit<\/p>\n\n\n\n And <\/p>\n\n\n\n Writers <\/strong>submit<\/em><\/strong> and <\/strong>post<\/em><\/strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m still a little girl hiding. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Writers, artists can’t do that. Writers are brave and show up.\u00a0 Artists show their work.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My grandma was a writer. Small time writer of small town folk stories. A small press published 300 copies of her story collection. And I always knew that writing was in my bones. When I was a preteen I started novels. When I was a teen I started journals. Nothing went beyond a few pages. The only finished thing I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122,"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions\/122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}