I considered writing fairly early in life because my mother was a writer from the time I was very young. I remember her taking her Masters in English and writing novels. She put it aside for a while to pay the bills and raise us all but picked it back up when I was in college. I always enjoyed talking to her about writing.
When I was in high school, I did well in writing exercises. I remember having to write a short story in the ninth grade. That was fun. I always enjoyed writing papers for class. In the tenth grade, I remember a comment on one of my papers that got me excited about writing. The teacher said if every student wrote like that, he’d be out of a job. In college, another professor reinforced my excitement with a comment on a paper. He said I wrote with passion and tact. I loved to hear that and it made me feel like I could do it.
The first time I really dabbled in fiction was when I got obsessed with Doctor Who in college. That was before Doctor Who was more than a cult show on Public Television. I loved everything Doctor Who and I had to write my own adventure in screenplay format. It was satisfying to finish the 80-page project, even if it was just for me and would never be filmed. In that same time frame, I took a playwriting class and wrote a short play for fun.
Not long after that, I came up with an idea for a novel. I’ve written bits for this off and on over the years, but it has spent a lot of time on the back burner while I’ve pursued my career as a pharmacist. In the meantime, I’ve satisfied the writing bug with lots of technical writing for the job and a chapter in a professional textbook for pharmacy students.
A few years ago, my mother took up the pen again and started writing story poems. Her first one was so good that I encouraged her to publish it. She wrote enough poems to fill a book and did just that, which made me so proud. She’s followed that up with several more books and she isn’t stopping anytime soon. She started going to writer’s conferences and doing book signings. It was inspiring to me all over again. She started encouraged me to write again too. I joined her at a writer’s conference two years ago to start my serious writing journey.
At that conference, there were many wonderful speakers. One gave me some fresh inspiration for my novel. I also listened to a talk on flash fiction. The editor giving it said that flash fiction was one of the smartest ways to pursue publication because on average, it takes about 25 interactions with an editor to get published. He said that you might as well have those interactions with a flash fiction editor instead of with novel editor, just because flash fiction is shorter. It is an efficient way to improve your craft and get experience.
I’d never seriously considered spending time on short stories, but that made so much sense to me, that I resolved to try that route. In the next six months, I wrote and submitted four stories that did nothing. I submitted the fifth story in a contest. The judge awarded it runner-up status in the contest and it was published last year. A couple of months later I won a contest in one of my writing groups.
I’ve entered multiple short story and flash fiction contests since that time. I really feel that the contests with prompts are the most helpful because they stretch my creativity. The flash fiction contests make my writing tighter. I have gotten another story published, and it comes out next month. An editor has also contacted me about another story he rejected last year that he wants to consider for a different issue this year. My craft is improving and the stories are doing better.
I am still committed to finishing and publishing a novel-length work. To get there, I’ve been taking a novel writing class with my local writer’s organization. The instructor, a best-selling author, has given me many great tips to push my novel toward completion. I’ve invested in writing conferences and online classes to learn as much as I can to further my goal.
I’ve found an amazing critique group that has pushed me to improve even more. I can’t say enough great things about my local critique partners. I have also discovered some great online writer’s groups with regular contests. My first group came about through James Patterson’s Master Class, the second through the wonderful 2Elizabeths, and finally, the group that gave me this prompt, the DIY MFA Book Club. These groups and the writers I have met continue to inspire and push me to write better and more often. I am excited about the journey.
