This quote justified what I’ve known to be true about my publishing journey. And I am trying to come to terms with where I go from here. Forgive me if I sound like a broken record, I know I have written about this before, but I am still wrestling with this and writing is how I work it out—and that’s telling…as you will see, but I won’t spell it out for you (wow, pun-time).
Currently, I am working on finding my love of story again. The royalties trickle in, and each time, I am reminded how the effort to get there broke me and how, finally, my passion oozed out until I just didn’t care to write one more word.
Freedom.
No contract, no guidelines, no selfie-world expectations.
My love of story dulled, and I’ve felt like its acquaintance for over 2 years…until, a spark was kindled by a contest prompt.
And I didn’t really focus on the reward from the contest. I wanted to prove (to myself) that I could write a story that I loved. A story that was from the heart and not mimicking a critique’s sentence structure or publisher’s formula. Kinda like how I wrote before I went to my first writer’s conference 16 years ago.
And so I wrote.
And I entered.
And I finaled.
And it will be published this fall. But the reward hasn’t had any affect on me like it might have had in the past, because the reward wasn’t what I was writing for.
And maybe there’s something to that.
All these years of striving to publish, to sell, to market myself had me put my desires on the reward.
What a shame.
I got caught up in the game.
Tossed my heart aside to make a buck and a like. I was never super good at it, now that I look back, because I was never ever satisfied (a Hamilton song comes to mind 😉).
Now, I am starting from scratch again. But I am not in it to win it (and I used a cliche and I don’t even care🤪). I am only wanting to continue to write because once upon a time (cliche #2), starting at the age of 8, I was in love with storytelling and it was fun and I always found time to write a story because it was just something I did—before anyone told me how to do it or said I had a chance or told me that I fell short of the right way to do it.
So maybe, 41 years after that initial spark, about 16 years after that publication pursuit, a few years of falling out of love with it, maybe writing has become a warmer acquaintance again.
We’re not chummy yet.
I don’t even know if I have it in me to write what I really want to write. I hardly know what that is right now.
But, I know the mistakes I have made—and it has little to do with sentence structure or plot points.
I don’t want to focus so much on me or the stuff, I just want to love to write again.
So, we’ll see.
angie dicken 