I feel I should have a teachers group network to review and chat and to reflect our thoughts. I am sure there are many available network of the kind.
Dig them out of that dusty file drawer. Read each one, word-for-word, page by page. Then slect your closest friend, the one who would die for you, the one you know you can trust with your deepest, darkest secrets. have him/her come over to your place. Have his/her favorite snacks and drinks. Then, assign the task of reading your work.
Remain SILENT, as he/she reads.
At the conclusion of his/her reading, ask for his/her most objective opinion.
Then, re-write and revise. Send Query letters to Literary Agents. Prepare for rejection letters. Persevere, write and write some more, and keep trying to get your work published . . . DON'T GIVE UP!
Can you imagine a world without Ernest Hemmingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edgar Allen Poe, Agatha Christie, or J. K. Rowling? They did not give-up on their writing, and the world is a better place for the contributions each has made.
Put 'em up on a blog somewhere; at least one person will see it. Whether or not they say anything, at least your work will have affected somebody in the world.
show them off, writing is a gift that should be shared.
Pull them out and organize them, establish an affinity diagram on the topics and then prioritize the groups. Then get it done.
In the mid late eighties, I was a police officer in a small town, and came upon a highly unusual gruesome scene that I had to handle. The image of that day was intensely focused in my mind for over 13 years before I finally sat down and wrote "Jackknifed,"
http://www.joshcomm.org/shortstories/jackknife.html and got it out of my system.
There were other stories I had written, and held onto, before sharing and giving forth those things I saw, but you have the desire to share yourself and thoughts with others, risking all, and not live in fear. To those of you who are afraid of taking risks, I turn you to this simple poem I have carried and lived by for many decades, that poem entitled "To Risk."
http://www.joshcomm.org/poems/torisk_p.html
First of all, read it again. Read it as if it was someone else's work. If you enjoy it, then show it to someone else! Discuss it! Update it, if necessary!
Then the process of submitting the manuscript for publication begins ...
Get them out, read through them, correct them up and start sharing! Or... if you are too embarrassed, work on some new stuff, share it and maybe in the future you will have the courage to revisit them.
Burn them. You were a different person when you wrote them and other than marvelling in pathetic sorrow at your own precocity you'll still end up doing nothing about them. Look forwards not back.
Take them one by one for a good shaking out. Have a quick read-through and ask yourself very sternly if you tgruly believe it is either 1.) a good read and/or 2.) well written. If it's a good read, then work on the well-written part and make it a live project going somewhere. "The process" will decide, along the way, whether it makes it to the public eye or not ... and you will have learned a helluva lot more about yourself and your work.
Once you've dealt with the first one. Then take out the next and do the same thing.
One at a time so that you can give it your full and focused attention.
Type up your favourite stuff and make a Booklet with it in! Celebrate your creativity! If people don't like it, it could be because they are jealous.
Definitely worth keeping and revisiting upon occasion. We all like to think that the newest work is the best, but all of our earlier writing contain some absolute gems and nuggets of concise observation, or an idea that really was waiting for just the right time.
Go for it!
(Shakespear said) "Screw up your courage to the sticking point" and publish them. Try http://www.lulu.com
Learn from them. Take them out, reread them. Ask yourself, how could I make this description more intense, this conversation more lively, this plot move more easily? You'll amaze yourself.
What are you waiting for? Pull them out, read them, edit them, join (or start) a creative writing group and keep on stepping. The beauty of our technical age is that creative writing groups don't even have to be "in person". Just use the notes feature in word processing and you have a face-to-face meeting right there at your computer. I always say that being published doesn't make you a writer. The act of writing makes you a writer, so get that stuff out, dust it off, make improvements, and start writing again! |
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