I spent yesterday and today editing and rewriting for a magazine that my notes show accept free lance material. I have looked in my current Writer’s Market and also online and cannot find the magazine listed any more. This is discouraging. I know they still publish . . . don’t they? Is anyone else familiar with Instructor Magazine?
Two things I lack that I sorely need to expand my writing career are time and energy. I am home tonight and feel so tired I’m ready to go to bed. It’s barely 7:30 pm. I don’t know how I worked all those years and took care of three sons alone, but somehow I managed. I remember the sheer exhaustion that came with trying to juggle an elementary school child, a middle school child and a high schooler. Now I’m just trying to take care of myself and my pets and the energy I expend at work exceeds what I have total. Something has to give. I really want to write. Am I willing to risk homelessness to do it? We’ll see.
Post was put in wrong blog. How does this keep happening? It’s annoying and I went to this blog, but it showed up in my “Ms. Playful’s” blog.
The more I write and write about writing, the more emails with offers of help and notices about paid services for writers I receive. I want to write partly to share my words, but also to earn an income. I do not want to invest hundreds of dollars to get help with my writing. How do I know that their ideas are better than mine? How do I know they can help me until after I invest money in their businesses? Soon I will quit opening the emails that pretend to be someone interested in my writing. If I haven’t sent a certain email address any submissions, I doubt what they want is to help me. More than likely what they want is to reach into my purse and extract money. I can do that without their help.
I just heard about NaPoWriMo. It’s similar to NaNoWriMo, which I participated in recently. I wasn’t happy with the novel I wrote that month, although I did meet the word count goal. The novel is done, but needs much revision. Usually I revise as I write, but trying to churn out so many words in such a short time did not allow time for that.
NaPoWriMo is celebrating the month of April, which is National Poetry Month. The goal is to write one poem per day. I’m sure I can do that. Poetry is expressing emotions in as few words as possible. My poetry also tells little stories. I have different themes for different groups of poems I write and hope to publish a book of my poems. What better way to expand my self written collection of poems than to participate in this endeavor? I’ve actually been working on a book of poems for a self publishing site I found. I have some poems of mine that were published in magazines and I retained reprint rights to them, so they’re included. I’ve also written poems I haven’t submitted for publication that I also think are good enough to go in the book.
I try to go with whatever emotion I may be experiencing at the time. Right now I’m tired from throwing the ball for my youngest dog. She’s huffing and puffing herself while back in the house and complaining that she wasn’t ready to stop yet. Yes, she was. So let me see if I can express this emotion about her and that experience in as few words as possible.
OK . . . the poem about playing Fetch with Joy has been written. It needs work, but not much.
Constance As A Writer 