Lessons Learned From Year One

This has been a year of learning. I didn't really know what to expect when I started writing regularly and figured that I'd figure it out along the way. That process is long from over and at a year in, I feel that the journey has just begun.

The year has been filled with first. That is after all how you learn. I've written more than I ever have, joined The Magic Spreadsheet (google it), done some real editing, submitted a story for publication, and dealt with the rejection of that story. It's been quite the ride!  Out of all of these things, I am most proud of actually submitting something. Even if it was just a short story and who cares that its been rejected over and over, it taught me so much.

I sent my first short story out on October 8th 2013. It was, as I expected it would be, rejected. I was of course a little disappointed, I mean we all want to succeed at everything, but that never happens. The rejection mentioned that I had potential as a writer so that took a little of the sting out of it and the fact that I could now call myself a working writer, according to "I Should Be Writing's" Mur Lafferty's definition, was really cool.  Thanks Mur!

After getting the first rejection, I went through my story and found so much wrong. I would have rejected me on grammar alone, and I kicked myself (hard) for the stupid mistakes that I had made. It's not an excuse, but the first time I sent out the story I was in a hurry, thought I had corrected things which I obviously hadn't and sent it without much thought. It was late, I was tired, whatever, it was stupid to send it like I did but I did.  So there's my first big lesson. Don't be in a hurry. These things take time and you will overlook things that will make you look like you have no idea of what you're doing when you get in a hurry. 

After kicking myself many times and hard, I went back through the story to make corrections before sending it back out into the wild. I did more than grammar though. There were some scenes that could be better, so I spruced them up, added description here and there and sent it out again. It was again rejected. No big deal I thought and set to going through it again.

Somewhere in this process the story changed. Not just the grammar and fleshing out, but the mood and feel of the story. It lost a little of what I was aiming for in the first place, and I did it in an effort to make it better.

After two more rejections, I read through the story again and realized that I didn't like it as much as the story I had started with. The grammar was better, the scenes had better description, but it missed the feel of the original.  What started as a dark but funny story had lost all of the funny and was now just dark and kind of boring. There's my second big lesson. Stay true to the spirit of the story while you revise and edit or you may end up with something that you barely recognize as your work when you're done.

It looks like I'll trunk that story for now. Maybe I'll go back to it in a few years and maybe not. Either way, it was a great learning tool. I'm hoping for better luck in year two of my writing journey, but no matter what, I'll keep plugging away and stacking up the lessons learned. They are bound to help me get further down this crazy road I'm on.