Tell us about your doubts or fears, and how you conquered them. Bring us along for your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who might be struggling.
Visit and connect with fellow writers. The group aims for a dozen visits each IWSG Wednesday. And make sure to return your comments. This group is all about connection!
To sign up go here
The awesome co-hosts for the August 7 posting of the IWSG are Renee Scattergood, Sadira Stone, Jacqui Murray, Tamara Narayan, and LG Keltner!
And the question for this sweltering summer day: Has your writing ever taken you by surprise? For example, a positive and belated response to a submission you’d forgotten about, or an ending you never saw coming?
Honestly, it continues to surprise me every day that writing (the act itself) is not, in fact, easier than merging gently with the comforter in a nice long nap. Excuse me. This brain-wrenching, ego-destroying, viscerally difficult effort is not what I signed up for and yet somehow I can’t make myself quit trying.
To answer the question I also have a story for you which starts all the way back in 2017. I had wrestled a silly event which probably took all of 15 seconds at the dinner table into a two-page short story format, as we do, and I was submitting it left and right. I tried many different outlets until one day Chicken Soup For the Soul accepted my short story and paid me 200$ for it to appear in My Crazy Family which published in 2018.
Good for me, right, job well done, and on to the next one.
Two weeks ago (we’re now in 2019 if you’re keeping track) Country magazine emailed me with the delightfully surprising knowledge that I had ‘given them a chuckle’ and they’d like to publish my silly short family story for 100$ and a copy of the magazine.
I’m always happy to give someone else the opportunity for a giggle but in this case I also wanted to know what the cheesy sprinkles they were talking about because it was mystifying to me. It took me almost a whole day of digging through the spreadsheets I keep of all my submissions to figure out that Country magazine was one of the places I had tried waaaay back in 2017.
The moral of the story is this; Country magazine takes almost three years to reply to submissions but they still might like your story, so go ahead and try.
The secondary moral is; if you write and submit regularly for three years you might, possibly, make as much as 300$. Welcome to #authorlife.
Hey, $300 is nothing to sneeze at. I’d be very pleased to earn that much writing. Then again, it’s my own fault for not submitting more often.
I shall not sneeze at it, definitely! I’m very glad I don’t have to live off of my writing though, lol.
A hundred dollars a year – you’re rich!
But that is good cash for short stories. Well done.
It’s great to hear ‘yes’ after eons of ‘no thanks’, and the cash makes it that much better, for sure 🙂
Wow! Three months… Congrats though!
Haha, thank you. I’ll take whatever acceptances I can get!
Congratulations! Enjoy every minute of it.
I intend to!
What a lovely surprise, even if rather delayed. Joanna Penn, writing podcaster, talks about the value of intellectual property generating multiple streams of income. You’ve just illustrated that principle.
That sounds so much more erudite than what I feel I actually do, haha. Very fancy! They’re more like income trickles but I’m proud to get accepted for any shorts I write 🙂