149. Putting yourself out there

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Last night, Kelly had an entry on risk taking and writer's. Every day we put ourselves out there for the world to see. Writing in our blogs, sending out stories for submissions, sending out stories to critique groups is us taking a leap of faith and taking a risk. just yesterday, I sent out my latest completed story to my new critique group. I'd been wanting to submit there the last few days, but I kept stopping myself. The group was new, and since I write mostly m/m romance and erotica, I wondered how the response would be. honestly, I was nervous as hell, but I did it. I took the risk because I knew I wanted some other opinions on it before I submitted it out.

Well, I submitted it yesterday, and this afternoon two of my new critique group had read it. The response was good and they did give me some good situations on the story. Since, I'm still unpublished as a fiction writer, I still get nervous about putting my fiction out there. It's the whole "does it suck" phobia. I'm still working on that. I guess that's why I hadn't submitted much fiction in the past. I focus mostly on my nonfiction. It has sold for me. So I'm getting better at taking risks, but it is still something that I know I need to work. If you want to make it out there in the writing business, you need to put yourself out there each and everyday. Not every one will like what you have to say or what you write, but some will. Those are the ones you end up writing for.

Last night, I wrote my review for last night's episode of the Real World, and tonight I need to watch and recap So you think you can dance, but I'm taking a mini break from writing. Or I have been. I accepted the fact yesterday that my brain needed a mini-break. It is the end of the month, and I have written over 25,000 words this month. This is not counting my blog or my personal journal entries. This is articles and fiction. I'm not sure the last time I wrote that much in one month. I began the month with a goal of 10,000 fiction words in my mind, and I passed that just in the last couple of days. Last week, when I saw how close I was to 25,000 words, I made it my goal to surpass that, and I just did that with my review last night of the Real World. I'm quite proud I made some goals, and I stuck to it and succeeded. I didn't think I would. I'm getting there.

Have a great day everyone!