Swans NaNoWriMo
Now you too can be a writer! by Alma A. Hromic October 21, 2002 Once upon a time there was a little girl who loved words. She read a great deal. She read some more. From the first cherished book on her bookshelves to date, she has owned, borrowed, read, reviewed, gloried in and panned thousands of books, in three different languages.
In time, she has written and published five books of her own, and continues to produce book-length material; in between, she has had her byline on scores of thousands of words in the form of shorter pieces, fiction and non-fiction.
She has had hundreds of words rejected by editors with everything ranging from "Go away and never darken our doorway again" (albeit put a little more politely) to "This was so almost right that it breaks my heart to reject it."
These are a writer's dues - reading, writing, rejection. All of them need to be paid before a final acceptance, before the emerging of the writer from the chrysalis of someone who fiercely yearns to write into the butterfly of the published writer. (And then the butterfly finds out that it's hard work to keep flying, and that nectar is rare and difficult to find... but that's another story altogether.)
That girl was me. I paid all those dues. It's a matter of pride for me to stand up and say that I am a writer when people ask me what I do for a living. Yes, it's hard. Yes, it's sometimes grounds for clinical depression. Those are the valleys of the land; I took them on when I accepted the occasional attainment of those glorious peaks, planting my flag on some personal mountain. | |
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