Allow Yourself To Be A Writer And See What Happens
After taking three courses in Writing to be Published, I wrote my first article.
A very kind classmate offered to edit my piece and gave me suggestions on improving my writing. Because of this, I dared to submit my article to HuffPost.
The next day the Editor accepted my piece and agreed to publish it on Christmas Day in 2020. I was elated. My article “A Love Letter To My Granddaughter (Who I Knew As My Grandson Until 5 Weeks Ago”) went viral.
My second article, a Service Piece, I shopped to many different outlets with no success.
But I didn’t give up.
I then studied with the Op-Ed Project for four weeks and hit pay dirt when my third article was published in The Houston Chronicle.
I was on a roll until I broke my arm in a fall, and I had to step back from writing for several months during a painful recovery. I almost gave up and sank into a depression. However, when I started to feel better, I took two more classes, and now I’m back in the saddle.
Publishing on Medium has been exciting and I have so much to say.
Learning from experts is the key to mastering any skill. My goal is to write daily and see what thirty days of writing consistently will feel like.
Through this injury, I realized that I have so much to say that can impact others in meaningful ways, so I push on to be the best I can be and offer hope to others that they can as well.
I’ve learned that words are powerful and that I have a voice waiting to be used for good in the world. I study the words of others and try to open myself to different ideas and methods of impacting the world.
In Toni Morrison’s documentary, she talked about writing in chalk on the sidewalk. When she and her sister wrote a cuss word down, her mother became inflamed over that word. Toni learned that words have power, and that set her on her path to writing.
I recently visited John Lennon’s memorial in Central Park for inspiration!
Study, listen, absorb and read authors/work you value. Together we can build the world we want to see and love living in.
Happy writing!
