Month: January 2018

100 Good Words

This week, and it’s only Wednesday, hasn’t been going too well. I’ve had two rejections for submissions I thought were pretty certain. One was solicited and it was still a rejection. The other was for a place I’d written for in 2017. The final straw was a workshop I’d been looking forward to attending cancelling the creative non-fiction track due to lack of interest.

I moped my way through work and then through my chiropractor appointment and then through dinner. I’ve been sitting on sofa trying to think of a way to breakthrough what I see as a wall in my writing. I’ve always felt that I have a knack for description and dissecting people, places, and things, but I’m not sure if there’s any soul in what I am writing. I know people have emotionally connected with my work, but I’m sometimes unsure of why.

I read memoir and personal essays that leave me questioning how I can fall off of the edge of my writing. That’s how I’ve always viewed what I’m crafting. It’s like I’m standing on a cliff looking over into a chasm. I’m brave because I’ve made my way from safety to the very edge of this precipice, but I can never quite open my arms wide and let the wind carry me down the slope. Of course, this brings up doubt about whether writing is what I am supposed to be doing. That perhaps I’ve yet to find my passion.

So what’s the solution? Out of the blue the phrase “100 Good Words” pops into my head. I started think that maybe I need to approach my writing as building a road. If I can put in 100 good words each time I write it will eventually add up to something great.

100 words isn’t a lot. People write many times that each time they sit down at their computers. For me, someone who reads each things she writes aloud obsessively, 100 words that perfectly fit for not only content, but also musicality, is a solid foundation.

So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to take it 100 good words at a time. Is it a snail’s pace? Yes, but it may work for me. Instead of me looking at everything I write as a larger manuscript, I need to concentrate on the individual pieces and then the individual pages and then the individual paragraphs and then the individual lines. Microscopic it is! 100 good words starting now.