I'm A Writer. . . No, Really!

Anyone who has known me for even the shortest amount of time knows that I've dreamed of becoming a writer since I was a little girl. Well, to be honest, when I was a little girl, I wanted to be the next Jane Pauly. I followed that dream all the way to journalism school, where I learned that most journalists are unhappy people with ugly hearts and no souls (and that's putting it nicely!). In other words, I realized I didn't want to become the type of person it takes to become a journalist. So, I left graduate school with the heavy heart of someone who's seen their entire future go down the drain. Most depressingly, journalism school made me hate writing. I was 24 years old, and I had no idea what to do with my life. Yes, 24 is young and maybe its not a big deal to not know what you want to do with your life at that age, but for someone who has had a "life plan" since I was 10, this was a bit unnerving for me, to say the least. Luckily, God distracted me with a wonderful guy, a beautiful wedding, and a breath-taking move to Europe. However, after a year in Germany, I found myself getting restless again. I actually missed writing. Cue God again: He dropped in my lap the opportunity to take a class about writing for children. Writing for children? I'd never considered it. But, if it gave me the opportunity to write about something other negativity, politics, and biased agendas, I figured I'd give it a shot. And I loved it. I loved, loved, LOVED the freedom that comes from writing fiction---and, not only that, but writing fiction for an age group that still enjoys the innocent things in life like puppies and ice cream. Naturally, after writing for awhile, I knew it was time to take the next step: getting published. It's a scary, tedious process, and after a year and a half of straight rejections, I was so ready to give up. I was almost ready to admit that, okay, maybe I'm not a good writer. Maybe this isn't what I'm meant to be doing. Today, I opened the mailbox and my heart sank: I saw before me a SASE (self-addressed, stamped envelope). When you submit a manuscript for publication, you also submit a SASE. This way, the editors have an easy way of sending you a rejection letter without having to put too much time or effort into the process. Anyway, I'd seen so many SASE's in the past 18 months, that I almost threw it away. But, curiosity got the best of me, and I wanted to see why I'd been rejected again: "Your piece doesn't fit our publication needs at this time" or "We've decided that your piece does not fit into any of our upcoming themes" or just a flat-out "NO." Imagine my surprise when I opened it and found these words: "Congratulations! We would like to publish your work in an upcoming issue." I had to read it several times before it finally sunk in--I was being published! Someone actually thinks my writing is worth sharing!

As you can see, the piece will be published by Skipping Stones magazine. Find out more about it here. There's some slight editing to do (which I've chosen to leave up to the professional editors at the magazine--I'm not good at editing my own stuff), and the Editor-in-Chief told me they should be done editing by March or April, which means they will make a decision on which issue to feature it in then. So exciting!

I've always been told that you can't really claim you're a writer until someone else says you are. Well, someone said that I'm a writer. So I'm a writer. . . no, really!