Walk, Crawl, Stumble. . .

Okay, so be honest. Who looked at that title and thought, "Wait! That's backwards. You have to crawl before you can walk!" Well, in truth, normally I would agree with you, but when it comes to my writing, this seems to be the pattern I follow.

I sit down to write the story, my creative juices flowing, not like a river, but more like a steady stream. Finally after much work and effort, I hand my new work to my critique group. As thanks for my efforts, they beat, mutilate, and abuse it. With a smile, I take it back, knowing that they have my best interests at heart.

Here is where I crawl. The edits are great, and I know they are needed, but I have to stop and analyze each one. If it is punctuation: just fix it. If it is grammar: Okay, now how do I fix this? If it is a story issue: here are the hardest ones, as in some cases it is already fixed later in the story. Some I need to figure out how and where to fix it. This process is slow, and difficult, but again, necessary.

Story written, edits done, now you would think I could at least run, but no... Time to have my critique group check my query letter, send them out and wait. Receive rejections, but keep striving forward, knowing that someone will see my work, my passion, and want to take my work to the next level.

Hopefully when that finally happens, I will begin to run. Till then, my fingers will continue to tap out pages, my mind will continue to visit my wide tracks of property in la-la-land, and I will move ever forward.