Happy St. Paddy's day.
Spring is in the air. Major League Baseball teams are winding down at their Spring Training Camps and gearing up for Opening day in their respective states. If you've ever had a chance to speak to a player about the game, you know how excited they're about what they do for a living. They've honed their skills over the years and love to talk about the game.
Many baseball players probably started off playing ball with family members and from there moved on to T-ball at a neighborhood park. Their first coaches taught them an important fact--practicing in between games helps them perform better. As they matured, they graduated to different levels of playing: middle school, high school, even college. Eventually, all those hours of practicing to improve their playing skills pays off. A baseball scout spots them and recommends them for a Minor League spot. But it doesn't stop there. The baseball player continues to persevere and works even harder on his skills, proving he's ready for the Major Leagues.
Like a baseball player, a writer needs to continue to hone their skills so they too may one day become part of the Major Leagues and be published by a traditional publishing house. It's not easy to convince one of the big publishing houses to sign you on, I should know, I've been writing since 1995, but if you don't persevere you'll never know if your dream could've come true.
We need to keep on writing. Hone our skills. We've talked about attending writing seminars, attending classes to improve our writing and joining writers groups. But when we're working on a novel, it's hard to find extra time. One thing I've been doing these past four years is writing short stories for different anthologies. Don't forget, anthologies expose your writing to others too. Usually, the ones I've participated in have a deadline of August. The time frame is perfect. My new novel comes out in the spring and I take a short break before starting the next one.
Writing stories for contests is another way to sharpen your writing skills. Even if you don't win a thing. To be honest, I had gotten tired of sending in stories to various contests and never hearing anything. But this past December, I decided to persevere and enter another interesting contest.
Guess what? Two weeks ago I received notice that I'm a finalist in the contest. I couldn't believe it. I'm on pins and needles. All the tweaking I did with this particular story, in between each contest it was submitted to, finally paid off. I'll share about the contest next blog when I hear where I actually placed.
So keep persevering. Write your heart out. You never know when the surprise notice beginning with "Your writing's been selected" will cross your threshold via mail or e-mail.
Until Next Time
This is Marlene Chabot
Mystery Author
