I found out (over a year after it happened!) that an essay of mine got nominated for a Pushcart. Found out the same week it also got nominated for Best of the Net. It was my first published piece and it felt really damn good to see it get some love.
Fantastic title--worth the wait and the agony. My recent win was the continued alignment of my vocation and avocation... I have an actual job supporting a community of writers!
Love it, Jami! After many months of writing for myself, I decided to take the plunge and share some of that writing. The response was so overwhelmingly positive - I am still beaming!
This week I did an interview to be featured in another Substack publication. The writer reached out to me after finding my writing via an email sent from the Substack account about a month ago. I received a nice bump in subscribers from that email and it was great to connect with a fellow writer. I’m hoping 2021 is filled with many more small wins that add up to an overall big win.
I had to laugh when I saw the title. I teach a first year class for comedy writing and performance majors. One of the ongoing assignments is set them up to develop a regular writing habit for generating material and ideas for potential material. I make a big point of "Take the Win" - that the goal isn't to write 10 good jokes, it is to write 10 jokes, or even 10 very rough half ideas for jokes. Did the minimum and turned in the two first draft samples required for class? Take the win!
So, I will follow my own advice. I did not get two third draft chapters done this week. But I did write every day and on two days I wrote for a three hour stretch. I did finish a third draft of one of my chapters. And I realized that the other chapter is not really a chapter- it should be part of an earlier chapter (which will then be ridiculously long but I will deal with that in the next edit).
I embraced my inner night owl/taskmaster and stayed up till 1am creating the best pricing graphics on the website for my now full-time hustle. I was buzzing for two days! I had agonized over how to create them and every little detail and instead I blew them out by keeping them simple and joyful. I'll take it!
Big win for me was getting the biggest copy writing project I've ever had thanks to a referral! Smaller win was getting two more chapters of my novel draft typed up from my handwritten draft.
File under cool things I never considered happening: A friend told me a teacher friend of his asked if he had heard of me and could my friend recommend a story of mine to be taught in the college class.
Not exactly a writing win, but: I got a job offer last week to start part-time work as a contact tracer! By day I'm a freelance social media marketer, and business has been slow with the pandemic. Having some extra income from contact tracing work will relieve some financial stress and may give me some good stories!
Also, this coming week I'm starting an 8-week workshop at Lighthouse Writers that I'm super excited about! Heard about them thanks to your newsletter :)
A couple of years ago I finished a book I'd been working on for years. I sent it out to a handful of agents, got a lot of rejection (one of which was very encouraging), and ultimately decided to shelve it. Then I started the book I'm working on now. It's slow-going, as I have two young children and a job, but I make sure to write for 15 minutes a day. My win is seeing how that first book has taught me so much about writing. I'm def not done learning how to write, but it's astonishing how much I learned from those years working on the first book.
After a year of submitting and getting loads of generic rejections, then two personal rejections, I finally got an acceptance! My first piece of published fiction will be a short story coming to a small online lit mag near you in April, and I feel like I’ve won the lottery.
Well, Georgia for sure. Plus after the subsequent shit show in DC, it was so nice to get a request for my first 50 pages on Friday from an agent I had queried on Thursday mostly as a distraction. I’ll take it!
I found out (over a year after it happened!) that an essay of mine got nominated for a Pushcart. Found out the same week it also got nominated for Best of the Net. It was my first published piece and it felt really damn good to see it get some love.
Fantastic title--worth the wait and the agony. My recent win was the continued alignment of my vocation and avocation... I have an actual job supporting a community of writers!
Love it, Jami! After many months of writing for myself, I decided to take the plunge and share some of that writing. The response was so overwhelmingly positive - I am still beaming!
This week I did an interview to be featured in another Substack publication. The writer reached out to me after finding my writing via an email sent from the Substack account about a month ago. I received a nice bump in subscribers from that email and it was great to connect with a fellow writer. I’m hoping 2021 is filled with many more small wins that add up to an overall big win.
I had to laugh when I saw the title. I teach a first year class for comedy writing and performance majors. One of the ongoing assignments is set them up to develop a regular writing habit for generating material and ideas for potential material. I make a big point of "Take the Win" - that the goal isn't to write 10 good jokes, it is to write 10 jokes, or even 10 very rough half ideas for jokes. Did the minimum and turned in the two first draft samples required for class? Take the win!
So, I will follow my own advice. I did not get two third draft chapters done this week. But I did write every day and on two days I wrote for a three hour stretch. I did finish a third draft of one of my chapters. And I realized that the other chapter is not really a chapter- it should be part of an earlier chapter (which will then be ridiculously long but I will deal with that in the next edit).
I am taking the win!
I shared three of my essays with some writing friends and they loved what I wrote! So gratifying. Thank you, Jami, this is great!
I embraced my inner night owl/taskmaster and stayed up till 1am creating the best pricing graphics on the website for my now full-time hustle. I was buzzing for two days! I had agonized over how to create them and every little detail and instead I blew them out by keeping them simple and joyful. I'll take it!
Love the title!!!
Thank you!!!
Big win for me was getting the biggest copy writing project I've ever had thanks to a referral! Smaller win was getting two more chapters of my novel draft typed up from my handwritten draft.
File under cool things I never considered happening: A friend told me a teacher friend of his asked if he had heard of me and could my friend recommend a story of mine to be taught in the college class.
That is so cool!
Not exactly a writing win, but: I got a job offer last week to start part-time work as a contact tracer! By day I'm a freelance social media marketer, and business has been slow with the pandemic. Having some extra income from contact tracing work will relieve some financial stress and may give me some good stories!
Awesome
Also, this coming week I'm starting an 8-week workshop at Lighthouse Writers that I'm super excited about! Heard about them thanks to your newsletter :)
Also I feel like I should reveal that the rejected titles were: The Bone Chapel, A Trip to the End of the World, and Extra Life.
I was coming here to ask just that!
I lost a storytelling game show and got some valuable feedback. My story about a fireworks accident deserves to be delivered with higher energy.
A couple of years ago I finished a book I'd been working on for years. I sent it out to a handful of agents, got a lot of rejection (one of which was very encouraging), and ultimately decided to shelve it. Then I started the book I'm working on now. It's slow-going, as I have two young children and a job, but I make sure to write for 15 minutes a day. My win is seeing how that first book has taught me so much about writing. I'm def not done learning how to write, but it's astonishing how much I learned from those years working on the first book.
After a year of submitting and getting loads of generic rejections, then two personal rejections, I finally got an acceptance! My first piece of published fiction will be a short story coming to a small online lit mag near you in April, and I feel like I’ve won the lottery.
Congratulations!
yay!!! congratulations!
Well, Georgia for sure. Plus after the subsequent shit show in DC, it was so nice to get a request for my first 50 pages on Friday from an agent I had queried on Thursday mostly as a distraction. I’ll take it!