I wrote my first full-length novel when I was 22 and received at least that many rejections before I put it to bed forever. Last summer, 40 years later, I pulled it out of the bottom of a moldy cardboard box, cleaned it off and read it. My hats off to the publishers who decided to reject it since it “had issues.”
There were several folders crammed full of poems in the same box. Most of these cheesy poems reflected the life of a typical high-schooler and early college kid – being dumped, having a wreck, losing a best friend, etc. I continued to write, joining local groups, some of them more for the social aspect than for sharpening and refining writing skills. I learned something useful from the serious writers and found that what worked for me was not so much a large group but one or two fellow writers who were as driven about their writing as me.
We meet every Friday night here at the Magic Table to study what we’ve written during the week. I read my newest poems to Beth (I usually have more to read since I work at a job far fewer hours than she) and she listens for the overall “feel.” We send each other copies electronically so we can see the poems as we read them. Allowing one another to see the poems makes it easier to catch all kinds of mistakes. We make corrections immediately, save the changes, and let them rest for the night.
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