On July 1, I submitted my story collection to another competition. It’s the first time I’ve done that since 2018, so you can tell my energy has been directed elsewhere for the last five years. Life gets in the way of writing. Some writers seem to figure out how to avoid that problem, but I haven’t so far. Teaching, dealing with Covid-19, and moving to a new state are a few of the distractions I’ve encountered, and I’m sure there will be many more in the future.
That said, one thing that has helped me immensely is reconnecting with a long-time friend, who is also a writer. Even though they are in North Carolina and I’m in Kansas, we decided to connect through Zoom every two weeks as peer writers. We weren’t sure how or if this would work. We’ve never been in a writing group together, but we decided to set up some guidelines and try it. For guidelines, we agreed to each submit a story or novel excerpt for each session (further revisions are welcome). We limited each session to 30 minutes initially (the free version of Zoom) but expanded that to 1 hour with a Zoom subscription my friend generously purchased.
Since we are both fairly confident about our writing, we agreed to review overall content rather than grammar, spelling, and smaller issues. It took some time for me to figure out how to do that. As a teacher, I’m used to looking at the overall content as well as the smaller details. But I’ve slowly learned to be a better reader by looking at the big picture. We also strive to ask questions and point out things that confuse us as readers. We avoid telling each other “how to write the story,” although we offer suggestions that might be helpful.
That said, so far (knock on wood), our collaboration has been great for me as well as my friend. I’ve found answers for story endings and plot issues that stumped me for years. Not to say I won’t change those in the future, but for now I’m happy with the revisions.
Because we meet every two weeks, I write more. I am also able to see my stories in new ways. (That happens when I have a reader.) And now I feel confident about sending out my story collection again.
While I know writing groups or peer writer review doesn’t work for everyone, if you’re struggling to stay on task and get feedback, I hope you find a writing peer or group. I’ve been in many groups over the years. While not all of them were helpful, I’ve been fortunate to participate in some excellent ones that made me a better writer. I’ve never been a fan of Zoom meetings: however, I’m surprised and glad to find it’s a great option for my friend and me.
For all writers out there, I wish you well as you strive to carve out time to write and submit your stories, poems, or books. I also wish you well in finding the resources, peers or other strategies, which help you do that. As we all know, there’s no prospect for publication without that.
Karen T Miller 