One Baby Step

After yesterday’s post, two friends emerged like old growth trees, always there through forces of any kind:

Cam writes:
“As much as I’ve always wanted a writing community, besides you, I’ve never had one. Or if I have, it hasn’t been constant. Little blips here and there. It is a solitary pursuit for me. One I’ve begun over and over, because there has been nothing left to lose. Which means at times I’ve lost everything with my writing. Maybe it has been me, or who I am, or just the way things have gone….A writer begins again because we HAVE to. I can’t describe it any better than that. The times writing has diminished down to almost nothing for me. And then I started again. You are far from that place, but I think you feel the potential borders of having your creative writing taken away. Though you have your blog (exercise), art writing (pay), your creative writing (identity), screams, because it is who we are. And when the creative writing feels threatened, WE feel threatened…You have never stopped. Maybe that is why you are having trouble beginning again.”

MBA writes:
“Did you know that [our teacher’s] poem that was included in the Best of American Poetry or Pushcart 2008 was rejected by SEVERAL magazines? And my poet friend submitted to FIELD for seven years (that’s 14 submissions, filling the 2 per year quota) before they finally took his work? Now he’s in there pretty regularly but, I am sure, still gets rejected…Keep writing and send again down the line. I wouldn’t take this time to tell you what I know and about the sub possibilities if I didn’t think you are so very talented! You are young and it takes time to develop and live and write about it! Keep writing with abandon and let that imagination and heart run wild. And keep submitting and don’t pay too much attention to what comes back. Eventually it’s going to gel if you just keep going. And have a triple peppermint mocha or a salted caramel latte with whip once in a while. I’m pretty much on the verge of a nervous breakdown all the time (my looming, albeit indolent cancer,
my hubby out of work and needing eye surgery, my autistic son is in puberty and may get kicked out of school, etc… etc..) but these yummy holiday drinks and a quiet browse around the local bookstore are saving me from total mental ruin. Oh yeah, and writing. Writing has saved my fucking life.”

And today, I write. Just a little bit. But I write.

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