“Write Your Way Out”

…is what Boston Erin said to me as we were walking back to her car after lunch yesterday. A fine children’s lit novelist in her own right, she read my poetry manuscript as its first reader/editor and made some excellent suggestions. But isn’t that why we write—to make things better, to improve our lives, to “write our way out” of the old and into the new?

Too bad poets, writers, and teachers don’t get the recognition our society affords athletes and rock stars. Wouldn’t be great to have your first book accepted right off the bat because the masses have heard of you and are clamoring for more, like the NBA draft?

I’d be lying if I said, “I don’t need recognition or validation by my peers.” I don’t write in a vacuum. I write, primarily, because I need to see my life before my eyes. Sometimes it gets so lost in toys and bills and long commutes, which is time away from home that I’ll never get back. But I also put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, so that one day I can support myself as a writer (and become U.S. Poet Laureate!). I just think being a writer is one of the greatest vocations in the whole wide world!

Last night, I made revisions to my poems and sent them off to the next round of trusted souls for their opinions. Then in December, I will shove my baby out into to world to sink or swim.