Quickly, some self promotion

So I finally got around to buying a copy of the magazine I had story published in last month. If you get a chance, check it out here. It's a non-fiction piece (a personal essay, even) about connection to place.

Voiceworks is an incredible publication -- and not just because they kindly published my piece. Each edition (it's a quarterly magazine) features new writing from young Australian writers and provides a wonderful opportunity for writers and artists under 25 to get there work out there. Even if you don't buy this particular issue, please do check it out.

I'm very bad at self promotion, so I'll leave it there.

Frustration

Sigh. I'm frustrated. I don't seem to be able to get over it either. I try to be positive, I really do, but at the moment I feel like I'm wasting time. I'm working, I'm even writing, but I don't feel like I'm achieving anything.

This all began to become obvious about three weeks ago. My Mum came to visit for the weekend and we went to see Ruben Guthrie, a play by Australian playwright and actor Brendan Cowell. I loved it. But I began to wonder why I wasn't writing plays myself. Or anything, really. I mean, I am writing, but nothing feels finished and I still have to go to my day job. I feel somehow trapped. Somewhere.

I wish writing was my day job but I have no idea how to get from here to there. And that, more than the fact that I'm not there yet, is what I'm frustrated about. I'm a proactive person. I like to have plans and implement them. I like to make decisions and act on them (for instance, when I moved away from Melbourne the time between me deciding to do so, and actually getting on a plane was about eight days, and it was only that long because I had to give notice at work). I've made some decisions about things I want to do in the near future, but I can't act on them yet. Patience is certainly not my strong point.

All that said, I do have some things to be positive about at the moment. I have received some wonderfully positive feedback from my teachers about a screenplay and a short story I have written; and a non-fiction piece I wrote last year is about to be published in Voiceworks.

So why am I complaining, I think. Well, I'm just impatient I guess.

Publishing

I’ve been published in print just once. On the web (other than here), I’ve been published a few more times. But I’m still not entirely sure how one goes about moving from Written Piece (notice I don’t say ‘finished’ – my pieces are never really finished) to Published Piece.

I do know that it involves putting your work out there. Sending your baby off to people you don’t know, who will judge whether or not it is worth publication. I find it a little terrifying.

The piece I had published in print was the first thing I ever really sent off. I should be proud of that, but it has, in fact, made it much more difficult for me to send anything else for consideration. What if it was just beginners’ luck? What if I only had one good piece of writing in me?

I know these are all just silly excuses for me to avoid having to face potential rejection. If I don’t send anything for consideration, I won’t have anything published. Simple as that.

I’ve made a mini-vow to myself. I am going to sit down at my computer and go through all of my short stories; and I am going to pick two, three, maybe four to start sending off to potential publishers. I will keep sending these stories until everywhere I can think of has said ‘no’ (or not replied).

The other issue here, of course, is that I do need to feel like something is at least finished enough for publication. So this is the first part of my mission: I am going to try to get three or four pieces to a Finished Enough point and then out they will go, into the big, scary world of Please Publish Me.

Wish me luck!