Sharing your writing can look like standing in a long line at the post office with a bulky envelope filled with stories waiting for their postage while your toddler children skip and hop and jump around you singing that one day they’ll be livin’ in a big, ol’ city.1
It can look like sitting in the carpool line and reading a text from a friend about a story slam of sorts. “I’m going to try out for this, and so are you,” she writes, and you agree, and after the try out, without knowing whether you made it or not, you celebrate over pasta and wine because the two of you gave it a shot.
It can look like the landscape of Santa Fe - rugged with its blue sky and purple mountains majesty, and you can’t breathe because the air is too thin or maybe it’s that you’re finished with graduate school, your baby is starting Kindergarten, you agreed to go back to teaching, and everything has happened too fast. You are supposed to read from your MFA portfolio today, your graduation day. You’ve chosen a story about a skateboard and a handful of Skittles. It’s a story that started in 1999 and here it is 2014 and it’s ready - you’re ready - and the moment is heavy with all that it’s taken - of you, of your husband, of your children - to get here. You are dizzy with contemplation and significance and you tell this to another friend - this one a doctor who knows a thing or twenty about chasing dreams. “I know,” she writes back. “It’ll all be OK.” Soon, she is there - a surprise by the koi pond, the enormous goldfish swim up to get in on the gig - with her husband and three daughters.
You read your skateboard story to a crowd of friends and colleagues and mentors and family, and five little girls who you tell before you begin: “This is a story about a time when I got a little banged up, but I’m OK now. I’m just fine now.”
Sharing your writing looks like 4:30am at the stop of the staircase while a storm outside rages, and the dog next to you - the dog that single handedly ended your 45 year disdain and fear of all dogs - shakes and pants, terrified of what’s going on outside. You make a nest of sheets and blankets, swaddle her up in them, then sit down next to her. One hand on your dog who made you unafraid and another on a notebook. You write about the storm, about exhaustion, about the chaos in your life, about the dog who changed you, and you see what it is you can make of it.
And you see what it is you can release.
The business of submitting our writing is gnarly and emotional and unequivocally humbling. My friends Megan Willome and Tresta Payne and I can’t take that away, but we can offer our camaraderie because we are in this next to you. We also want to share our writing with the world. But when and how and where?
It is from this desire to share our work that we developed a 12 page workbook called, “Let It Fly.” It’s a writing challenge, it’s an organizational tool, it’s (hopefully) inspiring. You can use it to keep track of ideas, submissions, dates, goals, and places to send your writing.
The workbook is designed to be used for three months, and is available for purchase here. Paid subscribers, as a (small) thank you for supporting my work, I’m sending you the workbook for free.
What will you let fly this summer?
Thank you, T. Swift.
I was hooked from the first paragraph! Beautiful descriptions and what a great workbook! Forwarding for other writer friends!
Excited for this and JUST purchased!