Gaining Confidence Through Writer’s Club

Not only is going to the writers’ club giving me social contact again, with local people and not just old friends from other counties.

But it’s giving me more confidence in my writing.  I keep getting praise for the little things I bring in.

Tonight I brought in my sci-fi romance, The Last Night, the 1992 revision. People were so concerned about my characters that they threw out ideas for rewrites and expansions, which would allow them to live instead of being executed.  LOL

People were surprised that I wrote it around age 19, and at how much I had written in general by the time I wrote the first draft in 1990 at age 17.  They called me precocious.

I thought this was normal for writers.  In college, I was a writing major, so I knew a lot of people who were at least as good at writing as me, if not better, at my age.  After all, we’d already been through a year’s worth of various writing courses.

Why do I keep writing the Richard/Tracy story despite being watched so closely by Tracy?  Whenever I ask myself that, the same answer comes up: Because I have to.

Why have I written so much all my life, not just in adulthood but since before I could write?  Because I have to.

It’s not so much a choice as a drive, an ever-pressing need.

It’s driving me to keep posting my Richard/Tracy story and my College Memoirs day after day after day, whether they’re read or not (except by Richard and Tracy), whether the frequency is too much for my subscribers to keep up with.

I MUST write these stories.  I MUST post these stories.

Then when I’m done, I’ll be free to write the next story.  But until then, my inspiration is dry for anything new, because it’s all caught up in what I’m working on now.

That’s just how my muse works.  It won’t let me rest until the story is done.  Unless it’s boring me; then I stop.

If I’m getting such high praise from the writing group, then I should branch out with my writing, maybe try to break into a local magazine…..