Accepted

I have bonafide acceptance into my first ever grad school! While I see this as a stepping stone in my graduate level education, I am nonetheless excited. As I’ve written before, I am also nervous. I am uncertain that I will be up to the challenge of school after so long out of the game, and worry that I may fail in this endeavor. Challenges are to be faced, though, and are ultimately what define us as people, so I am going to face this one as bravely as I can.

Meanwhile, I have been thinking about the step beyond this one: the Master of Fine Arts in Writing. I really, really want to jump into that, but must test myself first. My advisor at my first ever grad school has given me a lead into a community, Art House Dallas, that centers around creative arts of all kinds. After perusing their website, it looks as if they have plenty of written art events.

I have not been a part of a writing community since my undergraduate days when I was part of a quite exciting group of writers that were my peers and fellow students. I miss that sense of belonging intensely, and the fun of writing together with other enthusiasts. It particularly sharpened my skills and made me a better writer. I write on my blogs, but am not eliciting feedback on how to improve my writing. More online journals, these blogs give me a chance to throw words at the screen and not lose the ability to craft a sentence, but they are not trying to be high art.

I worry that in a community of writers I may not be accepted. I know that this is imposter syndrome rearing it’s inauthentic head, but I cannot shake the feeling that I wouldn’t belong, or that I would be an outsider. As with most people in a group, I would want to belong in the group, be a full, contributing member. I don’t want to hang on the fringe, or just exist in the space. I want to commit and become an integral facet. I would like to offer as much as I would be given, in terms of feedback, critique, and a fresh perspective. Maybe Art House Dallas could be the opportunity I am looking for.

I have a friend in Pennsylvania who is a young adult author and she has invited me to be part of her group of writers. To date, I have not taken that plunge either, but I feel that it is time to do so. If I am going to commit to a life of writing, and make it a viable part of my life, I really need to be part of communities that write.

I also need to get more serious about writing every day. My wife has a few book projects she would like assistance writing, and that I have agreed to help her on. I need to get started with those in a real way. My blogs are doing fine, I last wrote here ten days ago and on PhilMartin.blog four days ago, so I am regularly enough publishing posts, but I need to inculcate myself into the habit of writing. I cannot improve without doing, and doing so regularly.

I have an action list: join Art House Dallas events, join my friend’s group, start on my wife’s books, and continue blogging regularly. Taken together, that is more than enough to keep me busy. Grad school classes start this August, and once they do, I will really be in the thick of it. All the better! Without having a full time job, I need to be employed doing something. Even more so if that something is writing. (I hope to have a job again though, and relatively soon, but that remains To Be Seen at the moment.)

I look back and re-read that paragraph: my action list, and I am excited. There is potential for so much good there. It is a risk, of course, as most things new are, but without the threat of risk there is no hope of reward. I don’t achieve by sitting around doing nothing, and that gets boring after awhile anyhow. I must have something to do, and I have chosen, for better or for worse, writing.

I was thirteen the first time I consciously sat down and wrote a poem. I still have it, but it isn’t any good. It is evocative, but amateurish, has imagery, but lacks sophistication. I was thirteen, after all, and just starting. But it really reminds me of the poet I would become, and the sort of thing I write now, just, better. Before then, and since then, I have written a lot of different things, but that I consider the true beginning of my intentional writing career.

That is another long term project I would like to commence at some point, by the way: revising my book of poetry. Did you know that I self-published some poems? Well, I did, and you can buy the collection on Amazon. As good as I consider them (I am offering them for sale, after all) I would like to see what some intense revision could do. I want to put them through the wringer of my own critique, and others’, and see what emerges. I think I have enough to work on for now, but that remains a longer-term goal. Look for a second edition of Whiskey Poetry in the future! (But for now, buy the one that is out there. Amazon has it on sale for a little over $5. Can’t beat that!)

I am now thirty-six. That is twenty-three years in the profession. I have been paid, to date, if memory serves, $130 for my writing. That is for one job I held writing educational materials, a blog post for a website I used to contribute to, and two copies of my book to my mom and a friend. But professional writers don’t often become multi-millionaire New York Times bestsellers. Sometimes they aren’t even published. But they are still writers. What matters is how you do it, and I want to do it like they do: consistently and at a high level. Small beginnings are not to be diminished.

Consider my acceptance into grad school another small beginning. I am making my way forward, and that is what matters.