The thing I loved most about my time in undergrad and grad school was the community of writers who were available to read stories and provide feedback. It’s a little trickier when you’re out of school to find these same sorts of communities. If you are lucky to live in a big city, there are usually a plethora of writing groups that you can join. But small towns or small cities…well, you might just have to start one and hope someone shows up.
One perk of being a college teacher, especially in English, is having friends and mentors who love reading and writing as much as you do – who when they find out you are writing a novel offer to read it. And when you follow up to ask how serious they were about reading it, they actually take you up on it. For me, that’s Amy and Ann. I owe my teaching career to them. They are closer than friends. And I’m about to hand over a copy of my novel to each of them – I feel like I should be more nervous about this. But maybe lack of nerves is a good sign…?
Another full copy goes to my sister, Kelly. The remaining half a copy goes to Jack. He’s been reading along since I started.
I’m a treehugger, I swear I am. But there’s just something about the physical – the heft of the pages. I wrote that. I may have sat and stared at this for a bit just trying to take it in.
Once I hand them over, I will, for the first time in over two years, not be actively working towards writing and polishing my WIP. What does one even do?
Oh yeah. Start something new. 🙂
Ami Maxine 